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Can it be done:
a. Without huge built up knee sliders?
b. With the rider recovering, straightening up and getting back on the seat?
c. In front of a camera?
d. On a moving bike!
And:
e. On a 26inch wheeled MTB, as opposed to a BMX bike?
Any takers?
First to supply evidence will win either a £3.00 milkshake from Costa Coffee in Prestwich, or will receive a free envelope of Blancmange through the post.
I've clipped a pedal on a road bike and that felt like a huge lean (and I was well lucky to recover that) but if you just tilt the bike it's no-where near "knee down" lean.
I've done a, c, d and e from your list at the same time. It's always been "b" that's been the problem!
I'd say not possible but obviously someone on here will have done it.
Ooooooo you've tempted me now...I've always thought about puttin on me knee pads and seeing how low I can get, perhaps I'll wait til summer and we get some steaming hot tarmac. I have these on my HT
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If you could stretch to a blancmange mikshake I'll give it a go
Does scraping your inside pedal on the ground while going around a berm count?
if you had a bike with a good weight in it and picked a good mountain to descend down then you might get the knee down.. but who cares. just buy a motorbike and aim to do this!
http://www.zx-10r.net/forum/showthread.php?t=75629
There an old b& w / sepia image of some road race cyclist, bent forward and almost touching his bars, taken on what appears to be a dry & dusty circuit (?) that is pretty much exactly what you're asking.
I'll come across it in the next year I'm sure!
Mart: I'm sure that's for effect - you'd never ride quickly if you hang off the bike like that, in fact the front looks very unweighted as it is, any more of that & it'll wash out. Always better to be more pro-active in your counter steering and the bike will drop into the corner far more efficiently - as well you know I think!
mikey that's cool but you have a berm to help you 🙂 Did you get the bike horizontal? There's a pic I found once of a DHer with the bike perfectly horizontal throuh a berm s bend....another thing I'd like to achieve on the MTB one day
martin is prob right about having a heavy bike, the c of g is much lower on that motorbike. Perhaps some lead near the bb would do it 8)
awesome pic iain
I guess it's a different approach, on the big bike you're generally hanging off into the corner to keep the bike stood up (which is why si many people go slower and lean less when they're trying to get their knee down, some people could manage it with the bike bolt upright I reckon 😉 ) but on pushbikes you tend not to do that, you're leaning with the bike or counterleaning quite often.
Sure it could be done on the right berm but that's cheating.
the old sepia pic of a young lad with a pair of goggles on his bike is great he is on a dirt track with almost his elbow on the floor i think he went on to be a world champion glider pilot or something but can find the pic
so i'll bore you with a couple of me on my under powered srx
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Knee PAH get like Olivier Jaque and get your elbows down 😯
If someone's going to crack this, I reckon we need a camberless, downhill bend, preferably well away from the traffic. Think one with a decreasing radius would be better, but willing to be proved wrong.
I've tried offroad with a BMX bike, but always end up collapsing inwards, stalling, or almost doing what feels like a pathetic 'junior' highside as the bike stands up.
Cheers for all the pics BTW, inspirational!
ADE I like that, how do you manage, I find I am grinding the foot peg way before I get to the point where I can grind the knee on mine (a srx 600 as well). Steve you have to be very very under-skilled to fail grinding the knee with a R1 (or a GSXR or a ZXR).
There's a huge difference in some of the track day images you see at courses.
The fast guys do not hang off, they shift their weight across the seat and countersteer.
Hanging off a bike anyone can do, the bike doesn't even need to be over at an angle much (see R1 above) to allow the rider to shift his whole body over and down.
And that old picture is exactly the one I was was thinking of - cheers!
Ti29er wrote, "Hanging off a bike anyone can do,"
I can't... That's the only reason I found out I go so much faster without thinking about the whole hang off/knee down thing, I used to always be doing that then I busted up my leg and lost the flexibility to do stuff like that... So I had to relearn riding a bit and discovered that actually, what I was doing looked fast but didn't really work! Ah well.
srx is a little modified,, when I bought it it would brake into a tank slapper over cats eyes and white lines ,, i thought about a steering damper but went the other way from "normal" i reduced the trail by dropping the front and raising the back thinking there would be less self correcting force so less inclined to wobble
a speed wobble is when the self correcting force is greater than needed to return the wheel to the centre so then it goes past the centre so you then have more correcting etc so it all increases
rear shocks 22mm longer than std front end 12mm lower forks through yokes. rear springs dual rate front end wp fork kit,,
even has data logger on pic 2 you can just see front wheel speed sensor and front and rear suspension pots
i had to take off the hero spikes off the footrests, and slightly change the exhaust as that is a bit solid when it hits
a great little bike
Some magazine tools did an article on taking a SC road bike down some Tarmac and intentionally crashing it etc years ago.
That's just the point I was making.
Once you stop trying to hang off, be more positive with the countersteering and the bike will turn faster and drop into corners quicker.
You will, if you have the correct tyres and set up & bike, find your knees touching if you move them outwards.
Hanging off the bike as per some of these above images is not the fastest way around a corner!
sometimes i finish off a ride on the zx9r on a dry roundabout real late at night and have a ride around a few dozen times.i dont hang off but just never seem to get that far over (judging by the 3mm of chicken strip left) I sometimes blame the sports tourer style but deep down i know that someone that can corner could do it on a zx9r with ease. i could bank over on a bmx fine enough and on a brand new street triple R i took more of the chicken strips off on a few roundabouts than ive ever done on my own bike.i noticed this looking at the tyre when i arrived back and mentioned it to the sales guy.. it didnt even feel over at all. its just a diffrent bike.
like ti29er says, if i go out for a relaxed easy ride down loch ness i could flow around corners in a sit up and beg position and feel confident in dropping/pushing the bar a bit and finding that ive been over not that far off what i achieved on the roundabout the night before!







