Bike Forums - Zero Length Stem

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Quote:

Originally Posted by SkinGriz (Post 22995244)

IOW, a trike that was forced to steer as a car, steered as a car.
As soon as it was allowed to steer with lean, it did.

You know… bikes with training wheels don’t need to be counter steered. Bikes with training wheels don’t steer like bikes.

”I can make a 3 wheel vehicle steer like a car.”

Not applicable to bikes.

Yeah I made this same observation too. You are not wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaxgtr (Post 22987928)

Have you seen this???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyTlND9Cuo

This was the first thing I thought of. Seth did a good review and explanation of why it does not cause steering problems. But MTB geometry is different than road bike geometry. OP never said what kind of bike he's talking about.

In any event, it's clear that if it's true that bicycles invariably steer by the use of counter-steering (although there are plenty of examples in this thread that argue otherwise, persuasively), since the push-the-right-side-of-the-handlebar-forward-to-turn-right clearly doesn't apply for riding no hands, to say nothing of what the artistic cyclists get up to---it's a trivial truth.

In the interest of not gumming up this thread any further, I suggest that we move conversations about how a bicycle steers to this new thread:

https://www.bikeforums.net/general-c...cle-steer.html

Apologies to the OP

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trakhak (Post 22994901)

One thing I've learned from reading Bike Forums threads over the years - every bicycle rider who has taken motorcycle classes believes fervently that bicycles cannot be ridden without counter-steering, whereas most bicycle riders who haven't taken motorcycle classes find that hard to believe.

Understandable. Motorcycles are much much much (!) heavier than bicycles, and for that reason are far more dependent on countersteering. On bicycles we use countersteering for continuous balancing and to execute pre-planned maneuvers, e.g. to initiate a leaning turn. But at the same time, we can also use a number of non-countersteering-based emergency maneuvers, like swing the bike around a sudden pothole and so on. The reason a bicyclist can do that is the simple fact that bicycle itself weighs a lot less than the rider. With motorcycles it is the other way around. For motorcycles it is countersteering, countersteering and countersteering all the way. There are no alternatives.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trakhak (Post 22994901)

The simple fact that a bicycle can be steered easily from the saddle while riding no hands, both in a straight line and around corners, would seem to obviate the assertion that bikes can't be steered without counter-steering as described in the quote above, and yet . . .

Um.... When one rides a bicycle with no hands, one's still using the very same counterseering in order to balance and initiate leans for turns. The only difference is that one's using minute weight shifts to turn the bars instead of using their hands directly.

"Riding with no hands" is very easy to simulate simply by walking a bicycle while holding it with only one hand at the saddle. A bike being walked like that is very easy to control/steer. However, if one makes a video of that process and watches it in slow motion mode, one'll immediately notice that every steering maneuver they execute while walking the bike is initiated with ordinary lean-induced countersteering.