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how to ride a wheelie??

 
mykul_05_gsxr mykul_05_gsxr
New User | Posts: 8 | Joined: 09/05
Posted: 09/09/05
04:12 PM

Hey i was just wondering whats an easy way to ride wheelies on an 05 gsx-r 600??  Like what should the rpms be at when i what to let loose of the clutch to get it to stand up, and what gear is the easiest to pull it up and keep it up?  

 
bleedgreen bleedgreen
User | Posts: 194 | Joined: 07/05
Posted: 09/09/05
04:43 PM

no offence but my oppinion on this is if you have to ask dont even try it. unless your just asking what rpms people usualy clutch theres up at cause its a new bike for you. not your first bike. i could have misunderstood your question...wouldnt be the first time  

 
enp83 enp83
Enthusiast | Posts: 361 | Joined: 02/05
Posted: 09/09/05
04:49 PM

I can see it now....  You scare me with "let loose of the clutch" and "get it to stand up."

I would say don't start off with "clutch wheelies."  To me they seem a little more intimidating to try and a lot more risky.  Try doing the "on/off/on" method in first gear around 6,000 rpms.  Basically what you do is accelerate in first gear up to 6,000 rpms, quickly roll off the throttle and push down on the clip ons, then quickly wack the throttle open while yanking up on the clip ons.  At 6k rpms on a 600 you really shouldn't have to worry about the bike looping over on you (unless it does come up, you keep it pinned at WOT, have little brains or lots of guts and let the bike get way too verticle).  You probably wont even be able to wheelie it at 6k rpms, but keep trying and slowly increase the revs until you find a point at which you can bring it up.

Don't stand up, remain seated...no need to be a "star boy" while you're learning.  It does help a little bit to move back and not sit right up close to the tank like you usually do.  Don't worry about getting a high wheelie while you're learning the basics.  Just concentrate on being consistent, get your timing down (when it comes to "on/off/on") and get use to how the bike reacts.

Please don't go try and wheelie down some busy street...  

 
wheelspin wheelspin
Enthusiast | Posts: 318 | Joined: 05/05
Posted: 09/09/05
07:40 PM

Quote:

...no need to be a "star boy" while you're learning.



Actually, there's no need to be a "Star Boy", period...

Quote:

Please don't go try and wheelie down some busy street...



Yes. Please. Don't.  

 
PoliniRCR14 PoliniRCR14
User | Posts: 122 | Joined: 06/05
Posted: 09/09/05
08:02 PM

Quote:

Hey i was just wondering whats an easy way to ride wheelies on an 05 gsx-r 600??  Like what should the rpms be at when i what to let loose of the clutch to get it to stand up, and what gear is the easiest to pull it up and keep it up?




Heres a tip, and this is just from ridin on quads so much. Once you have the nose in the air, its ALL BODY LANGUAGE! Clutch and throtle are your good friends here, but your body language is the best way to ride it out. Just be careful once you hit that sweet spot you dont overcook it; bikes dont have grab bars like ATVs ***  
www.MinimotoGP.tk

 
Dunlop Dunlop
New User | Posts: 20 | Joined: 08/05
Posted: 09/09/05
09:57 PM

If I had a nickle for every person I've taught how to wheelie.

Your 600 is easy to wheelie but you need to first develop a sense of what a wheelie is supposed to feel like and that takes seat time.

You'll want to begin by getting riding gear and wearing it.

When you've got good gear then you can begin learning by doing little wheelies: In 1st gear bring your bike up to the bottom edge of where the bike really pulls hard. In a quick motion, close the throttle and then whack your throttle open. You'll get a little wheelie out of it.

Keep doing this type of until you can ride it for a while on the back wheel and feel comfortable. Then come back and ask, "How do I clutch up a wheelie?"

 

 
Gitcho Gitcho
New User | Posts: 7 | Joined: 09/05
Posted: 09/10/05
05:16 AM

Quote:

Hey i was just wondering whats an easy way to ride wheelies on an 05 gsx-r 600??  Like what should the rpms be at when i what to let loose of the clutch to get it to stand up, and what gear is the easiest to pull it up and keep it up?




10,000 rpms, 1st gear, pop the clutch. Hang on and have fun.


Can someone please cue up that video again?

