Total Motorcycle Community Forums

You have entered a long sweeping turn at too hot a speed.

You have to make a decision........NOW.

You have three choices, and two of them involve slowing (braking). Do you down shift or do you brake?

If neither why not?

Your third choice is to maintain this too fast speed (and you better be Rossi here) and hard counter steer to hold your line ....and pray you make the exit.

It's too late to go back and enter at the speed you should have for your experience.

So what do I (that's me) do......and most important of all, don't do?

Dan

Well that's pretty easy, you drop the clutch, break the rear tire loose, and drift through it like a supermoto...
Come on, gimme a challenging question!

But seriously downshift and brake with the rear... If you brake with the front on anything but a BMW it will try to stand the bike up through the corner and you'll just screw it up anyway. Trust me... haha

drop a gear, and feed it more gas, you need to get to know the capabilities of your bike, ohhh and when you get done stop and get the seat uncrammed from your ***

Press hard and maintain speed and she'll pull through every time. You are the limiting factor. The front wheel is responsible for roughly 60% of your cornering traction. It's also your most effective brake. Utilize it and you stand a good chance of pushing yourself over the threshold.

At the same time if you're going to stop then use your brakes. Downshifting isn't nearly as precise and you don't want to drastically destabilize the motorcycle.

Of course you could have taken a variety of on or track cornering classes ranging from a track day to a total control class so you have extra tools in your toolbox to deal with situations like this.

The real question is how on earth did you enter a long sweeper turn too fast? Those suckers can't sneak up on you.

I agree with Story, more or less.

I've been known to trail brake pretty deep into a corner. And I sometimes downshift at corner entrance - but can't see downshifting between corner entrance and apex. I'd have to do it exactly right, get the power back on completely smoothly... and I probably wouldn't. Too much chance of really upsetting the suspension doing that.

So I'll take my chances pushing it through. Get my weight waaayy down and waaay over. Relax everything else, get that inside elbow down and in, drop that shoulder, keep my eyesight waaaay up and out past the apex.... and push it through, baby, push it through. I'll take my chance with the lowside. Better that than brake too much, stand it up, run wide and smack into some solid object at God knows what speed.

jstark47 wrote:I agree with Story, more or less.

I've been known to trail brake pretty deep into a corner.

oh yeah. Trail brake to the apex. Load the front suspension for more cornering traction and sharper turn in then throttle out from the apex

going back to the old race saying "when in doubt throttle out"

Thanks guys.....

Personally, I've got a lot of miles to go before I get this down without going down.

Unless I want to straighten up and stop in a turn I'm off the front brake: that's all I'm almost sure of.

Story: you're right about getting into a long sweeper too hot. I really meant the opposite and hitting something much tighter and unexpected.

Mostly I'm just pretty much dragging the rear brake and praying.

Yeah....."throttle out", I know.

Dan

Why are you dragging the rear?

My answer is the same for any type of turn

story:

Help me (noob) out here, Buddy.

Explain in detail the difference in "dragging the rear" and "trail braking".

As long as I survive my too hot entrance I'm "sorta" OK....but maybe I need to learn a bit of the terminology, here, too.


Dan

Correct me if I'm wrong, but trail braking is the act of applying front brake to "push" the front tire into the asphalt, and gradually letting go of the brake as you approach the apex and then throttling out. Obviously, there's some risk in new riders trying this out on the street as you're liable to stand the bike up in the middle of a turn.

Dragging the rear is applying rear brake pressure (in any scenario, i guess). The risk here is lock-up in the rear and a likely low-side dump if you're not completely straight.