Quick turning
 

Picking up a topic from the body position thread, how do you get on with quick turning?

I've done CSS through to level 3 and I know the theory - quick push on the inside bar to get the bike turning then relax and let the bike steer itself. How far you push the bar is how far the bike will lean, how quickly you push it is how quickly the bike will get to that lean angle.

So in theory, you approach a bend at just the right speed and in the right gear, look at the apex (or other RP's if the apex is blind), turn the bike quickly with a quick push on the bar and wind the throttle on smoothly all the way through the turn. Do all that right and you should clip the apex perfectly and (given all the other body position stuff is right) get a good exit and drive out of the corner.

In practise, I find quick turning the hardest thing to get right. I've lost the front end and lowsided twice when I've been trying to do a perfect quick turn on track. I've got something wrong, either still being on the brakes (don't think I was) or not relaxing enough after the quick prod on the bars and letting the bike lean until I rode of the edge of the tyre or somehow loading the front too much. I'm quite prepared to buy into the quick turn theory, but the practise of it is a leap of faith for me and I still feel some trepidation trying to do it right. After some perseverance I suppose I can now do it moderately well, if a little nervously, on track.

I was interested to see Andy Ibbott say that you could practise on the road as well as the track, and since I can't afford too many track days, that's where I've done most of my practise, but perhaps that's also why I'm not making the progress I want to. I find quick turning on the road is as hard as hell. For a start, the carriageway is only about 8-9 feet wide on an A or B road, then you can take a few inches off that on either side to account for all the gravel and crap near the kerb and the cats eyes in the middle. Then there are all the road hazards to deal with, such as all the bumps and the tramlines from heavy traffic, the manhole covers (why do they put so many of those on an ideal line for bikes) and assorted white lines, plus of course the inconsistency of the grip that you can expect with Farmer Palmer spreading muck about and those little banks of gravel that inexplicably end up in the middle of the carriageway.

So because of the narrow width and all the assorted hazards there's not much margin for error when you're trying out quick steering on the road (OK you could use both sides of the road if you can see clearly all the way through the bend and there's absolutely no traffic) and I've found that when you try it the control inputs that you have to make are minute. You have to push the bar quickly, but not very far in most cases and there is a tendency to overcook it and have to sit the bike up again because you're steering too deep

There is almost a natural tendency when you shove the bar quicker to also push it harder and further than it needs to go, then you try and compensate for that and end up not doing enough. Then of course for me there's that demon inside my head that says "Jools if you push that bar too quick you're gonna lose the front again", so I have my own battles with exorcising that particular gremlin

Anyway, enough rambling, how do you do it?

[Edited on 12-7-2005 by Jools]

Jools unless it was wet, I venture to suggest its practically impossible to loose the front end just by turning the bike quickly on a steady throttle position-on a track.

I would suggest that maybe you held the front brake for too long into the turn or you maybe rolled off the throttle a bit violently, both would transfer the weight onto the front, loading up the tyre and reducing grip.

As for the gremlin-I'm sure its a confidence thing, practice is the only way to overcome it. I now have the same thing about getting on the power too hard on the exit after my recent off.

I'm not sure that this is really a "prod" on the bars - more of a controlled push - the movement is quite minimal in fact. As you say, its the speed that this is achieved which dicates how quickly you turn.

I struggled with this for a while, until I realised that I was in fact tensing up on the bike before I initiated this (probably as a result of braking) and resisting this movement by tightening my grip on both bars and actually controlling (or preventing) the movement of the inside bar, by gripping the outside bar too tightly.

At a recent CSS day I cured this by actually moving my hand away from the outside bar completely (just a cm or so, whilst still covering the bar) and only applying pressure to the inside bar. Didn't help much with the pickup though!!!! ;)

HIH
Tim

Could be a number of things, as Tim and Gary say above.

One thing though, especially seeing as it's becoming an issue for you, is tension. When you get tense you grab the bars, it's a survival reaction. I wouldn't mind betting that you're hanging on to the bars a bit tight, weighting the inside bar and/or not relaxing after the push. Remember there's two steps to the counter steer, a push and a relax. The bike will settle into it's own line if you have no input into the bike so it stands to reason that you are forcing the bike to do something it doesn't want to do.

The only way to really find out what is happening is to have someone following you when you try the quick turn to see what is happening. In the meantime - try practising the quick turn and making a conscious effort to relax. Even go so far as to flap your arms before and after - it might look and feel stupid but it's a good physical reminder for you and will help you relax.

Oh and remember to breath deeply. It will help you relax as well.

yeah, especially if you have suddenly mastered quickturns and find yourself heading for the nearest verge/field interchange!