You really sure you want to go there?  

 
mykul_05_gsxr mykul_05_gsxr
New User | Posts: 8 | Joined: 09/05
Posted: 09/10/05
04:56 PM

Quote:

no offence but my oppinion on this is if you have to ask dont even try it. unless your just asking what rpms people usualy clutch theres up at cause its a new bike for you. not your first bike. i could have misunderstood your question...wouldnt be the first time




No it's not my first bike, i was just curious on what you guys thought was the best rpms for getting an 05 gsxr 600 to wheelie, thats all.  

 
Trevitt Trevitt
Administrator | Posts: 295 | Joined: 11/99
Posted: 09/11/05
04:43 PM

Quote:


No it's not my first bike, i was just curious on what you guys thought was the best rpms for getting an 05 gsxr 600 to wheelie, thats all.




Um...what's this then, from another thread?

Quote:

Hey everyone i just bought an 05 gsxr 600 and it is the first bike i have owned.




AT  

 
wheelspin wheelspin
Enthusiast | Posts: 318 | Joined: 05/05
Posted: 09/11/05
05:59 PM

 

 
mykul_05_gsxr mykul_05_gsxr
New User | Posts: 8 | Joined: 09/05
Posted: 09/11/05
06:13 PM

It means exactly what it says it means.  It's the first bike I "as in me" have owned.  My dad and brother have owned bikes that they bought "as in paid for them their selves". This is the first bike I "as in me" have bought "as in paid for it my self".  I have rode their bikes for as long as I can remember.  Sorry i made that so confusing i didn't know there were people on this website looking to make people look bad.  my apologizies. get a life!!  

 
enp83 enp83
Enthusiast | Posts: 361 | Joined: 02/05
Posted: 09/11/05
06:20 PM

I guess I'm on my 10th bike or so now, have ridden a few other peoples bikes  

 
Trevitt Trevitt
Administrator | Posts: 295 | Joined: 11/99
Posted: 09/11/05
09:45 PM

Quote:

It means exactly what it says it means.  It's the first bike I "as in me" have owned.  My dad and brother have owned bikes that they bought "as in paid for them their selves". This is the first bike I "as in me" have bought "as in paid for it my self".  I have rode their bikes for as long as I can remember.  Sorry i made that so confusing i didn't know there were people on this website looking to make people look bad.  my apologizies. get a life!!




By all means, carry on then.

Forgive me if I'm too cynical to answer your question though.

AT  

 
bleedgreen bleedgreen
User | Posts: 194 | Joined: 07/05
Posted: 09/12/05
08:52 AM

Quote:

It means exactly what it says it means.  It's the first bike I "as in me" have owned.  My dad and brother have owned bikes that they bought "as in paid for them their selves". This is the first bike I "as in me" have bought "as in paid for it my self".  I have rode their bikes for as long as I can remember.  Sorry i made that so confusing i didn't know there were people on this website looking to make people look bad.  my apologizies. get a life!!




yea forgive us for not wanting to tell someone who we dont know if they even know how to ride how to clutch up a wheelie. just in most cases its little johnny asking how to do it after his parents just bought him a new gixxer 6 from the dealer and he has no experience. so yea forgive us for not wanting to be responsible for some kids death after he gets in over his head.  

 
Dunlop Dunlop
New User | Posts: 20 | Joined: 08/05
Posted: 09/12/05
09:16 AM

excerpt from my Hooligan's Handbook:

All the advice below is for amusement purposes only. Any damage to yourself, passengers, personal property or others property either directly or indirectly is not the fault of the author or publisher or any of their related constituents. It is solely the responsibility of the operator of the motor vehicle to drive and act responsibly.

Wheelies, big, goofy wheelies are the best and there are three different ways to launch the front wheel into the heavens. Once the front wheel is in the air and the adrenaline is rushing, there are only two different types of wheelies: Balance wheelies and any wheelie that falls short of the balance point. Actually, there is another type of wheelie: the wheelie gone bad which is when you bring the front wheel way past the balance point. If that happens tap the rear brake to bring the front end back over. It’s probably a good idea to just set the front end down after that happens and not try to milk the wheelie for more air time. Besides the first few times it happens, you’ll probably need to stop and check your shorts anyway.

