Did a lot of reading up on this yesterday. Once the lean is initiated, the steering has to be directed back into the turn to stop the bike toppling over. There is a lot of mention of torque being applied to handlebars, which suggests that normal, instinctive steering is done by unconscious pressure. Someone, CR? Mentioned active and passive countersteering. It seems that passive countersteering is what we do when not thinking about it but active countersteering is when we give the inside bar a conscious shove to drop the bike hard into a corner or tighten a line.
And active is what we learn to turn faster, so you can go in faster and carry more speed as well as turning later. Or do Keith Code says
Another classic example is how kiddies tricycles and indeed reliant robins ( given handlebars as opposed to a steering wheel) would easily tip over when cornering, again, the weight is moving to the outside of the corner as opposed to the inside.. the same when a little one has stabilisers on their early bikes.. watch them turn and see which stabiliser wheel hits the ground? most likely unless we have a natural GP star of the future, to be the one on the outside of the turn and what are the stabilisers for, to stop the kiddie having a fall... !
Once again, if you read my post fully you will realise I'm not comparing two wheels against 3 or 4 .. it's simply to try to explain how motion and mass combined with steering affects the path of a vehicle with and without a pivot.. A MV tech cert and physics might help..! It's not oversteer on a speedway bike either.. where oversteer on a car is preferred to understeer for with oversteer you can if skilled control it with throttle and steering combined where as understeer has that negative feeling and just becomes hard work.. front wheel drive and rear wheel drive makes a huge difference too.. all affecting steering in part.. oversteer is where the front wheels are controlling the steering path theirselves with no input from the driver, if the speedway rider throttled off and went a lot slower does the front wheel try to steer to the inside on its own? No, in fact what's the first thing a speedway rider does coming off the tapes ? All his upper body weight tucked low by his inner handlebar grip a push on the inner bar and throttle to take it around the corner before getting uprite and over the back wheel for the next corner.. once again, if he pulled on his left bar momentum combined with gravity would see him exit the track via the fence..
Nope, I think there is confusion creeping in now. The speedway example is totally different. In that case you are turning the bars the "wrong" way to counteract a drift. This can be called counter steering but it is not the same thing as "countersteering" to initiate the turn. Ok, it might be the same input from the rider but the physics are totally different once the rear wheel has broken traction and started to drift. In "countersteering" to initiate the turn, no actual counter movement of the bars takes place .. as I said before, although a counter-turning torque is applied to the bars, the physics/mechanics of the situation means that this causes the bike to lean into the turn .... instantaneously. There is no initial turn in the wrong direction followed by the "counter" reaction from the bike ... its all one integral process. The "weight shift" during the turn is again a totally different thing. In this case it is simply centrifugal force, and this applies equally to four and two wheeled vehicles (and 3, 6 8 wheelers or whatever) and always acts towards the outside of a turn. Its the same force that keeps the string on a conker taught if you whirl it around. I remember when I first switched from a tricycle to a bicycle and eventually mastered the steering. Then I found myself back on a tricycle some months later and couldn't understand why the steering suddenly felt so weird. I later realised that I had become subconsciously familiar with countersteering without realising it and I was now applying the same subconscious input to turn the tricycle .. but being unable to lean, it simply didn't work and actually turned the tricycle the wrong way. If you think about it, this is why learner cyclists are so wobbly. They turn the bars in the "right" direction but the bloody thing goes the other way. This persists for a while until the subconscious logic kicks in which suggests the only other available option, ie to turn the bars the "wrong" way. And, lo and behold, it works. Thus we all subconsciously learn to countersteer without ever having a rational explanation for it .. or even conscious knowledge that we are doing it. For me, this became something of a revelation, in that it taught me the value of riding by "instinct" or "feel". In fact when we do this we are not ignoring the physics and "just riding" we are in fact subconsciously assimilating the physics. In the end, this is (bizarrely perhaps) how I learnt to play guitar. Having tried fruitlessly for years to learn the facts and practice the techniques, I eventually ignored all that and just allowed my instincts to let me "feel" the music instead. I ended up playing in a band. Its not magic or voodoo or anything like that .. its cold, hard physical reality, but approached from a different perspective. Incidentally, I also countersteer to exit a turn .. by pulling on the inside bar to raise the bike. Its not a technique which I have heard much discussion about but it is exactly the same physical process, except in reverse. For me, the main use of trail braking while countersteering is to avoid the bike sitting up if I am braking after I have already tipped into the turn. On my one and only trackday to date, I found that if I entered Gerards bend at Mallory too fast and needed to lose some speed, a touch of the brake caused the bike to sit up violently and direct me immediately towards the grass and the scene of the accident. I now find that by applying a countersteering force to the bars I can brake in the turn without the bike sitting up and running wide. This is perhaps the nub of the original tenet of this thread. But like I said before, I'm relatively new to this advanced application of countersteer. I do find that it does actually have some relevance in road riding though. However it is fraught with danger as the merest hint of overdoing it, or the merest sprinkle of gravel etc will have you off in an instant. Nevertheless, I do think that it has its place in my armoury of practice and understanding of how to ride better on the road, but only if used with extreme caution, and usually only as a "get out of jail card" if I've overcooked it on a tightening bend. Finally, although it is true that countersteering forces are speed dependant, they still apply to a significant extent even at a slow walking pace on a pushbike. It is often said that they only apply at faster speeds, but this is simply not true .. they just become larger as the speed increases.
