Noob Q: Foot Peg Part

[B2FiNiTY]

So whats the purpose of the pointy part on the foot peg? I can't figure out a purpose for it?

[Alex]

On the stock pegs? Those are called "peg feelers". When your bike leans over while going through a turn, if you lean the bike over far enough, the first thing that will likely scrape the ground will be those peg feelers. You can feel this scraping through the peg and realize that you don't have much lean angle left, and should become quite careful about doing anything that might upset your current traction situation. For track use, many people remove the peg feelers (they just unscrew from the footpeg), to give just a few degrees more lean before the pegs themselves scrape, but some folks have said that in that case the first thing that will scrape on the left side is actually the kick stand mount and no longer the footpeg.

[B2FiNiTY]

Thanks Alex. I'll pay attention to that next time if I ever get down that low.

[Alex]

As one point of reference, I ride the bike reasonably quickly on the street, I try to carry significant corner speed as we don't have any extra helpings of power on this bike, and I often lead rides that contain much more powerful machines with some pretty skilled riders on them. I've not removed the peg feelers from the stock pegs, and I've never touched them down on the street. It's good that the warnings are there if someone does have the bike leaned such that they do touch, but for me that would be more of a warning that I wasn't riding the bike with a decent safety margin. To require that much lean angle, I would have had to misjudge the corner, choose a poor line, turn in to timidly & then have to overcorrect, not shift enough of my weight to the inside of the bike, or a few other riding or judgement mistakes.

On a racetrack, it's a different story and I have removed peg feelers or gotten rearsets on my trackbikes; that environment is one that does reward more serious lean angles.