Powering Corners

[WIDGIN]

Powering Corners

I'm certainly not trying to preach to the choir, but recently someone who told me I ìhaul assî made me think about writing this post.  :idea:  In short, a few techniques I use for safer, faster, more confident cornering.  Most modern riding books Iíve read seem to only focus on picking lines around corners.  It seems like a huge number of riders donít understand the gyroscopic effects, tire adhesion properties, and simple physics involved in cornering.  :(  

35 years ago, after almost dying from a slow trail-bike collision, I had an epiphany that made me work on improving my awareness to be safer and to learn to ride faster at the same time.  The result is that I routinely rider faster than most of the riders I meet, even though Iím certainly not the fastest, smoothest, or craziest rider on the road.  On the Tiger, this means that a fair number of sport bikes limp home wondering how the heck that big, dirty, ugly beast with the striped tank passed them on a short straight on our mountain roads and then completely disappeared from view after a couple of twisties. :lol:      

The first and very obvious technique is to continually scan the road and all surroundings as far ahead as possible.  If you are on a winding switchback road, even in a deep forest, you will often catch a glimpse of oncoming traffic when it is two turns ahead of you IF you are looking there.  You're entering a right hand turn; you see a flash of movement through the trees coming around what will be your next left corner or maybe the right corner after that.  You need to determine how to take a corner far before you enter it.  Preferably, you should be consciously thinking 2 corners ahead of yourself.  Iím sure that professional racers on an enclosed track are thinking several corners or even a lap ahead.  If you're concentrating on the corner you're already in, you're way too late to do much except just react to whatever pops up.  :oops:          

Second, you should square off corners on the street to improve visibility through the corner.  This will actually slow you down somewhat but allows you to SAFELY concentrate on the fourth technique, which makes up for the loss.  Third, use the front brake aggressively (if on pavement.)  The Tigerís front brakes are decent enough the quickly haul the bike down from speed, but not strong enough to easily lock.  90% of your braking force comes from the front.  If youíre afraid to use it to its capacity, youíll never be safe on a motorcycle.  

Fourth, and the MAIN POINT of this post is that you should throttle THROUGH corners and not coast around them.  This is necessary to transfer weight to the rear wheel to settle the chassis.  You can only lean a bike properly and safely if the rear wheel is under power.  Brake early enough before a turn to allow gassing it all the way through the turn.  :)  "Coasting" through a turn too fast or braking very much while leaned over are effective recipes for crashing.  The results of either action (lack of action when coasting?) are running wide into the weeds on an upright bike or losing traction on the front wheel resulting in an ugly pavement slap.   When coasting through a corner, much more weight is on the skinny front tire.  Therefore, to balance weight and tire adhesion, you need to apply throttle to move the load back.  In my experience, you can corner any turn between 20mph and 30mph faster then the legal limit by simply keeping power driving the rear wheel to transfer the weight. 8)

Don't believe me?  Find an open sweeping corner with good visibility and low traffic.  Run though it with your normal technique.  Now go back, brake a little more than usual before the corner, then roll on the throttle all the way around the corner and lean more than usual.  Feel how planted the bike felt?  The sucker feels like it's glued to the road once more weight transfers to the rear wheel.  The more throttle you roll on, the more planted it will be (unless youíre riding a 150hp, 400lb bike that has the capability to break loose the rear.  Even if you are, stepping out the rear is fairly easy to control as long as you donít panic and shut down.)  The moment of instability is the transition between braking and accelerating when the weight is shifting.  This should happen when you're relatively upright and not leaned over.  Think about it, if you normally coast or putt around corners, you're probably riding in this instability envelope all the time!  Bike Magazine did a nice article about tire grip a month or two ago.  In it, they stated that most street riders never get close to the tires adhesion limits.  True, most cornering crashes are due to breaking tire adhesion due to sudden brake lockups or wild gyrations by a panic stricken rider.  The faster you're traveling, the more acceleration you will need in the corner to remain planted. :D  If it's a decreasing radius turn which becomes sharper than expected, hopefully you'll remember to give it even more throttle and lean it over even more.  The more lean angle you hold, the more throttle you need.  :shock:  In this circumstance, if you stab the rear brake, youíll likely lock the rear and possibly low side off the road.  If you use the front brake, youíll either stand the bike up (into the weeds) or break the front end loose and slap the pavement.  

