im trying to take corners faster little by little but today i failed... i almost went over the other lane. i was on the white line seprating the two lanes
my confidence in cornering is down right now.
i think im afraid of pushing the handle bars way too much since i dunno how good my wheels are for stuff like this. sure i got almost 500 miles now but i have never broken in the sides of my wheel so i dunno how well they'll hold traction.
how did you guys overcome your fear of fast cornering and high lean angles?
I read somewhere that most people make cornering harder by using both of their hands. They end up fighting themselves as both hands push/pull on the handlebars at the same time, and it makes cornering really iffy. The article said that when cornering, push on the grip w/ your inside hand and don't do diddly with your outside hand. Well, I went out and tried it on a lonely, country road and my bike nearly went horizontal. I was way overturning until I got the hang of it, but now I'm much less afraid of leaning into turns than I was before. I was so surprised at how little pressure I needed to use when I didn't have my off-hand fighting me the whole way.
Now, if this is about fear the only thing to do to fix that is to take your bike to a safe place and practice a lot. That's really the only way you're going to get to know how your bike reacts to different situations. For low-speed stuff, an empty parking lot works well. For higher speed stuff, back roads are your friend.
P.S. IIRC that article was in the book "Total Control."
If you're afraid to corner at high speed, then don't. Take a lot of time and practice, practice, practice. When you feel more comfortable on the bike, it will come to you naturally.
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"Four wheels move the body.
Two wheels move the soul!"
VermilionX wrote:
how did you guys overcome your fear of fast cornering and high lean angles?
I leant the bike so far over I low-sided it. I learned pretty quickly where the limit of traction was.
In my opinion ignore all this garbage about countersteering. Warm up your tyres, charge into a corner, shift your weight to the inside, look through the corner whilst remaining steady on the throttle. Simple.
Mintbread wrote:
I leant the bike so far over I low-sided it. I learned pretty quickly where the limit of traction was.
In my opinion ignore all this garbage about countersteering. Warm up your tyres, charge into a corner, shift your weight to the inside, look through the corner whilst remaining steady on the throttle. Simple.
warm up my tires? how exactly do you do that? just ride around for a while before attempting corners?
there's this good corner near our house that i always take. it has 25mph limit and i took it around 40mph today. that's when i almost went to the other lane.
Last edited by VermilionX on Sun Feb 12, 2006 9:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Keep taking that corner, but at only 25-30mph, and do it over and over again, then start slowly picking it up to around 35 or so. 40 might have been a tad quick for that corner.
Heh, okay, so most any bike can handle a lean of 45 degrees assuming the road is clear of ice and rubble. The easiest way to learn to take corners faster is to take the corner over and over. Going a little faster each time. Look through the corner to where you want to go. No matter what look down the road in the direction you want to go. Doing this, I've gotten from the point where I'd take the short right turn into my subdivision from under 10km/h to over 40 if I want to. I barely have to brake if I don't want to.
Of course I'm generalizing from a single example here, but everyone does that. At least I do.
hmmm... 45º is a lot, im not sure if my tires are up to it.
at 45º, won't pegs almost scrape at this angle?
i've been shown a good back road around here, it's like a mini twisty, it's fun since i can go fast on it since the corners aren't very sharp.
that 25mph corner isn't really a good place to practice. im just taking it as i go, i don't really go there just for the corner since it's a 3-way intersection w/ traffic lights so not good to practice there.
VermilionX wrote:hmmm... 45º is a lot, im not sure if my tires are up to it.
at 45º, won't pegs almost scrape at this angle?
i've been shown a good back road around here, it's like a mini twisty, it's fun since i can go fast on it since the corners aren't very sharp.
that 25mph corner isn't really a good place to practice. im just taking it as i go, i don't really go there just for the corner since it's a 3-way intersection w/ traffic lights so not good to practice there.
I hope your bike can lean to 45º. Even a harley can lean that much! Your bike is probably rated close to 70º of lean, so don't worry about the bike not being able to handle a fast corner
