WRONG! Counter-steering works on all bikes, regardless of how big, heavy, slow or fast they are. It's the most fundamental aspect of safely riding any two-wheeler, including bicycles. Riding with both hands on the bars goes without saying. All experienced riders naturally counter-steer.

 

While changing the exhaust may help, the most useful thing you can do is to improve ride height. The rear is simple, by replacing your current shocks with longer ones, say 13". Up front you will find that your forks probably sag a lot, which is a little more involved. By increasing pre-load on your fork springs you can lift the front approximately an inch, which will nicely match up with your new shocks. That is exactly what I have done with my SuperLow.

Increasing pre-load up front involves adding a spacer on top of the spring, or better still replacing the stock spacer with a longer one. As that involves dismantling the forks, you can improve things by replacing the stock springs with single-rate ones, matched to your weight. A further improvement to consider is adding a set of Intiminators to improve damping and ride quality.

 

gbrown your doing the media thing and only quoting part of what he said. He did screw up a bit by putting the important part in the next paragraph but it is there

 

Rog, which post are you referring to?!

 

This one

 

His whole post is badly written. That part contradicts the first part, which I feel needs to be corrected. This push/pull thing isn't anything we need to do consciously, it happens naturally. The phenomenon of counter-steering is best read about, by way of understanding how a bike steers, rather than setting out to do it.

When I first learned about it myself, as a new rider of just a few months, I went out on my bike and, hey presto, found I was already doing it!

 

raise your suspension. the iron sits on lowered shocks. 13-14inch will give you what you are looking for. you'll be trading the stupid slammed look for a more traditional appearance and more flexibility.

 

I'm not sure if anybody has mentioned it already, but IMO, the best thing I ever did for my bike's handling was the heavy rate fork springs sold by Progressive along with some new 10w or 15w fork oil. The bike handles sooooooo much nicer than before and it doesn't sag as much when you sit on it. I mean, it feels like a whole new bike and actually handles pretty decent for what it is.

 

Try to pay attention before you shoot off your mouth.

I did NOT say that countersteering doesn't work. That's stupid. I said that you shouldn't try to do it with ONE ARM, which is the way it's most commonly taught: "Push right to go right, push left to go left".

I said you should always use both arms: to go right you push with your right arm and pull with your left, and vice versa.

Which is how everybody SHOULD do it.

 

Thanks for all of the input. I'm definitely gonna get bigger springs and stiffen up the front end. Excited to see the difference...