DIRT.  You can go around, over, or through damn near anything on a motorcycle if the rear wheel has enough power driving it.  The only safe recipe for a bike out of control is to punch the throttle.  It you do this; you will immediately feel it stabilize and straighten out.  In the dirt, if youíre entering a corner too fast, the only way to make the corner is to gas it and hang the rear end out in a power slide.  Hitting the front brake may result in a face plant.  Same thing with whoopsie-dos, the safest way to get over a small hillock is to punch the throttle at the bottom, which transfers weight off the front end.  The rear end may go sideways a tad but will straighten out as soon as it catches traction.  This is where the gyroscopic effects of a spinning rear wheel come into play.  Under power, the bike wants to remain upright as long as the wheel is spinning.  The only caveat is you now need enough room to safely slow down before the next hazard.  Thatís what makes riding a top-heavy, powerful bike like the Tiger a challenge off-road.  When you punch it, the cat jumps ahead so quickly that it can be difficult to slow down enough before the next hazard is upon you.  I don't try to hang the Tiger's ass end out often in the dirt because it's just too heavy, I don't run knobbies, and I don't have the strength to hold the back end up if it goes too far.   :roll:   But, I do like to play a bit and love the feeling of the rear end hooking up and delivering that instant stability.   :twisted:

Thatís why my username is WIDGIN (When In Doubt, Gas It Now).  
I hope I didnít bore the tears out of you and Happy Trails

[Tama's Tigre]

WIDGIN,

For me, it was after 35 years of riding, that I finally had my slow dirt crash (overshot a berm), that broke a rib.  First time in my life that I broke a bone, and at 47, slow to heal  I've since retired from 50' table tops... and back to where I started, on cowtrails.

Thanks for articulating what some of us take for granted; that is a reflexive, innate, almost instinctual riding ability.  It doesn't happen overnight, but rather after many years, on many bikes, and often through trial and error, and many face (and other body parts) plants.  Fortunately for me, all but one, have been in the dirt.   :)

Thanks again for a brilliant physics and riding lesson  :!:

[fano]

Excellent writeup!!! When in trouble- gas it!  :!:

[abruzzi]

I can't tell you how many time off road, both on the Tiger and lighter bikes, I have powered out of a fall.  Braking is the worst thing at those moments, and garantees a fall.

I'm not speed demon on the street, but I can generally keep up with my brother on his Buell Lightning (he's a very good rider.)  I hear people frequently dismiss the rear brake, but I find I use it pretty heavily in the ~half second before the turn, to change my line in the turn (if I misjudged, or the turn was blind.)  I occasionally use it in the turn, but it is always followed by throttle.  In those situation, I don't come off throttle to brake, just brake and throttle at the same time--it seems to make the transition on and off smoother, and it seems much smoother than just backing off the throttle.  Go figure.

Of course part of my odd practices is I had a low side not too long ago, riding a brand new bike home, when something in the tranny seized, locked up the rear wheel, and slid into oncoming traffic.  So, I'm still working on that fear of the bike sliding out from under me.

Geof

[ned37]

i agree with the technics you describe about road riding, but didn't see anything about countersteering.  maybe a newer generation of riders (and most riders are a younger generation than me) somehow automatically know the technic of countersteering.  i read an article back in the sixties about how you turn right to go left, etc and thought it was a misprint til i rode to work the next day and tried it.  it didn't become important to me until i rounded a sharp corner to see a car taking up my lane and i reacted all wrong and headed right for him.  luckily we were both able to avoid the collision.  from that point i decided to make a conscious effort to only steer by applying a push to the bars on the side of the direction i wanted to go.  now it is automatic.  since that time, i have witnessed a lot of accidents that were caused by the rider reacting backwards on the bars and heading right into the object they were trying to avoid, or standing it up on the blind decreasing radius turn that surprised them.  i find its easier to flow thru turns using it.
however i find it difficult to use advice about dirt riding from anybody who calls them "whoopsie-dos". :P

[Stretch]

I've been riding since I was 13 and took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Advanced Rider course when I was 20.  I was dumbfounded to hear the instructors talk about countersteering, in that you steer left to go right.  (Push the left end of the handlebar to go left, etc.)

