Beginners Guide of Riding Part 2

After going through first part in which we’ve seen what should be footsteps like wearing Hell-mate getting build confidence slowly rather than getting over excited, we’re here again with beginner’s guide of riding motorcycle's next part.

Body posture

Taking motorcycle out in traffic for first few days might be not so good experience for you in fact you may be in slight depress manner holding your handlebar with too much pressure.

Riding in stressful manner is not good way to start with motorbikes, if you ask any expert “How to ride motorbike?” they will tell you to stay stress free as much as possible to you and I can tell you with pretty much assurance that there is no written Motorcycle Manuals or Motorcycle Guide that comes with your motorcycle tells you about this. So holding your motorcycle between your hands tightly don’t make riding any better, actually this may render bike for bad handling during direction changes due to bad steering response.

riding position difference in bikes

Bad steering also occurs due to grips, either our hands may be proving smaller for size of grips or may be slippery grips, so you may want to check if your handle bars grips are in perfect condition after all you’re controlling whole bike with those.

You may like to familiarize with brake and clutch levers of your bike cause some levers may need firm operation while others may work with light push so it’s not really big problem just get to know effort level required for your levers.

Body strategy

You should understand what feels you best on your motorcycle, it doesn’t matter if you’re riding street bike or sport bike. All you have to do is find sweet spot on motorcycle and by that mean grab your bike with thighs, ankles and knees but not with handlebars why? let me explain you.

When you grab your bike with your lower part of body below waist such as knees and thighs you stay firmly on your sitting position just like seatbelt works in cars, plus keeping your lower part of body attached to machines body makes you feel your motorcycle, it also helps you in changing lane transitions.

Keep your heels attached to motorcycle’s foot pegs all the time firmly, they help to get better grip from bike as well as bike’s flick ability gets tremendously improves, foot pegs also helpful to understand various vibrations passing from bikes motor, the experienced riders understand most of engine related fault just by understanding pattern of vibration from motor therefor every new budding rider should make habit to understand relation between legs and foot pegs.

Remember never put toes to downward side try to keep as close as possible to shift lever and brake lever or else there are highly chances to get foot scrapping injuries while approaching at corner.  

Now what about above waist body strategy?  You hold handle bars of your motorcycle with your hands via grips to pull accelerator and apply braking and clutch levers as well as other operations such as beeping horn, switching turn signals or headlights, So what you have to do is hold your handle bars firmly at the same time keep your upper body section much lighter than your lower body section why? because keeping your upper body section too much firm will effect on handling factor of your motor bike, in short you’ll find difficulty in changing sudden direction change on motor bike that’s why you have to keep your upper body section firm enough so not to lose grips from handlebars at same time keeping much lose than lower body section.

Keeping your hands lose have another advantage, in some situations you may find surprise of sudden pothole on road and even your suspensions may not able to cope with condition at that instance yours lose hands will work like suspensions, the flexibility in your hands will able to absorb much of pothole impact, interestingly that’s not expected to be happen during too much firm upper body position and you may be victimize to unexpected crash.

Vision of Eagle

Newer motorcycle riders are usually little afraid to riding on main road and this hesitance is not bad at all. Because this hesitance gives them feeling to ride safely. But what newer riders most common mistake is to look at one and only fixed point at just few feet ahead of bike, therefor they get panic if sudden situations like big dump truck approaches towards them from 20 meters away. Looking at fix point while riding bike is deadly mistake.

If you ask any expert motorcycle rider they will agree upon motorcycle follows where rider looks philosophy, eventually you’ll figure out this fact after riding your motorcycle for few thousand kilometers.

Utilize your peripheral vision to get broad perspective of environment such as bumps, patch sections, unequal surface and even reckless driven vehicle, you’ll never know what new surprise the road might present for you.

Get broad vision of road ahead of you

 Keeping your vision ahead builds up confidence and helps your brain to compute defensive mode action such as slowing down or stopping completely before road catastrophe occurrence, your body will accommodate for different situations with difference stance, try to understand every new parameter of bike at every ride session such as how to lean at corner, shifting gears and braking applications which directly translates to giving training to your inner rider instincts.

Try to look as further as possible and keep your brain constantly feed visual clues, staying update with visual information helps to perform with predetermined profile or body’s stance, such as you’ll feel more confident while going through twisty corner which you have seen from 70 meters behind from actual approach. Suddenly you’ll feel that roads are getting less strange places and familiar pattern will start to occur in further situations.

