Learn to Lean your motorcycle- Part 1

Are you leaning at all?

There are a few dozen good articles on leaning/banking on Google and a dozen more on talking about steering- counter or otherwise. I thought of a unique approach to helping riders diagnose the fact that they have a problem (strange not many do acknowledge that) and then address it with visual cues.

Pic 1- DM holds the 240mm rear of a Night Rod in a perfect bank downhill

Why is a good lean healthy- for starters? A HD Road King turns when upright in about 24' whereas if you learn to lean you could do it in 20' and if you are really foot board scraping in the first gear- about 18' should be good. We tried this of Palladinos measurements- and a good rider or two can show how to shave of 1/3rd your turning diameter- which one day will get you out of trouble. I got my Fat Boy to turn within 22' and one day when I ride like Jerry, maybe 18' will be possible.

In Pic 1- you will see the reason for controlled banking and what happens if you were to lose your nerve. Physics will take over, you will use the front brake to slow down and that will shift your CG forward, load the front, unstablising the bike and causing it to straighten and run wide. This will take you into the path of the upcoming Jeep with potentially disastrous consequences.
Almost every rider upgrading from what was Indias staple 100cc bouquet of bikes has faces this situation. So what to do about this?

What are the aids available?

Assuming that you have the proper air pressure in your tires- you could then- start off. Visual inspection for banding is the first step and most important. Any sign of banding is bad news for the tire. It means that you will wear out one portion of the tire faster as you are causing all the wear/tear at that area only.
Strange that many would not know, but there are other visual cues available. There are a few kind tire manufacturers that have 'fun markers' on their tires and the KTM rear shown on a 390 is a perfect example. AR got this for me and highlighted in read are the lean markers that show how well you are banking on a tire designed to take banking.

Pic 2- Fun Markers on a KTM

Here in Pic 2 we see that the rider comfortably banks till level 4 (marked with the green,) which considering the predominantly urban use of the bike, is very good. I would dread to be touching 5 in Mumbai roads. Using these numbers as a guide, I feel the rider can tell how he has been running the bike, and if he has been using the gear box to its fullest potential- or if he has been running a gear too high or low- and therefore not maximising his 'control' potential to its fullest.
A regular check also enhances safety as you will notice that these tires are no longer the 25-30,000Km 'hard' MRFs that shod our Bullets and Hero Hondas of yesteryear but are now softer to enable bette cornering, high speed stability by also better braking to stop the bikes.

What do I want you to do?

 When you do to your bike, I want you to clean your tire with a dry cloth and see your rear tire. Closely.
A friend who has worked with me tirelessly on this topic volunteered his bike- more so because the improvement is actually visible :-) later in the article.

Pic 3- Straight up riding caused this banding

So what do we see here- a band of worn tire right down the middle (marked in red,) showing that the rider would be riding upright most of the time, and the shortcoming being the inability to lean- the reasons could be from the fear of falling- brought about by either a return to biking at a late age, inadequate learning, improper education, or in some cases, pure fear of leaning, fear of own capability or that of the bike itself.
Mine is to dwell in correcting this- not finding the cause.
So in highway riding, we see the slightly used areas adjacent to the Red bands in Pic 3. The outer band in green is this picture is a result of banking on highways runs and on easy long corners that are seen so often on the straight highway like NH8 going north  and then NH17 heading south of Mumbai- something like the gentle curves of I-77 South in the Virginias.

So what did we aim for?

Pic 4-  Huge improvement in utilising the width of the tire

We aimed for this- utilising the most of the rubber. as shown now in the green. The intent was not to scrape the knees but to enhance rider safety by encouraging him to
a) utilise the handing of the bike to a better degree,
b) use the gearbox better and
c) just be able to maneuver the bike in a more adroit manner.
d) get better tyre life out of your piece
The benefit for one would be- to be able to swing out of the way of a car that would stop right in front of you for no apparent or explicable reason, where your ability to move around him was the only possibility other than rear-ending him with damage to ones own bike. In but a few weeks of riding, the rider showed tremendous improvement in banking and how did he get there, well thats to be seen first in Pic 4. The central banding will not go away, and possibly a new tire when the tread diminishes would then see more even wear/tear the next time around.So this then becomes the right time to focus on spotting the problem and then working on it.

Once you have diagnosed the problem, then you head to Part 2 - how to go about rectifying it in three steps.
-KD
#BombayHarriers

Contd.
http://beagoodrider.blogspot.in/2015/10/learn-to-lean-your-motorcycle-part-2.html

Do read my articles on 'Managing Diabetes' and 'AIDS' @ http://therealslimkd.blogspot.in/