But sure enough, when we went out riding that afternoon, I saw the light.  



That was twenty years ago.  

If you haven't taken the MSF course, it might be worth your while.  I thought I knew a thing or two about riding motorcycles, but picked up a world of good habits, and dropped many bad ones.

Stay safe.

[WIDGIN]

however i find it difficult to use advice about dirt riding from anybody who calls them "whoopsie-dos".

Sorry, I never go fast enough to countersteer. :oops:  From what I remember, you need to moving at a fairly rapid pace (something like 10mph) before countersteering actually works.

[WIDGIN]

If you haven't taken the MSF course, it might be worth your while.  I thought I knew a thing or two about riding motorcycles, but picked up a world of good habits, and dropped many bad ones.
Stay safe.

My application was denied. :oops:
My insurance rates will go up. :?
I'll be put in timeout for arguing with the instructor.  
Just kidding.  I did take a course years ago but just like differential equations, I forget things after a few years. :roll:

[Stretch]

Honest... I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood.

[zombie]

sweet as thats how I ride

[Advwannabe]

Nicely said widgin,

the 'when in doubt gas it' works in the dirt even on a stretched, hard tail XS650 chopper.

But it probably shouldn't have been there in the first place......  

Cheers, Russell

[ned37]

'when in doubt gas it' works in the dirt

ya, that dirtriding habit got me in trouble more than once riding or driving on the street.  primarily when i'm coming up on a light that's yellow, or in a merge situation.

[WIDGIN]

'when in doubt gas it' works in the dirt

ya, that dirtriding habit got me in trouble more than once riding or driving on the street.  primarily when i'm coming up on a light that's yellow, or in a merge situation.

I can understand the problem with a yellow light, but not the merge situation.  Over the years, my instinct to punch it has saved me from a few cages who wanted into my lane and never knew I was there until they saw my tailpipe.  Since I've been rearended in my car 3 times in the last 2 years (each time while sitting at a traffic light), not sure I consider braking a viable option.  Getting run over by a cellphone addict in an SUV who wasn't even looking ahead would suck.

[Stretch]

Explosive acceleration in the right hands has saved many a rider.

[Perfal]

Good explanations, WIDGIN.

But the fact that you feel the need for such a topic raises one question to me : how do you proceed in US to obtain your riding licence ? Here in France, one *must* take course in a certified driving school (great business, you can guess), that means at least 20 hours sitting on a bike (not including the theorical part of the training, which can be important too). In my opinion, this course is clearly not sufficiant enough for a student to claim being a safe rider, but it nevertheless gives strong basis - countersteering being one of them, as for avoidance technics, emergency braking, and so on.

Back to your explanations, I would lay emphasis on what I consider two major factors for safe cornering : the line and the look.

The first one is more important than you seem to admit. Indeed, it will decide wether you're going to stay in your lane or rather go and visit the berm or the other lane. The principe (which I did not learn in the course but from a skilled rider friend of mine) is to always try to get the largest line as possible, that means entering a right turn close to the central line, and on a left turn being close to the berm. You should then wait to see the exit of the bend before heading to the "point de corde" (sorry, don't know the englis vocable for that). Once you passed it, you're on your way out of the turn, that means you can throttle up.
A picture might help to understand :

The other main point to me is the look. One of the first basic lesson is that "the bike follows the look" - that means you're heading where you're looking. Staring at a stone on the road while thinking you should avoid it is generally the best way to roll right over it. This especially applies in cornering : always try to look at the turn's exit. I say "try" because most often you don't see it before you get over that "point de corde" - that means you must look as far ahead as possible till you get it in sight. And the bike will then follow. If you keep staring right in front of your wheel, you will sure be heading out of your line. Turn your head, look away, lean your bike, and enjoy... !

A last word considering braking. I personally hate braking hard, for several reasons : apprehension of blocking the wheel,  go-kart complete braking failure reminiscence, propensity to care of engine, paddles, ... I therefore rather apply smooth braking by using brake engine, before entering the corner. It also allows to be on comfortable revs so that you get good traction all over the corner and be ready to spring out of the curve. The global result is a smooth riding, with little braking between curves, high lean angles and quite constant overall speed.