Originally Posted by
DaveSSS
While some people say to lean the bike, what they are really doing is countersteering by pushing on the bars - on the same side as the direction of the turn - just the opposite of what you would do when turning at a very slow speed. Countersteering is what causes the bike to lean and turn sharper - not body English. Anyone who'e ridden a motorcyle very much knows that if you're turning right and going too wide, you push harder on the right side of the bars (countersteering) to lean the bike more and turn sharper. A bicycle works the same way, but with a road bike's hook shaped bars, the countersteering action isn't as obvious.
A common cause of newbie motorcycle wrecks is a failure to turn tight enough. Rather than pushing harder on the right side of the bars (to turn right), the rider panics, quits pushing and goes across the centerline into oncomng traffic. When I first started riding hairpin mountain descent on a bicycle, I had not taken a motorcycle training course. I was riding a Colnago that has a lot of steering trail. If you didn't apply constant pressure to the bars, the bike would straighten up quickly and not turn. After taking the motorcyle training, I have a lot better understanding of how a bike turns. I've ridden thousands of miles in the mountains and never had a problem.
You put more pressure on the
left side of the bike on both the bars
and the pedals in a right hand corner. That's what countersteering is all about. On a corner you should have little to no pressure on the bike towards the inside part of the corner. If you do, you are likely to slide out of the corner.
It's all about physics and Newton's laws. First, there is no force called centrifugal force. What a vehicle experiences on a corner is the natural tendency of a body in motion to continue in the same direction unless acted upon by an outside force (Newton's First Law). The actual force is the centripetal force of the tires pulling the bike through the corner (the outside force). To maximize this force you need to express another force on the tires to keep them in contact with the ground. You do this by pressing down on the outside of the corner. This makes the downward vector more vertical and centered on the tires. If you were to press down on the
inside pedal and hand, the force is directed downward but is a long distance from the tires. In effect, you've made a lever of your body with the pivot point at the contact patch. The centripetal force is reduced and the bike tires slide out on the corner.
m223, you are doing most thing right, however, press down
hard on the outside pedal as you go around a corner. You can't press down hard enough. Put pressure on the outside handlebar and drop the inner shoulder. You'll get a feel for how hard to press down on the handlebar with experience.