Mike, it's ironic you posted the pic you did, because I was thinking of doing that myself. The one you posted isn't very clear because you can't see the back wheel. I was out for a 140 mile ride on the weekend, and I tried to figure out how someone could own 7 different motorcycles, and still not understand countersteering. I figured it out on my mountain bike before I ever got on a motorcycle.

As stated above, it is impossible to turn a bike at speed without countersteering. It's physics. (Ever see the movie "My Cousin Vinny" where he says 'perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove'? That's where this is headed).

Check out this vid. This is an example of NOT countersteering because of slow speed.

Once you get up to speed, a bike doesn't change direction by turning the front wheel toward the direction you want to go, as in a car. At speed, if you try to turn the handle bar to the left, it's the same as "pushing" right. The handlebar will go left a mere moment, after which the bike leans right, and you are turning right. You are no longer riding on the center of the front tire, but right of center.

You seem to think that after initiating the turn as above, you than turn the handle bar to the right, into the direction you're going, to maintain the turn. This couldn't happen. If you did, it would immediately countersteer you back to the left. The bike would straighten up, and if you keep the pressure on, lean left.

A number of pages back I posted Keith Code's video of the "No BS bike." You said:

Actually, I think he'd shake his head and roll his eyes at you. He made the "No BS bike" to prove exactly what everyone in this thread has been trying to tell you. You are precisely the kind of person that motivated him to make that bike in the first place. Now I know you did say "slow enough" in the quote above. No one has disputed that. When you do a U-turn as in the video above, you are doing a few mph, and therefore not countersteering.

Once you hit speed, that no longer works. You can't will it to work because you think it does. Following your logic, this guy's front wheel should be turned to the right, and quite dramatically, to be turning this much. But it's practically straight as an arrow.



Before you hit reply and start picking this apart and telling me all the reasons you think it's wrong, ask yourself: "Might I actually be wrong?" "Why has not one person in this thread jumped in to side with me and defend my assertions?"

 

my lawnmower is difficult to steer

 

You need to take the class.

 

Why did you skip over my last post? That is the image that I have a question about.

Comment on the front wheel in this image. Where is the evidence for counter-steering? Now before you answer look at my immediately preceding post and tell me if you disagree with the interpretation in that post. You may not be able to see the back wheel but you can tell the front wheel is not turned left.

In your image we can see that the front wheel is turned left. Your driver is obviously counter-steering. I believe your driver is trying to increase his angle of lean, whereas my driver is not counter-steering and appears to be trying to maintain or decrease his angle of lean. If my driver were to push right he would increase his angle of lean. (He could be starting to do that, we cannot tell)

Basically, it appears that one counter-steers to increase the angle of lean. Period.

 

countersteering is like peeing your pants. Everyone can see that it is being done, but only one person can feel that it is being done.

 

I'm actually an LSF instructor but the enclosed figure 8 has always given me problems.

 

the rider in your picture may actually be coming out of the turn going into the next one. we don't know, we don't get to see the seconds before and the seconds after.

but you're starting to get the picture (maybe) 'if my driver were to push right he would increase his angle of lean' is correct. when you go into a turn, you are making minute corrections all the time. it isn't like pushing a button, then doing the turn. if you find that you have to turn a little sharper, you start to push on the inside bar a little harder. if you need to decrease your radius of turn, you start pushing on the outside bar. also, as you come out of the turn, you start applying pressure on the outside bar until you are going the direction that you want, then you stop exerting pressure.

 

First, thanks for not be critical.

The point I am trying to make, using your example, is that when the driver is pushing on the inside bar he is counter-steering, when he is pushing on the outside bar he is not counter-steering.

 

But he is. He's just countersteering in the opposite direction. If he keeps pushing on that bar, eventually that bar will become the inside bar and he will be turning the other direction.

There's a maneuver that is taught in riding courses called the swerve. The maneuver is used to avoid an obstacle that's directly ahead of the bike. To initiate the swerve, you press (yes, that's the terminology instructors use, by now you should know what it means--) in the direction you intend to move around the object. If you want to go left around it, you countersteer by pressing the left handlebar forward. Once you have turned and gone past the object, you then countersteer right by pressing the right handlebar forward to straighten the bike out and resume the original direction of travel. This is generally a fast enough maneuver that you are still leaned to the left when you press the right grip to straighten the bike, but that doesn't mean that you aren't countersteering. It merely means that you have shifted from countersteering right to countersteering left.

My point-- it doesn't matter what attitude the bike is in, or which way you're leaned. If you actively press on one grip while either simultaneously pulling the other grip or relaxing tension on it, then you're countersteering, and you will lean and turn in that direction. If you press harder, you'll lean further and turn faster.

 

...so here's what I'm going to do as my response to all of this...

For every page in this thread, I'm going to devote five solid minutes (about the same amount of time it takes to read a page in the thread) to actually practicing my maneuvering skills on the motorcycle.

Shane