tl;dr for those who saw the meltdown thread where I pined over my sold R6, it was the footpegs on the S1K that were actually too short and it "handles" as good as/better than the R6. I now have a track day coming up.
So since I bought the S1000RR I slowly (then quickly) started to regret it on the grounds that "it doesn't handle like my R6 or like 600s do".
I posted a thread here losing my actual mind and was extremely close to jacking in the S1000RR for another R6 13S (2008-2016), but luckily the dealership had too much trouble finding an underwriter to part-ex my bike for the R6 so I gave up on that.
At first I thought it was suspension related so I toyed with softer/harder settings, made no difference.
Then thought it was the tyres themselves so I replaced those. It did make a positive difference although it was probably more of a placebo effect.
I was able to lean lower into corners with more confidence but was still getting to the limit because the traction light would go spastic when I'd push it. Body position still felt completely unnatural and forced, very uncomfortable.
Then I realised it might be the rearsets, so I adjusted these. The previous owner had them on -1 (lower) to make it more comfy so I jacked it up to 0, which is stock, then +1 which is higher than stock. +1 sucked, 0 seemed perfect. Seemed to improve a little bit.
Also tried adjusting front and back position and found that front, or stock position was perfect as-is so I left that alone.
So at that stage I felt that I finally had my feet in the right position but still somehow felt completely cramped and unable to really maneuver properly around the tank.
Stuck with it this way for a good few months (still very much disliking the bike) and then realised the problem was that I could not turn my outside leg away from the bike with enough room to weight the outside peg.
Instead my outside leg would be high on the ball of my foot and I'd be stamping down as hard as I could just to give me enough room to be able to hang off and not fall off the bike. This would make it really weak/tired really quickly and felt really unnatural.
Fast forward to a week ago I learned by posting on the S1000RR Facebook group that the stock rearsets come with 100mm footpegs.
The spec on the footpegs for the HP rearsets is 82mm. That's almost 2cm less room for my foot.
Contacted Gilles who supply parts for the HP rearsets and got the 5mm spacers and the foldable pegs. Combined these measure 96mm, so close to stock.
As soon as I put these on I can get both knees down anywhere again and the bike feels exactly like the R6 felt, ridiculously stable at any speed and any lean angle in any gear. The way I tested this was by getting knee down at 20mph into a Tesco's car park slip-road thing and other stupid places where it's narrow and this shouldn't be possible.
The whole time all that was wrong was that I didn't actually have any room to move my legs around the tank without them getting very tired.
I'm just posting this update in case anyone else sees my old thread and is put off upgrading to a 1000 because their 600 handles better. Now I've figured it out I can never go back to a 600. This thing is a pure upgrade from the R6 in every way and I'm glad this E36 M3 is finally put to bed. I actually thought there was something wrong with the bike, but there isn't.
I wasn't going to do track days on this bike until I fully sorted out the problems that were eluding me and driving me insane, but now I've got Brands Hatch booked for the 22nd of August. Really curious to see how the bike behaves compared to the R6 on the same track.
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