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Locking front on asphalt, is it hard on sportbike?

DocWong said:
This is of course not the most effective way to shorten stopping distances, but if your goal is to lock up the front wheel and not do a stoppie:

At a moderate speed, suddenly pull very hard and very fast. You can get the front wheel to lock up sooner that way because time was to allowed for the suspension to load up the front wheel increasing traction. This is something we do at every dual sport clinic I do. It's in the dirt, so it slides the front wheel easier.

Caveat : You can easily crash doing the above on the street with high traction conditions. I.e. good sticky pavement. If the pavement is looser, such as dirt, it'll lock up easier.

Also, you must either be very light on the handle bars or put exact even pressure on them to not tweak the handlebars to not crash.

Once you feel/hear the front wheel slide, let go. You'll be glad you did. :teeth

Anyway I cover this in detail in my new Doc Wong Braking Class.
Click to expand...

Today I went through some oil while aggressive braking which locked the front brake then the rear brake. I released the front brake then slowly reapplied the front brake.

This caused the bike to be upset and very little weight on the front tire. I kept pressure on the rear brake till I could get weight back on the front to make the turn. After I felt the weight transfer to the front I initiated the left turn and released the rear brake.

My observation is that you don't want to practice a front lock up. Too much can go wrong and it can happen very quickly.

Ill be signing up for the Doc Wong Braking Class. Since light on the bars and going straight saved me. :thumbup
 
I've tucked the front more times than i care to admit, all in the first 12 months of riding, and luckily have yet to crash from a front end tuck while moving. i've locked the front all the way twice, once on purpose on my 250 without any problem, and again on my ZX6R while bedding in brake pads when it was cold at night, and i almost went down.

I agree i think it's a bad idea to purposely practice that on a sportbike on asphalt, the best practice i get for that situation is....da da DAAA, a dirtbike. again. dirtbikes are teh best for training everything. and i lose the front all the time on my dirtbike because i'm pushing it happily, and i pick it up off the ground and brush my knees off, happily. when you can trail brake hard in the dirt (and i can't) without losing the front, then you're a G.
 
I don't know why the thread got resurrected or if it's been said already, but if you want to deliberately explore the limits of your front brake, and you should, don't use the back brake at the same time. You're more likely to crash and you won't be using the front brake as effectively either. Better not to do two drills at the same time.
 
Thought Gary J started a thread concerning the direction the front would slide if the front wheel locked up. Did a search w/o success.
 
Locked the front on a few occasions. Two ended w/ the bike on its side. Like Bud experienced recently, on one save I heard the chirp and on another the tire talking back. On another save I was pushing the '07 dyna a bit in the rain going over 84 west past Alice's. The front gave out completely going around a left bend. Left foot kept the bike up as it drifted crossed up toward the guard rail. On another (again 84) toward the bottom, a car came out from stage, locked the front going strait and the bike kept going strait. The last one was on the kawk, looking into the sun and turning onto stage from 84. Was hugging the double yellow then power on turning onto Stage. Didn't see the new patch on stage covered w/ chip. Front locked to the right, foot peg and foot hit the ground and bike slid sideways. It recoverd on it's own. Lucky. Pulled a U, parked at the store and lit up a smoke.

Can be saved w/ luck.
 
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p4i1 said:
I meant if you apply front brake progressively, it's hard to lock it since stoppie happens much earlier.
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This is true of sport bikes, but not necessarily of all bikes. Quite a few sport touring bikes, touring bikes and cruisers will slide the front before they will stoppie. If switching from a sport bike to any of these, it's a good thing to be aware of.
 
tzrider said:
This is true of sport bikes, but not necessarily of all bikes. Quite a few sport touring bikes, touring bikes and cruisers will slide the front before they will stoppie. If switching from a sport bike to any of these, it's a good thing to be aware of.
Click to expand...

Good advice. I find it almost impossible to skid the front of my R1 (it always stoppies) and very difficulty to stoppie the Capo (it prefers to skid the front).

Similarly the rear brake on my R1 is worse than useless but the rear brake on the Capo provides significant stopping power.
 
The monoblocks on my hyper will lock a hot sticky front tire if grabbed too quickly.
 
ToraTora said:
If the front wheel locks up the bike will travel on the tangent to the curve at the time of the lock up, because the force (your front tire) controlling the direction modification to your momentum has effectively been neutralized with the skid. That is to say you will travel straight out of the corner you are in, or straight on the path you were on if you were traveling forward.

You can see a visualization of this by watching a video of Rossi (or any other rider) when his Ducati looses the front end in a corner--his direction of travel is a straight line (the tangent) out of the corner (curve) for which his momentum counter force (his front tire) was controlling the path of the bike.

[youtube]xcwyJ5zdknU[/youtube]​

And just like packnrat posted if the front wheel starts skidding (stops rotating) you have lost control of your bike (outside of stunting techniques).
Click to expand...

So you didn't find the post I was refering to either.
 
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