Make habit to look inside rear view mirror, they’re there for specific reason, make train yourself to look inside mirror at least 3 times a minute and more if you’re in heavy traffic. Looking inside mirror is one of the key element while riding in busy traffic

Rear view mirror's have sole purpose to show whats behind

Inside city or on multiple lane interstate highway, checking out rear view is mandatory, even if you don’t plan to change direction or lane transition it’s just gives you good level of confidence what’s happening behind you, so you don’t get freak out when suddenly high speed car overtakes you by very close margin.

Or even could save you from getting rear ending from other vehicle.

Constantly staying visually update from mirror is not that much hard, you don’t have to turn your head too much, simple quick view is enough and then you can concentrate again on road ahead, All Mirrors are adjustable so all you have to do is adjust them according to your preferences.

Yes, it’s true for some people that rear view mirrors shows their shoulder often most of time but it’s shows how well they're alert about their rear section. You can get aftermarket rear view mirrors if stock one doesn’t working for you.

It's better to get full stop to enjoy nature around you

So the bottom line is: till the moment you don’t get too much confidence, it’s best to look on broad view of road ahead of you as well as behind via mirror, you may be riding in beautiful twisty section of Kasara or passing by scenic beauty of some other road don’t get lost in senses stay focus to your instincts, you may even wants to get full stop rather than looking at roadside beauty while riding and getting distracted.
If you haven't read this article's previous part you can read here.
 and don't forget to read future articles.

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Motorcycle Braking Guide: Chapter 1

Riding motorcycle is one of thing which gives great amount of pleasure for most of people, who prefers 2 wheels over 4s. But this pleasurable activity comes with its own Risk factors. Many Things become bit unstable on 2 wheels. Therefore we have brought following article for new budding riders to make understand braking parameters and usage more precisely when riding motorcycle. 
It's fact that motorcycles are always been fun factor in life, and then it doesn't matters if you are roaring your engine in silent zone or zooming through highway. As the technology increases, more advance types of bikes getting in our hands which have insane amount of acceleration capabilities and some of them even goes beyond safe controlling zone of riders.

 
Accessing speed is matter of seconds on modern motorcycle, But braking in exact time while avoiding accidents and getting ahead of dangerous obstacles or turning safely to desire direction can make difference between life and death. As for rider, controlling bike in most demanding and cautious situations is very important skills. One should constantly learn from past incidents to expand their riding skills.

It's our chapter one of braking guide, We're going to flash some highlight on few basic things and explaining basic principles involve in motorcycle braking. Future articles will go deeper in science and info clearing many vital things.

The Tyre    
Tyre is hardware to which braking have most direct and final relation, Basically Tyre provides friction between your bike and surface you're riding. Therefore choosing right type of tyre is very important thing. In money saving favour you may choose hard compound tyre which comes cheap and lasts longer, but remember hard compound rubber have bad traction property with road which causes your bike slide during hard hard braking which ultimately cause bike fall if you dont have experience with sliding, That's the reason experts always advices to choose soft compound rubber tyre which have excellent traction level on road , though it have little bit higher costs compare to that hard compound rubber tyre but no way its higher than human life!

Grip
After determining the right type of tyre for your bike , you have to determine have much grip you're getting. Why ? because grip is actual traction level between your tyre's contact with road surface. While friction is principle that provides forward motion when your do pull accelerator.
Motorbike's grip depends upon number factors , such as presence of undulations, uneven surface road and presence of water. Physical condition of tyres and its type. Old tyres or wrong type chosen for road you're riding can affect grip level with bad manners, Bike can be victim of skidding and braking distance can be significantly increase.
Same way wet road conditions means less grip level and more chances of skid, In such conditions its important that rider should understand and get idea of their bikes grip level and road contact section. Knowing your bike better also helps to build more confidence to ride bike in critical grip conditions.

Grip is  one of the most vital factor while braking, more contact between the tyres and road , the more influence of braking power get applied, while less the stopping range, which is good in fact. Grip nature also changes according to weight , Therefore we should keep in mind that heavy weight bikes have more inertial force while in motion, that's the reason heavy bikes requires more braking distance and stronger braking bite  or force.
On flipside lightweight bikes prone to lose grip from road easily due to which they can skid easily compare to heavy bikes. Keeping this weight difference in mind will help you to decide which is  right bike for you and your riding style.

While riding there are various type of forces acts upon motorcycle which causes significant changes to riding behaviors of machine, Including the weight shifts to front or rear depends upon whether bike is braking or accelerating. As grip dramatically affects by the weight, therefore bike's contact with road surface and stability constantly varying accordingly, while you pull accelerator the weight is transfers towards rear, presses tyre more deeply to road getting more grip level over doing ultimately causes rear end power slides which can make bike out of control.

