(no) BS Bike & Keith Code

[Holt]

I'll have a look at the pdf, but as far as I know at this moment, body steering works mostly because while leaning off the bike's RHS, you pull on the left handlebar and/or push on the right. In other words, you could just as well push on the RHS handlebar at once

What can be seen in the video is that COG variations do modify the trajectory. It's a pity we don't see the guy hanging off as if he was deep in a turn on a track, so we could see just how little one accomplishes.

Interestingly, I had a chat with a colleague about all this earlier. He explained how he does "body steering" on his Zodiac: he blocks the engine at a given speed and straight ahead, and then takes place up front. To turn right, he just shifts his weight to the right.
This works because of the boats width, the fact it probably is considerably lighter than an average MC, and the absence of gyroscopic moments that will counter any roll attempt.

Of course you can pull instead of push; the idea of pushing is that it's faster.
Why should it be fast? Because on the road it's in the emergency cases you really need to know what it's about.

The term "countersteering" is established, at least up here in the cold North, since quite many years, and the method has been taught in courses, both in beginners- as well as advanced racingcourses carried out by our largest motorcycle organization, SMC, under supervising by Keith Code's CSS.

Actually I think it was the Norwegians who were out first here. They wrote a book "Full Kontroll" (you can see it in Swedish here: http://www.svmc.se/upload/SMC%20central ... 0SVENO.pdf - guess the pics are readable in Frenglish as well. ) based on Keith Codes methods, back in 2001.
That book has been distributed to all of the 70.000 SMC members, and is spread among the Norwegians NMCU as well.

 

[john zibell]

Holt,

In the US, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) started formally teaching countersteering in the 1970s. Although the technique can probably be documented earlier. After all, they had to learn it from somewhere.

 

[Holt]

Holt,

In the US, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) started formally teaching countersteering in the 1970s. Although the technique can probably be documented earlier. After all, they had to learn it from somewhere.

Yeah; I think I heard about countersteering when taking my license back in the 70's as some kind of racing-gimmick - but no one has to my conscience put it in print before much later. I've got a book on motorcycle driving skills from the mid-sixties, and it's on the old lean-and-see-what-happens technique all over.
Old motorcycles generally do have a much lower point of centre of gravity than modern ones. I really have no idea on what that does to driving techniques. Maybe the leaning-technique did work. Haven't got an old bike, so I can't try. But someone out there may be able to tell.
Cannot find anything from here earlier. Tho' the innernet wasn't in my 'puter before 1996 or so, either..

 

[GuzziMoto]

It is very hard to ride a two wheeled vehicle at any speeds above ten mph or so without counter-steering. It does not matter whether you know you are doing it or not, and it doesn't matter whether you understand how it works. If you do not ride really badly (I actually saw a guy on the Blue Ridge Parkway riding a scooter without counter-steering, it was painful to watch) chances are you are counter-steering. The name does not refer to the motion of the bars but rather the way you input to them. You attempt to turn the bars to the right and the motorcycle will actually turn left. Once you are in a left hand turn, if you need to turn more to the left you do not turn the bars to the left more but rather you again attempt to turn them to the right. The bike will tighten its line and turn more to the left.
It gets funny when people (usually people like Code) attempt to polarize the issue into an either/or choice. You can do both to control your motorcycle, and in my opinion it stands to reason that if some is good then more must be better. If you do both then you will be able to control the motorcycle better and ride faster. That is why guys like Mick Doohan used to wear holes in the bottoms of their boots from how hard they were pushing on the pegs to help control their bikes.
Keith Code did not "invent" counter-steering, and in my opinion he has done more harm then good by trying to turn it into an either /or argument. But if you take what he teaches and apply a little reason and common sense to it there is much good in his ideas.
It always amazes me that this subject can bring out so much. It is as bad as an oil thread or religion.

 

[RJVB]

Just one more thing: it you tilt a bike (MC or bicycle) right at standstill, the front wheel will fall to the right. This is actually one reason one can steer a bicycle from the hips, without holding the handlebars. I'm not exactly sure why the true countersteering on Todd's picture (and referenced by me in one of my posts above) works, but I have a hunch that it actually comes to counter or control the drift of the rear wheel.

GM: no, this is not as bad as an oil thread. The physics behind the whole issue is still understood incompletely. Some of us on here might actually advance the understanding (I've already had very interesting discussions with MotoScusi about it, offline).

 

[GuzziMoto]

Just one more thing: it you tilt a bike (MC or bicycle) right at standstill, the front wheel will fall to the right. This is actually one reason one can steer a bicycle from the hips, without holding the handlebars. I'm not exactly sure why the true countersteering on Todd's picture (and referenced by me in one of my posts above) works, but I have a hunch that it actually comes to counter or control the drift of the rear wheel.

GM: no, this is not as bad as an oil thread. The physics behind the whole issue is still understood incompletely. Some of us on here might actually advance the understanding (I've already had very interesting discussions with MotoScusi about it, offline).

