[eternal05]

But I may be copying you a bit Yours just looked like so much fun in your videos. If I hadn’t watched them, I don’t think I would have looked into the DR-Z any further.

[eternal05]

…they have a black one too

[eternal05]

Might be a good time to check out that DR-Z I keep talkin’ about. Local dealer is doin’ 20% off all purchases for black friday and 1% APR financing for 5 years….

I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

[eternal05]

Hey there,

Eon’s totally right. I ride all through the winter, and I don’t even ride in the rain. Get yourself a good weather forecasting site (I recommend wunderground.com) and just make sure that there’s next to no chance of precipitation on a day you plan to ride.

Manage that, and then all you’ve got to do is get enough gear to be warm in the cold. Once you’ve gotten more comfortable, you can be hardcore like Eon and get rain gear.

[eternal05]

“It hasn’t been updated for the 2010 models yet, but that sounds like a good winter project… “

I see what you did there…

[eternal05]

…how I dread your slippery feel…

[eternal05]

Wise move. Sorry for the derailing!

[eternal05]

Common sense tells you that chicken strips might be a bit more about machismo than skill, but one of the best pieces of advice on of the track-day instructors gave me was that, if anything, you WANT to have chicken strips…and go as fast as everybody else. The real mark of a good rider is that they can go the same speed as another guy (or faster) and lean LESS in the same turns.

[eternal05]

First off, I think we agree…for the most part. Second, I think I definitely over-simplified things. You’re absolutely right that there is a complex equilibrium of forces that must be maintained, and it’s certainly not as simple as I made it out to be.

I think you’re still missing my point which is simply that change of direction can be brought about without lean, and that a leaned bike will change direction. That point is a direct contradiction of the line I cited. If I, for instance, go to a big empty parking lot and get myself into a nice 25 mph circle, I can, with a sticky throttle, take my hands off the bars and keep going around in that nice tight line. No steering input whatsoever and the bike keeps going in a perfect circle. Whatever combination of forces is at play, the bike goes in a circle if it’s leaned over substantially.

As far as your examples of ways to lean a bike without turning, I think it’s fairly straightforward to say, as you suggest, that opposing a certain amount of turning force with another force, either a strange normal from an inclined surface, wind, or displacement in body weight of the rider, may yield cancellation. If you chain a moving car to a barge also in parallel motion in an adjacent canal and try to turn the car away, nothing will happen. But that’s not conclusive proof that the action of turning away is not responsible for turning impetus. All you’ve done is show that some additional force can be introduced to cancel out or counteract whatever cornering force would normally be causing a change in direction. Also, I’m not sure what roles tire profiles and deformation behavior play in the examples you gave, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with it, especially in the case of pre-corner setup.

Again, I didn’t mean to get into a physics boxing match (one I’m horrifically unqualified for), only to point out common-sense error cases in the cited statement.

[eternal05]

” A change of direction results in a lean, a lean does not result in a change of direction.”

This is false on both counts, but unnecessary to his (otherwise correct) argument. I personally think understanding why this is wrong is really important to your understanding, scientific or otherwise, of how your bike steers. As with any argument, you can disprove it by contradiction: finding any single case where it fails.

Try the following, either on your motorcycle or (preferably) on a bicycle.

1) At VERY slow speed (slow walking speed), turn the handlebars but do not lean the bike. You will find that you CAN (don’t have to) steer the bike directly (not counter-steering) while keep the bike completely vertical. The reason both direct steering and verticality hold is that you are steering your bike like a car or trike. Both tires have a (mostly) flat surface is in contact with the ground, and the only way to change direction is by changing the orientation of the front tire’s contact patch.

2) At speed greater than 10 mph, try to lean the entire you+bike package without changing direction. You can’t! The reason is simple. If a bike is leaned, it HAS to turn. The explanation is really simple: bike tires (both motorcycle and bicycle) are rounded. The circumference of the middle of the tire is larger than the circumference of the edge of the tire.

That means that if you roll the tire one revolution on its side, the inside of the tire will travel less distance on the ground than the outside of the tire. The only way for that to work is if the tire rolls in an arc. Voila! Turn.

[eternal05]

Wear on the edges of the tire? Good goal! Just make sure you’re not trying to get rid of your chicken strips by pushing the bike down under you.

…you know, or using 40-grit “chicken-strip remover”

[eternal05]

I mean, those aren’t just normal dirt tires are they?

[eternal05]

When you’re out riding on the MSF range, keep the following three things at the forefront of your mind at you’ll have less trouble:

1) Your eyes hold the key to everything. Keep them up and look where you want to go. ALWAYS! But not just where you want to go in the next half second. Your eyes should be looking for where you want to be in the next 3-5 seconds. That means that in a turn, you look as far into the turn as you can. In a slow-speed u-turn, that means you look all the way behind you as your beginning the turn.

2) Don’t hold onto the bike with the handlebars. How will you make 1mm changes in throttle if your hands support your bodyweight? Loosen up! Grab the bike with your lower body and try to be as light and loose on the bars as you can. It will REALLY help things like throttle control while turning the bars, clutch modulation while in full-lock, etc.

3) Be smooth! Everything you do should be smooth. Your throttle inputs, your steering, your braking, your feathering of the clutch, it should all be smooth. That means you should try to avoid any lurches or jolts in your riding (i.e. too abrupt on or off the throttle, sloppy gear change, etc.).

[eternal05]

My Ninja was nice in that regard, and in many ways I feel the same way about it that you seem to feel for your GS. The difference is that I still didn’t want to crash it. I could have de-faired it, but that felt like sacrilege. To own a Ninja after Kawasaki had finally grown a pair and redesigned it to look all sleek and then strip off the sleek? Nah.

I’m goin’ motard

[eternal05]

…ass

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