[quote=“Ironman”]I figure I’d have stayed relaxed and accelerated a little. I then checked the google answers and found conflicting advice. Mine agrees with the one I listed below but you could choose anything to agree with you.
See the bold. It says to lighten the front end. Some web advice says to get your weight over the front end. That makes no sense to me. The front end is where the trouble is.[/quote]
accelerating hard enough to lift/lighten the front when you’re rapidly approaching a wall with a 90degree left turn as that guy was is the kind of game plan that will keep you out of the hospital, but that’s because you’ll be in the morgue…
in fairness what that guy had was a weave or a mini tank slapper…
on a straight road lifting the front it is a “possible” although semi-suicidal save for a tank slapper for a few obvious reasons… firstly and most importantly the handle bars (in even a mild proper tank slapper) are slamming back and forth against the locks several times per second… any imput or force throught the bars will only complicate / worsen the oscilation… crucially, the necessary throttle and clutch control to accelerate sharply enough to raise/lighten the front would be almost impossible… check this well known tank slapper video to see what i mean… also as you accelerate enough to start raising the front, the reduced centering forces (see below) would decrease resistance to the oscilation, and cause the slapper to get worse up until the point that the front wheel lifts off the ground at which stage you’d be out of the frying pan… BUT…assuming you could do it, what you’d be doing apart from raising the front, is accelerating violently in a random direction since the bike is shaking it’s head furiously and oscilating all over the road, and as the front comes up the rear will become your single pivot point you’ll then be accelerating hard, in a random direction, in a crossed up semi wheelie which is another way to say “world of pain”…
in practice the front getting too light, and deliberately engineered “flighty” or “flickable” geometry is what causes most tank slappers… as the front gets lighter the natural effects of phsyics and frame geometry which keeps the wheel centered are reduced… this natural centering force acting on the front wheel is a result of the trail (see diagram) and it’s this force that keeps the front wheel on course… as you lighten the front the centering effect of the trail is reduced, if something causes the front to get kicked out of alignment, like a rock, pot-hole, poor surface, crossed up wheelie landing, etc. it may set up an oscilation that the centering effects of the trail and rake cannot overcome (see above video)… what you want to do is leave the front well enough alone, minimising additional unhelpful steering input, holding the bars with the lightest grip possible short of letting go completely, whilst applying light rear brake which brings more weight onto the front, increasing the effect of the trail and naturally dragging the front wheel into alignment, reducing the tank slapper to a controllable level…
so it’s not getting your weight over the front, it’s getting weight through the bike/frame onto the front wheel that counts…
well that’s the theory/physics of it anyway… in practice what you usually do is fall off… :help: