<<Thanks Spin...slow down? that is the problem mate, it is the slow speed turns that have me stumped. By banging it on its ear, I mean leaning the bike down into the turn. I do understand and apply countersteering and do not hang off as I am not a GP rider knee scraping show off I do lean my upper body into the turn to get weight on the inside and I weight the outside peg which makes the bike feel more stable. >>
There's your problem.
You're using completely the wrong technique for a slow turn.
Leaning your upperbody into the turn pushes the bike upright.
An upright bike wants to go straight on - it's the lean angle of the TYRES relative to the roadsurface which determines the radius of the turn, and by pushing it upright you make it run on a much wider line.
This body in, weight the outside peg stuff is California Superbike School / Keith Code advice, but it's really not relevant to riding round a roundabout at 20mph!
You actually want to be doing the exact opposite - to lean the bike INTO the turn and move your body upright, so you increase the angle of attack of the tyres relative to the road surface, and the bike will turn on a much tighter line.
You can test this in the carpark - get off the bike, hold it upright standing on the left, turn the bars full lock and walk it round in a half circle. Now lean the bike into your hip (be careful obviously!) and walk it back round. You'll find you end up well inside the point where you started.
This technique of moving your body "upside" of the bike's centreline is called "counterweighting". When did you take your test? Did you do DAS and did you get taught this on your training?
There's more here on my website.
http://www.survivalskills.co.uk/riding_skills_35.html
I also offer short riding courses on Slow Control:
http://www.survivalskills.co.uk/short_courses.html
All original contributions to this forum by Kevin Williams are subject to a (cc) Creative Commons deed.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales
Full terms are available here but in brief if you use the author's work for any purpose, it's under the following conditions:
* Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
* Non-Commercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
* Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.
VD DEALS Blog Courses Books Facebook Twitter FREE STUFF
"Force has no place where there is need of skill" Herodotus 450BC :burnout:
