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Counter Steering |
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Counter Steering and the Gyro Effect If you ride a motorcycle at any amount of speed you counter steer but most of us don't think about the principle behind it. I learned about counter steering way before I ever heard the term. In 1981 I bought a new 750 Yamaha Virago. I put a throttle lock, also known as a cruise control, on it. The bike was well-balanced from stock. I could lock the cruise control at any speed on the interstate and take both hands off the handlebars and I could go for several miles without touching the bars. Unsafe I know but I was young and lived on the edge back then.(smile) I could just shift my weight a little to keep it lined up. I rode like this for about a year and then I changed the exhaust to an after market system. The stock pipes had one muffler on each side but the replacement system had them both on one side. So, my next ride on the highway, I locked the cruise, leaned back in my cool position, and the bike took off to the right harder than I could just shift my weight to correct. I realized that the new exhaust had taken a bunch of weight from one side of the motorcycle and had added it to the other side making the bike unbalanced. To correct the bikes path I'd take my left hand index finger and push the left handle bar grip to the right and it would bring the bike back to the left, thus 'Counter steering'. I've gotten into more than one debate on this topic. I always suggest that they try it. While going down the highway, get going straight and apply some pressure to the left grip pushing it to the right. WARNING!! You only need to apply pressure!! The handle bar may not move enough for you to say, "I turned it". Your motorcycle will go left. No one does a lane change without doing this - it's the way the beast is designed. Both wheels work as a gyroscope. The rear wheel gyroscope is fixed and the front gyroscope is mounted to a pivot. You really don't lean the motorcycle as much as you lean with it. It's the gyro force that leans it. I've done this as a kid many times with a bicycle wheel. You can do this yourself by holding a bicycle wheel by the axle with one end in each hand, kind-a like a set of forks, and have a buddy spin it. Now, while it's spinning try to turn the wheel. If you turn it to the right the top of the wheel will lean to the left. You can't hold it straight if it's spinning at any amount of speed because it will lean or it will lean what it's connected to. IT'S A LAW!!. That's why a motorcycle doesn't fall over after it gets rolling at a speed that's great enough to create enough force to apply the LAW. Three wheelers and four wheel vehicles have to work around this LAW. A car’s front wheels can't lean on their own because of the way they're mounted to the cars but they have a mechanical design that angles them and this is called 'Caster'. This leans the wheel rather than the wheels leaning themselves. The force of a high speed spinning gyro is
unreal. The gyro force is a law that's in effect all around us. Another
example besides the wheel is tossing a football with a good
spin on it. It won't wobble. It will fly like a bullet. And speaking of
bullets they are another example. The reason they fly as well as they do is because
of the
rifling in the barrel of the gun that causes the bullet to spin. And I'm
sure that at some time we have seen or played with one of those spinning tops.
Well, that's nothing more than a gyroscope too. MarkC |