Originally Posted by
carpediemracing
Balancing the bike requires steering the front wheel, however minutely. It's possible to ride a bike with tiny wheels (no gyroscopic effect), short wheelbase, long wheelbase, etc, but lock the steering and any normal rider will fall over.
It's pretty much impossible to turn the bars without turning or leaning; it's how two wheeled things work.
Okay, it's probably like saying it's impossible to fold paper in half more than 8 times. Mythbusters did 11 folds I think, using a huge piece of paper (100 yards x 100 yards?) and using a bulldozer and steamroller to help fold. I'm sure that a super wide tired bike (think 2 foot wide slicks off the back of a dragster) could be "steered" without leaned. But a normal bike, no.
No, I'm not talking about steering the bike, just turning the handlebars. I mean even if I was perfectly willing to crash the bike, I just couldn't turn the handlebars to make it happen. I feel like there was a lot of force preventing it from happening.