If you tilt the bike to the right at a stand still the bars may turn to the right, this is mostly a function of trail. But as most steering takes place while moving there are more factors involved. An example is if you take a bicycle wheel and, while it is spinning, lean it to one side or the other you can watch the impact on steering.
Once you exceed a certain speed you can no longer properly steer a motorcycle by turning the bars to the right to turn right. Leaning the bike is how you steer. Counter-steering is the most efficient way of adjusting the lean angle of the motorcycle, but it is not the only way. When you turn the bars to the left at speed the bike will lean to the right. You can also lean the bike to the right by pushing down on the right side foot peg or what ever. Anything that causes the bike to lean to the right will cause it to steer to the right. If you counter-steer AND use body inputs to lean the bike to the right at the same time the bike can lean to the right faster and that can be a good thing.
When you say "Todds picture", I assume you mean the one of the supermoto rider. That is not counter-steering as I would define it, as "Counter-Steering" to me involves turning the bars in one direction to initiate a turn in the other. The supermoto rider is not turning the bars to the right but sliding the back of the motorcycle to the right. This makes it look like the bars turned to the right but it is more a case of the tail wagging the dog. But to each their own.

 

[GTM®]

When you say "Todds picture", I assume you mean the one of the supermoto rider.

That is a picture of me on the Corona Husky 670cc SM monster for Euro Moto Mag a few years back.

 

[RJVB]

@John:
I've read your Archimedes article. Your description provides a different wording of something we claim. To move your body around on the bike, you need to push against parts of the bike, one of which is the handlebar. To keep yourself leaning off the bike, you also need to hold on to support (unless you're a native indian who's learned to shoot his bow while hanging off his horse's side? :silly. It is quite clear that at least in that latter situation, you're at the least pulling on the handlebar grip that's on the bike's opposite side.

The no BS bike provides a new set of "attachment points" for your hands which are no longer coupled to the steering head/column (fulcrum). In other words, it doesn't "remove the place to stand", it provides another place to stand that is no longer related to the appropriate fulcrum — or to a fulcrum that blocks the lever.

This simply shows that body steering does not work because it shifts the COG in such a way that the bike leans, but because of the inputs it generates at the level of the handlebars.

A pity Code didn't install torque sensors on the rigid handlebar. That would have allowed to measure "descending torque" stemming from rider body movements in an almost open-loop situation.

 

[Holt]

To move your body around on the bike, you need to push against parts of the bike, one of which is the handlebar. .

-and another one is the pegs.

 

[RJVB]

Of course.

I'm willing to predict that if you take the no BS bike, and prep it with a pair of pegs that are connected to the steering column, you'll find the bike will react the same way to body steering if you hold either to the "true" handlebar and the fixed peg OR to the fixed handlebar and the newly added pegs. That, or in opposite direction, depending on how you rig those pegs.

 

[Roblatt]

The way I see it is this. Picture the bike from above (eagles view). Then imagine, with the bike still upright and absolutely no lean, turn the bars to the left. With the bike still upright, the front wheel grips, but because the bike is too heavy to flip over the bars, physics instigates an immediate lean to the right. The bike then turns right. That is counter steering to instigate a lean to turn the bike.

ie steer one way to instigate a lean AND turn the opposite way.

 

[bobw]

Wow, so much information as to why something that does work isn't possible. There are many things you can do on a motorcycle reasonably well even without using the "better" tactic of using your core and leg muscles to compliment the motorcycles handling. When as a young man my, "Mrs. Robinson taught me to ride", I found her to be much more knowledgeable in applied technique than reading comments in Playboy, etc. Much the same with learning from Champion motorcycle racers, they seem to have success by using tactics that are attempted to be dismissed here by comparing apples to oranges. A friend once told me there is a big difference between a man sitting on a horse and a real cowboy. :lol: YRMV

Safe travels and Cheers

 

[Holt]

Wow, so much information as to why something that does work isn't possible. There are many things you can do on a motorcycle reasonably well even without using the "better" tactic of using your core and leg muscles to compliment the motorcycles handling. When as a young man my, "Mrs. Robinson taught me to ride", I found her to be much more knowledgeable in applied technique than reading comments in Playboy, etc. Much the same with learning from Champion motorcycle racers, they seem to have success by using tactics that are attempted to be dismissed here by comparing apples to oranges. A friend once told me there is a big difference between a man sitting on a horse and a real cowboy. :lol: YRMV

Safe travels and Cheers

You got a point there, Bob.

In my point of view learning the countersteering technique, chances of being able to get you out of trouble will increase a bit.
It's not necessarely for track use and taking the corners rapidly only.
Using it on the road may hopefully learn yourself to reflexively do well when approaching the heat.

The CSS is, as I know it, much more focused on keeping your sight right, than the countersteering part.

 

[SgtCrump]

A friend once told me there is a big difference between a man sitting on a horse and a real cowboy. :lol: YRMV

Now, everybody knows you steer horses by mind control......that's why you never see them wearing tinfoil hats!!