Quote:
Originally Posted by akima
.......... I think I have come away from this accepting that I don't really understand what's happening with my bike during a corner that well and that it's going to take me a long time to properly get it.........
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If you observe the reactions of your rubber and the frame of your bike, you can understand a little more each time.
You are a conservative street rider, who frequently has to deal with wet and oily city roads.
Surviving traffic, while enjoying riding, is your first priority.
Traffic conditions sometimes force evasive or aggressive maneuvers that can demand and consume much traction.
It is important that you learn to
objectively evaluate or calculate how much traction there is available at the very moment that you need to use close-to-all you have.
I frequently see street riders going around a corner at 2 mph because it is raining.
Among drivers that can see less than normal, that is a very dangerous approach to cornering on wet pavement.
Those riders do so because they have no idea of how much lateral forces the tires can take; same for using the front brake.
Over dry-clean pavement those max lateral forces are around 80% of the weight supported by a so-so street tire that is properly inflated.
If the pavement is wet and clean, that same tire can easily resist lateral forces of around 50% of the supported weight, before showing the first sign of slide.
If the pavement is contaminated with sand, mud, oil or Diesel, that percentage goes dramatically down.
Those things create a different type of friction: rolling (macroscopic or microscopic).
My first experience with rolling friction was with my 50 c.c. moped on a downhill wet curve.
It was raining and there was a long patch of mud that I could have seen, but, being 16 or 17, I never paid much attention to the conditions of the surface.
Dry or wet, the surfaces of plastic street markings and steel manhole or rails, have a much lower coefficient of friction with rubber than rough pavement.
Road surfaces made of polished concrete behaves somewhere in between those.
Being silk-smooth on the control inputs, as well as avoiding sudden changes of weight distribution, can save the unavoidable ride over slippery surfaces.
When friction is precarious, any sudden force, even if little, can break the inter-surfaces contact away and induce a slide or skid.
I believe that you could gain invaluable experience by practicing testing traction over those surfaces, dry and with some type of contamination; always away from traffic, obviously.
You don't have to lean much and risk a fall.
We all have a great traction sensor: our braking front tire.
From regularly practicing emergency braking on parking lots, I have an accurate feeling of how much my front tire can grip on dry-clean, on wet and on sandy pavement.
When I am not sure of the available traction (rainy day on unfamiliar road, for example), I use that learned feeling as a reference to test it.
I wait for a safe opportunity and progressively apply the front brake until the front tire skids, immediately releasing the lever before steering is lost.
Knowing that for the same curve and trajectory, the lateral forces on the contact patches grow with the square of the speed, I have then a rough idea of how much I need to slow down or moderate steering and braking inputs.
Please, read this:
http://www.visordown.com/advanced-ri...ips/14600.html