Power slide

Leaving your accelerator off or reducing throttle amount than current velocity of bike causes engine braking, this happens in all modern four stroke engines, tends to slow down bike, re-distributing the weight and if you apply front brakes little bit, you'll instantly feel the weight of motorcycle and your own too, being pushed to front ,causing the phenomenon which is famous among riders "Dive", and if you apply front brake harder more weight will get transfer to front end of motorcycle and thus cause bike to stop immediately due to more grip on front tyre , but be aware before over doing this, cause applying too much pressure on front can cause rear end too much light and can even possibly you'll find yourself doing stoppies or out of control because of crossing front tyre's threshold grip level.

No matter what type of motorcycle you're riding there's always very small size of contact patch between tyre's and road ,and it gets even smaller when bike gets in motion. braking and all riding techniques are stays on the mercy of this small contact patch. It depends upon riders how cleverly they utilizes this contact patch to slows down bike and to reach home safely.

Braking is a one kind of skill and just like any skill braking needs to develop by observations and practices. Keeping vision on all the parameters what's happening between two wheels can give you lots of information about how you should maneuver your bike towards your desire destination in one shot; Even if you miss few of changes happening over road situations can turn good things into deadly bad such as going out of grip ,leaving actual lane and crashing to oncoming traffic or roadside crash.

Chapter tip :- always keep in mind grip or traction is key factor here , which helps you to go faster as well as to slow down bike safely.

The front and rear brake of bike is meant to be use simultaneously in most demanding situations. The load shifting as explain above is very important reason to apply both brakes; clever balance of braking technique is required to compensate dynamic weight shifting occurs due to various physical forces acting upon moving motorcycle.
All you have to remember about weight shifting is: during acceleration the weight of bike moves rearwards , apply brake hard and weight sift towards front tyre. What important thing you have to remember is effect of this dynamic changes: as weight shifts to rear wheel, front end starts to get lighter and lighter and starts to lose traction from road. And if you happen to twist accelerator even harder you will find front wheel leaves the ground and raise towards sky , which means you're doing power wheelie.

Power wheelie

At the time you're braking harder , it's rear wheel that tends to lose traction and there comes very much chances of side skidding if you don't take proper steps to stop deadly situation. In order to minimize traction loss and rear wheel lift effect,  You must apply rear brake, also known as foot brake. Applying foot brake before front brake will compensate the weight shifting and thus helps to get back bike's balance.

The harder you apply front brake, the more precisely you need to apply rear brake so as not to lock both wheels and losing total control. You need to have more practice on bike with no ABS enable brakes installed. And there's no guarantee that same technique will work in all weather conditions, So it's just you who can figure out your bike's brakes at it's most potential capabilities.
If you ever ask most experienced riders out there, they'll point out that: braking should start with gently applying rear brake followed very shortly by main front brake. The front brake alone provides around 60 to 80 percentage of stopping power. How! well let's know the following facts.

When you apply brake, the weight shifts to front and tyre squeezes more to road surface thus pressure per inch on tyre's contact patch increases and collective result is more grip!

Bike's usually have Disk brake at front which are bigger than rear drum brake or even rear disks why? because manufacturer knows fact that it's useless to put bigger disks at rear cause rear end doesn't have as much grip as front, and even if rear brake is triggered extremely, end result is always rear end skids and fishtailing.

No matter if you wants to braking at higher speeds or slower, The basic principle is same cause various dynamics acting upon moving bike never gets change( atleast on earth). if you're riding at high speed and looking to slow down your bike to more controllable speed, you could just apply front brake carefully. while if you wants to stop your bike in shortest distance, your braking must start from rear wheel.

But why with rear brake? because looking at the various forces acting upon moving motorcycle, It is recommended to start braking with rear wheel , cause doing so shifts some weight to front wheel and then you can apply front brake hardly with less front end dive, which ultimately let you to slow down much faster.

In later chapters we will explain electronically assisted  Linked braking systems or Combo braking system , where electronics applies both brakes even when one brake is triggered. And How electronics can correct human error while riding motorcycles.

Chapter brief:- budding and less experienced riders should always keep in mind that correct braking technique is in applying front and rear brakes , and starting with rear break first . learn to understand and feel bikes braking parameters and load shifting or weight shifting effects, sure It'll be helpful for your whole lifetime riding.

 You may like to read  Beginners Guide of Riding Part 1

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