:lol:

Which I have done! I did it in the race at Castle Combe and went onto the grass INSIDE the apex!! It just goes to show what you really can do when you concentrate on quick turning properly.

Dom saw it all and thought it was quite funny!

:D

Jools, is quick turning a bit of a misnomer do you think?
The whole point of it is that they want you to square the corner off for maximum traction and minimum lean, but I think you can get too caught up in the 'quick' part of that.
Are you aware, normally, of your countersteering? Probably not, yet you are doing it or else you would not be turning. The point is I think you should think of it more as a 'positive' input than a quick one.
A good way to practise feeling this is to find a good, fast bit of road, with a few nice sweepers in it. Go up and down, faster and faster until you can physically feel yourself pulling and pushing the bars ( I find you need to be going pretty fast for this!) and then you will find the feel you need to do it.
I think it's pretty damned easy to overdo it with the countersteering in slower corners and I'm guessing you fell down at slower ones right?

Of course, Andy will come along and tell you I'm talking arse, but it works for me :D

Whoa Jen, spot on...

I actually do countersteer. I'm quite aware of it and, as you say, in the faster sweepers I conciously steer the bike this way. Actually, if it's not heresy, I find I have better control if I pull the outside bar at the same time as I push the inside bar, that way the physical effort feels more balanced. Not that the physical effort is huge, it's just a bit like steering a car with one hand, you can do it but probably not as precisely as when you use both hands on the wheel.

Anyway, your insight into the slower corners is absolutely right, these are the ones that I find more difficult. Usually, it's like TP says, it's easy to overdo the countersteering and end up having to sit the bike up again as you tend to slice straight over the verge, or find that the bike has just fallen into the corner. Maybe forgeting about concious countersteering on the slower stuff is the way to go and just trust that I'll go where I look.

I would beg to differ concerning the comparisons made between road and race track riding, although there are a lot of similarities i dont believe this should be one.

I am in the throws of looking to arrange a bit of a seminar in the not too distant future....................i wont hijack, ill start another thread.

That's what I do, just concentrate on your body position, look where you're going , and the rest will come easy.
Glad I could be of assistance fella :)

Hi Guys,

I agree that using the quick turn in slower corner is harder than in fast ones.
There is nothing wrong, by the way, with pushing and pulling, or even just pulling. Maybe you should try that? I think tension is a big issue here. Riders tend to brace themsleves for the bike's pending movement and then don't 'go with the bike' and then get more tense!

I'm curious with AndyB's comment below
"I would beg to differ concerning the comparisons made between road and race track riding, although there are a lot of similarities i dont believe this should be one."

I look forward to that.

:burn:

Glad to see ive got you curious. ;) Im not looking to criticise any of the teaching methods you employ, mainly because ive never done CSS.

However, i do think as in the case of this thread, people can get too wrapped up in things, like the use of the word Quick in relation to steering, and it can get a bit confusing or misinterpreted.

I think its about having a plan with a start point and a finishing point. How you achieve this does come from a variety of imputs between rider and machine.

Oh, and i do like the idea of you looking forward as thats probably the best thing anyone can do to determine their plan.:P

[Edited on 12-7-2005 by andyb]

as an additonal tip which helps me massively: if you are trying to speed up your turns and you usually get your knee down, the quicker you are turning the bike, the earlier in the turn your knee should touch down.

this is obviously really only for track where you can do the same bend every minute or two.

Knee down? Nah...you're 'avin a larf mate!

My avatar is about as close as I get to getting my knee down.

The problem is not the lean angle, I actually want as little of that as possible for a given corner speed so that I can use more lean to go faster. So I try to hang off the bike to use as little lean as possible although there are some nice grazes on both pegs (and not through binning it) that show that I'm very occasionally spending my full tenner on lean.

The problem is in the hanging off bit. At 5' 9" I've only got a 29" inside leg. The distance between the seat and the peg on an ST is quite large, so for me to brace my outside leg properly against the tank, I'm on the tip of my toe already. In order to hang off any further than you see in my avatar I would have to lift my foot off the outside peg (I know, I've tried it on the centre stand with someone holding the bike). I've tried doing this on track and just holding on by hooking my leg across the saddle.

This does a few things that all feel wrong. First, it twists my pelvis around the tank and it feels weird not being aligned in the same direction the bike wants to go. Second, I feel perilously like I'm just going to fall off the bike, not through binning it, but simply dropping off, so I end up supporting all my weight on my inside leg which then has to tense up instead of being nice and relaxed. Thirdly, it really upsets the stability of the bike because I'm not comfortable doing it and lastly it makes it a bugger to use my legs to climb back on the bike on the exit and I end up using my arms. All of this is not good, it feels unstable, so I don't do it.

