Praticing wheelies and not binning your bike!

[teagie]

aint tried to lift the vtr yet get it tuesday . but ive wheelied all my other bikes ive owned . tis mind over matter cover the back brake as u slowly roll forward blip the throttle or whack it open depends on how much torque u packin vtr should lift with ease . ne way flick out the clutch give a lil tug on the bars n you r away. good luck N FFS cover ya back brake to bring the beastie down if it goes tits up

[Galaxieman]

But .... do you find a good wheelie is shortley followed by a whacking pain in the kidneys?

You have that problem too? As for speed, I managed 114 on the highway w/ her on the back, and she seemed more displeased with that than the occasional front end hop. She's gotten really good about sensing when I'm about to whack the throttle open, as she grabs on tight and leans way forward. I did make the mistake of running up the road to get some food w/o adjusting the rear shock, and won't be doing that again. The thing wallowed like my old KZ750 used to...

-Jim

[Pete.L]

She's gotten really good about sensing when I'm about to whack the throttle open, as she grabs on tight and leans way forward

My Mrs is the same. She's an excellent pillion partner but Shhh! Don't tell her I said so
The only thing she's not too happy about is if I have to hit the brakes a bit quick. Hence, the first mod I had to fit to the bike was a grab rail for her.
Adjusting the shock is a must, my wallows like an old tug boat on the high sea's even on a straight road without it.

Kaz said

my 14 year old daughter usually rides pillion with me

I let my neice on the back when she was Ten (She would have probably stolen the keys and tried it her self if I hadn't ).
Funniest thing I ever saw. She was fully kitted up in all my wifes gear, at least 3 sizes too big and looked like a mini michelin man waddling up the garden path but she wasn't going to be put off.
I think she thought it was a roller coaster ride. She sreamed all the time on every bend and kept shouting "faster, faster" on the open road "do a wheelie for mum Uncle Pete".
Needles to say we only touched 65 on that trip (I told her it was 110) and the wheelie consisted of me having her hand wrapped around my front and me holding onto it. The wheelie was more of a hop than a wheelie but it was good enough for her.
She's sixteen now and OLD Uncle Pete's bike isn't that cool anymore but she's still after a popper of her own to get around on.
Trained her well me thinks

Pete.l

[Squiffythewombat]

as we are chatting about pillion wheelies:

I went out with my best mate who pillions all the time with me (he cant afford a decent bike right now) and he enjoys all the fast riding etc. I pulled out onto the main road and as usal shouted "wheelie", now normally he hears this and holds on for dear life!

This time he didnt! It was annoying as i manged to pull a nice high wheelie for some distance (5m prolly, lol) but it wasnt until half way through the wheelie i noticed out the corner of my eyes that his feet where level with my head....not so good i thought...i pulled over and it turns out his feet came off the pegs and we kinda did a no legged pillion wheelie.

The best bit was as we did it a ZX6 rode past giving us the thumbs up!!

Cant wait to get my bike back and start praticing them again! that and mending my low side damaga...d`oh!!

as for taking kids on bikes, ive only taken 3 or 4 for little trips and i have to agree with everyone here, they all loved it! - start them young, wish my dad had a bike when i was 12!

Toby

[bluesman]

year ago when I was riding Hornet I had couple of rideouts with experienced Belgian rider - young lad (25), but he started with bikes at 7 years and he first done cross (Beglium, no wonder - everybody loves Stefan Everts), then consequentially went through several road bikes etc.
I an my friend on FZR1000 joined that guy in small rides on couple of occasions. He rides Storm daily and SP2 for trackdays.
Now, after those rides I absolutely know reason why our bikes do not powerwheeleing.
We have to fix it by changing 1 seal. Seal between handlebar and seat yes, that big one
This Belgian guy EASILY powerwheelied Storm into "monster wheelies" in 1st and 2nd gear and pulled "low-level" ones in 3rd. His Storm's only mods is race exhaust.
That other friend of mine in that rideout (with 1995 FZR1000) started to complain that his bike does not do powerwheelies. So that Belgian guy took his FZR an pulled series of monster power wheelies in first 3 gears in front of us.
When I asked him how the hell he does it he said "oh, that's easy - Storm wheeling by itself, only difficult part is to get up to 5th gear in a wheelie....need to do it very accurately". He is not stunter, he just likes it.
One of guys in Russia I know did even more interesting thing - he powerwheelied Storm in 1st to see what happens if he will not gear up. His bike first went up in wheelie and instead of flipping over started to burn rear tyre while still staying in a wheelie! Well, then he lost balance and dropped it, but what a picture - it looked AWESOME

[Gavin]

Don't wear a thong when wheelying. My wife works in plastic surgery theatres, and had a patient a few months ago, who had come off the back of a wheeling bike, without proper gear on. Thong didn't break just acted as a cheese wire. Ouch

[Pete.L]

Don't wear a thong when wheelying

Thanks Gavin I have to remember to change before I go out the next time

Pete.l
Okay Fellas, How did he Know?.....Who told him?

[Badger]

Would a leather thong be any safer

Alan

[yellafella]

Heyup Kaz ! Were those photos taken at whistlestop cafe ?

[yellafella]

Had me butt on that very wall many times !!!!

[Galaxieman]

1st gear @ 3k rpm... up it comes:

Wheelie footage

[Squiffythewombat]

yay A VIDEO!

nice one dude, have you got any more?

[Galaxieman]

Ok, I'm already in the middle of a discussion on the US VTR board about not cleaning the windshield, and the lack of field of view, but I've since cleaned the shield and added a 0.5x wide angle lens which should solve the view problem. Here's about a minute and a half of on-ramp and off-ramp stuff in the local area. It's ripped down from the native 24Mbps DV-AVI to 150kbps so I can hang it on the web, but you get the picture. Also, I found out that the 16:9 widescreen option on my camera disables the vibration cancellation on the camera, so I'm going to go back to 4:3 and my next vid should shake a bit less (and the wheelies shouldn't f-up the video).

Ramp Video

Enjoy!

[Squiffythewombat]

yet another great vid! what is intresting to me, as much as the bike is the difference in the us roads to ours! Got any more vids then?????????


Camera wise, how are you mounting it to the bike? do you have a "steady" function on your cam? i found when filming on bike that turning this off helped loads and manualy focusing the camera on a point, say 25feet ahead of the bike works well to avoid any auto focusing half way through filming...

[Galaxieman]

No more vids right now, just got the mount last weekend. I also need to find some extra web space to hang them, as my internet service provider sucks monkey balls.

Here's the mount:


and here's the camera on the mount:


I've added the wide angle lens, and it does help some. It does have the steady function, but as I said, the 16:9 wide shot I was using disables that. With the wide lens I can still get the same width shot, and get the top of the tach as well. I'm working on a solid metal adapter instead of the tripod setup, so as to cut down on some of the vibrations due to the plastic 'C' shape of the tripod top. I'll also have to try the manual focus thing, since my camera does have that option.

-Jim