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5 Common Wear and Tear Items on Motorcycles
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ctfc13Participant
Hey Victor, hope it goes well for you out there on the day!
I live in England but I’m guessing they make you do the same across the pond i.e. you accelerate up to a certain speed then they tell you when to brake & you do an emergency stop?
The most important thing I can tell you is SMOOTHNESS is the key to quick braking!! Most learners think that because its an EMERGENCY stop everything has to be done quicker & harder than normal but trust me this has the opposite effect to what your after.
Sorry if this part seems like a lecture but its important!! Just for one minute think about what your trying to do & what your asking the bike to do!! Under acceleration all the weight will be transferred to the rear of the bike, under braking all the weight needs to be on the front tyre!! So how do you get it there?
See when you brake, what your trying to do is squash the front tyre into the ground, this makes the contact patch with the floor bigger & that means more force can be put through it & you’ll stop quicker. All the forceful (heavy) braking in an emergency stop is done at the end, the first few steps are just preparing the bike to do it & making it less likely for something strange to happen.
1) The first step which is key is to simply ‘roll off’ the throttle, simple I know, but this will start the weight transfer to the front tyre. Just practice accelerating then rolling off & see what happens, the bike dives (more like rolls) forward!
2) Now start to gently squeeze the brakes & the bike will roll further forward squashing that tyre down into the road.
3) Now you can pretty much brake like hell because the bike is setup & it isn’t going anywhere lol!!
Ideally your looking to roll off the throttle and start your braking in one movement, just get used to rolling off as your reaching for the brake, then you want to apply your brakes with the same pressure from start to finish say from completely off to fully on over 2 seconds, it doesn’t sound like a lot but think about it the whole braking manuvore from start to finish will only take about 6 seconds & all the heavy braking is done in those last few seconds.
As for your rear brake just apply it at the same gradule speed as the front and you shouldn’t have anymore problems with it.
One final tip, leave your clutch out till the last possible second, this has two advantages,
1) you get the added bonus of ‘engine braking’
2) you will find it much harder to lock your rear wheelHope this helps
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