Who rides motorcycles?

[erda]

Ride a Suzuki Bandit 1250; fortunate to have a wife that also rides-Kawasaki Ninja 650r (ER650F). We enjoy going touring in the summer for a few weeks.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Who rides motorcycles?

ME!

SR

 

[Garandman]

I made an experimental gyro-stabilized camera mount. The camera stays upright as the bike leans. Mounted to an SV650SF and the track is NHMS, Loudon NH. Try and find the "counter steer."

There are some places you are not allowed to pass during track days, so sometimes you have to wait a while to pass.

 

[GregbkH]

My Bat out of ****.

 

[yelbike]

Yz450f mostly stoke except for t4 exhaust.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Sigh.

 

[Sodo]

There's no such thing as counter steering.

Its just steering, theres no other way.

Good video find though!

 

[MikePA]

I'm always amazed when talking to bikers, some who have ridden for 20 years, about cornering, and you tell them; if you want to turn left, push the handlebars so the front tire turns right.
Half of them give you a blank /deer in the headlight /what are you talking about (?) stare.

This is taught in the Motorcycle Safety Foundation courses and it is called counter steering, not just steering, because it's counter intuitive and inexperienced riders are injured/die when they forget this/are not aware of it.

To turn to the right, you press the bar forward with the right hand.

"That's why it's called countersteering; you do indeed briefly steer the "wrong" direction. We all do it; it's the only way that single-track vehicles turn. But usually the movement is so subtle that we don't realize exactly what we do to turn. We look at the wheel in a left turn; it's turned to the left; we conclude that we turn left by turning the wheel left. We don't. And that's how we get into trouble when that bozo pulls out in front of us and then stops. We gasp and turn the bar left to swerve left, and the bike goes right. Then Harry Hurt and his researchers show up, and they write "The ability to countersteer and swerve was essentially absent." "

 

[jaotguy]

dang ! RD400 ... RD500 ...FZ750 ... ETC ETC ETC lotsa fun till the road rash sets in ..... now I'm too old (and jaded) to feel the rush at 200 KM + that I used to ... (I no longer yearn for bugs in the teeth as a happy biker)


and thats push down and forward in the direction you want to go ( for even faster turns ) ... it decreases the circumference of the tire on that side and transfers your weight to that side of the bike ....

 

[Gary Fowler]

There's no such thing as counter steering.

Sorry I didn't see Eric's video before I posted my comments. I think that is similar to the video that I saw.

I would like to know what you mean by that. Lots of folks who have been riding for years think that they just lean into a turn to make the bike turn. Some enterprising folks mounted a second set of handle bars to a bike and let some of those folks try to turn the bike by leaning, it cant be done.

At some point around 20 MPH depending on your tire sizes, bike steering changes from turning (pulling on)the handle bars in the direction you want to go to pushing them which is actually counter steering. The more you want to lean into a turn, (lets say a left turn for an example) the harder you push on the left hand handlebar which is trying to turn the motorcycle to the right but do to gyroscopic force on the front wheel, it just causes the bike to lean to the left. It takes so little effort to do this that many people think they are just leaning and turning the handle bars to the left. It is an auto response to steering the bike when the transition occurs when you have to start pushing instead of pulling.
I have never tried a pedal bike to see if this happens with them or not but I think not.

By the way, I have been riding since I was about 15. I rode a 125 Honda first then bought a Kawasaki 750 cruiser. I stopped riding for over 20 years then found a use Honda Silverwing 500cc that I rode for a while then bought a Yamaha Virago 1100cc and sold the Silverwing. A few months later I bought a used 84 Goldwing and later sold them both when I moved to Canada where I bought a Kawasaki 1500cc. It wasn't anything like the Goldwing but it was ok for riding in the mountains and around Calgary. I sold that before I moved back to the states and didn't ride for several years till I retired. Now I have a 2000 model Goldwing that I ride whenever I get a chance to have a riding partner. My next door neighbor rides his Harley with me when ever we can get together. It is amazing how much "stuff" one has to do when retired that keeps one off the motorcycle.