Ah, I must've misunderstood then .. I read it the other way. Sorry 'bout that. Still worth a clarifying post though I suppose .. but hopefully it came across as a smiley one.
Some interesting explanations, if I may add something to the mix. I am no track demon but enjoy a spirited ride like the rest of you so I signed up for an experience day & had the pleasure of spending it with Steve Plater at Donnington, I swatted up on my "Twist of the Wrist" book thinking it would benefit me greatly for my once in a lifetime track experience.. When we arrived we were asked if we had any track experience, a few of us were first timers and his instruction started with this... "Right Lads, it's as simple as this... want to go left? push weight onto the left footpeg, go right, push onto the right footpeg, don't sit on the seat unless you are on the straight, use the weight on the pegs to steer through the corners" Was a fascinating day and yes it did work and made sense in conjunction with what we actually all do subconsciously to get the bike through corners. Still no faster but I do feel more stable in corners
Yes that's exactly it but just put in an alternative way.. the good thing about the foot peg pushing is that you can't go to far in pushing a basically fixed peg but obv you can by initiating the turn by the handlebar.. by bar or by peg the idea is to initiate the turn in with one bum cheek only on the seat the inner side of your outer thigh / knee on the side of the tank and your head, the heavy part down by your grip area looking well into the turn.. the push on the bar or peg is part of the motion to smoothly interupft the centralfugal forces and via the pivot or headstock hopefully we turn in.. I was talking countersteer with my Wife and kids many years ago and she said it's rubbish, it's not what I do on my push bike! If I want to turn right I pull on the right handle bar, I got a small 916 model out with steering and demonstrated what happens if she did what she thought she did, her weight would go to the outside of the bend and would end in tears.. the wife and kids were gobsmacked, I just explained, that you are already countersteering now it's just you don't realise it but on a motorbike at speed you are trying to overcome the gryroscopic effect of the wheels as well and this means the bike wishes to stay on the path it's already on. Hence we change the effect of that motion by the initiation of countersteering .. etc etc...
A good illustration mentioned in online explanations of bicycle steering, which is essentially the same, is to go through a puddle and then turn, so you can see the tracks made by both tyres. You can see the front initially turn away from the intended direction of turn to initiate the lean and then turn into the lean to continue the actual turn and maintain stability. Apparently it also works on hard sand if you want to trace the path of the wheels.
What way is the front wheel turning half way through a corner? say you're at constant lean of 55 degrees in a long corner (and maybe doing some elbow heroics for good measure); is your front wheel in line at this point or still counter steering?? It's weird because it seems that lean angle is proportional to countersteer when on the bike yet if you look at pictures you can't really see much counter steer?
So you're saying you counter steer to lean the bike and then when you stop changing lean angle then it goes the other way? I still can't get my head around that as it doesn't fell like it turns in towards the corner??
Yep, mad isn't it. I mounted an action cam on my fairing at the bottom where it shows the front wheel and you can see it changing direction and pointing into the turn a very small amount.
That is exactly what happens according to the scientists who've studied it. If you look at the track of the front wheel on the ground, you can see where it turns one way to initiate the lean, and then back the other way to actually make the turn.
Lean angle is proportional to countersteer because that pushes the bottom of the previously mentioned balanced stick further away from vertical