I've had my knee down (genuinely, without it being followed by my arse) three times on the track. Twice at Netties Nook at Rockingham (which is also, strangely enough, a bogie 'lowside' corner for me - although I think I've cracked it now) and once round Chris Curve at Cadwell. I'm not overly fussed about the knee down thing because to borrow a phrase from my mate KeefyB "I don't get my knee down much, but I go round the outside of a lot of people that do"

Quick turning in slow corners differs in that the centrifugal force is just not there. When and if you push the inside bar the bike will drop in leaving your head and torso were it was. That’s the old moto X style. It’s the head and shoulder lead thing again. You have to get that moving first, commit to your line of site and the counter steering just seems to happen and you go were you look. With both arms bent so that you don’t run out of options through the bars you can counter steer all the way round to adjust your line, if were you looking and were the bike is going differ. If when you come off the brakes you’re off the bike to the inside before you initiate the turn the bike starts to turn as you slow down. If you came to a complete stop it would fall over.

I might be totally wrong but, I wouldn’t mind betting that with your low-side you got left behind by shoving the inside bar first. Then drooped in after your self, adding more counter steering impute and lode to the front tyre and probably not getting back on the throttle in time before the front gave up. or you had cold tyres

I have lots of questions to ask about counter steering in fast bends.

At a recent trip to Snetterton when riding round Coram bend I was hanging off Knee down and winding on the power but trying not to run to wide. I could feel the inside bar pushing back at me
even though I thought I was pushing back and pulling on the outside bar fairly hard. I was getting this feeling on every lap and it was the point at which I settled for the rest of the day. I know I could go faster but didn’t know what to do. Just push and pull harder? Do I need to look at the bike set up?
And the one I would like to know most of all did I wimp out or was something terrible about to happen?

Tin hat on

:roll:

someone who knows what they are talking about will no doubt be along soon but for what its worth, once the bike is 'set' in the turn you should be doing very little with the steering and certainly not fighting with it. i dont ever feel i'm having to forcefully steer the bike when lent over and deliberately try be be very light on the bars so they can track the road how they want to. you should ideally be putting one steering input only into each turn.

I totally agree with DickieDucati. Once set there is nothing to do with the bars unless you are fighting yourself or the bike has some serious set up problems.

This 'do nothing' principle I have used on bikes since I was taught it back in 1995 and in my old job with MCN it worked on all and every bike I rode, no exception. The more sport focused the bike the more important it was to have a light touch after the steering input.

Quick turning is just pushing (or pulling or both) the bar a little quicker, this does require a little more concentrated effort than slow steering but not much. (Unless you are on a four ton Springer Soft tail American thing)

But what is quick? 1 second, 3 seconds? 1/2 a second?
If you have never practised then a ‘little quicker’ is what we teach at the Schools. So you can see a small difference. Get used to that and the mechanics of it and then build on it. Another example of the basics at work.

Should you do it on the road?
Well what would you do now if a car pulled out in front of you?
Hit the brakes?
Hard?
Lock the wheel?
Not stop in time?
If you want to take avoiding action then you'd better learn this skill because it won't just happen when you need it most!
:o

Well I have to log off now as I have to get up at 4am to go to Ireland for a BMW track day.:o

Won't be posting until Thursday.

Andy

I have only had this at Coram. I didn’t get it at brands anywhere.
It wasn’t a fight just a lode on the inside bar. It’s a long fast bend were you can run wide on the exit.
With no impute on the inside bar the bike would have run out before I wanted it to, so I was accelerating but still trying to hold the line in for long enough to make the exit.
I know what you mean about relaxing after the steering impute and rolling back on the throttle and the bike going were you want but round there it didn’t go were I wanted without this inside bar thing.

:puzzled:

Good topic and one that I'm acutely aware of after a slow Trackday at Croft today. I find myself trying to get the bike 'on its side' reasonably quickly but since I dont know the bike's maximun lean angle I seem to end up slowing down too much and using the lean that I need for my 'slower' speed.

I guess any new skill is hard to learn.

Still - things have improved...I can now take Sunny In/Out as one continuous curve instead of the 50pence garbage that I first did when I went to Croft, so I think theres hope yet !!!

Cheers - Frank

If it helps Eric, I had exactly the same thing at Snet but at Riches, not Coram. I really thought about it between the track day and qualifying to try and figure out why it was different to everywhere else and the only think I could think of was me being tense on the bike.

I made a huge effort to relax through there in the untimed practice and guess what - it stopped. It was me being tense on the bike. Only in Riches, nowhere else. Something about that corner was making me tense and it wasn't anywhere else.

Something to think about?

It did get to the stage were I new it was coming and it did so I was a bit tense :)