The whole trick to doing a proper wheelie is to get the front wheel up to the "balance point" as quickly as possible. The longer it takes to get to the balance point, the longer you’ll have to rev out the engine and ride that bad-boy out. Once you’ve run out of useable power, it’s time to set the front end down or up shift. For most bikes, the balance point is when the bottom of the front wheel is roughly three and a half to four feet off the ground or something just past 45 degrees. While riding a wheelie, don’t think about how high the wheel is, this is just for the awed onlooker's information. Instead concentrate how much gas you need to feed into the engine. With practice, at some point your going to just barely go over the balance point. You will know this has happened when your spincter tightens up so hard that you’ll be constipated for a week. This is "a survival reaction," to use a term from a far better rider than myself. What your going to do now; is once barely past the balance point, you’ll shut off the gas and let the engine compression rock the bike forward over the balance point. If left alone the front end will come down. But we don’t want that, we’re cool. So again we’re going to feed more throttle into the equation and make the process happen all over again. We again roll the throttle on. Back over the balance point we go, spincter muscles tighten, back off the gas. The bike rocks forward and the front wheel begins to fall forward. Back on the gas. Off the gas. On the gas. Off the gas. Man, we’re cool!

A balance wheelie has the tell tale sound of the engine rapidly accelerating and decelerating. If you hear a big whooooph and see a wheelie, it’s merely a power wheelie. When you first begin to master doing wheelies (and you can’t really master them, things do go wrong from time to time) you’ll notice that you are slowly rolling up the rpm’s until you’ve run out of gear. People who are really good at this can actually slow down while riding a wheelie. You’ll see just how hard this is once you start popping wheelies. After you do your first wheelie, call Mom and tell her, she’ll like that.

Another thing about wheelies: Your front wheel is gyro. It helps you keep your bike riding straight and true on one wheel. Don’t hit your front brake while doing a wheelie. If you do, you will immediately loose stability. At best the front end will come down straight, at worst, it come down in a way that you'll look more like you're surfing the asphalt with your bike (tip: I takes three or four friends to lift up a car to get a bike out from under it that has been wedged in).

In doing wheelies, keeping the front wheel spinning for the gyro properties is so important that Doug Domokis, acknowledged as the "Wheelie King," actually installed an electric motor in his front wheel assembly to keep the front wheel spinning on his amazing around the supercross track wheelies.

When performing a wheelie, it is very important to keep your foot over the rear brake lever. It’ll save you at some point by doing so. Remember that you needn’t stomp on the rear brake when you do go over the balance point doing a wheelie. I can’t tell you how many people have goofed up front wheels, blown fork seals or worse from stomping on the rear brake with the front wheel reaching for the sky. A light touch is all that is normally needed to bring the center of gravity of the motorcycle forward of the balance point.

Even more wheelie stuff –don’t ride a wheelie over ANY road hazards. Road hazards can be tar snakes, bumpy roads, that funky white plasticized paint used to mark the roads, or seams in the road surface. My point is to make certain the road is free and clear of anything you can hit. Compared to riding down the road, you have almost no control of your direction while riding a wheelie. Always keep that in mind.

The Power Wheelie–These are just what they sound like. To perform then, You simply are aggressively rolling the throttle on and the front wheel comes up. In my camp, any wheelie that falls sort of a balance wheelie is referred to as a power wheelie.

Generally even the most powerful bikes can’t do a straight up power wheelie. So here’s the trick. Get your weight back and bring your bike’s rpm’s up to the bottom edge of the "fat part" of the powerband. At that point, briefly back all the way off the gas. This will get the bike's engine to compression brake and transfer weight to the front wheel, compressing the front suspension (this is especially effective on fuel injected motorcycles, where the engine gets no fuel at all when backing off the gas). Then just as the suspension begins to spring back up, hammer the throttle wide open. Depending on how much power your bike makes and how fat you and your motorcycle are, your front wheel should come off the ground. As a warning, wheelie prone bikes may come up so fast that it will scare the daylights out of you if you try this in first gear, so be careful. From there, it’s an experience thing.

Note: It’s very possible that on certain powerful bikes; because of the way they put down their power that a power wheelie just isn’t possible. Try doing clutch wheelies instead.

Clutch Wheelies –A clutch wheelie is a wheelie that you slip the clutch to get enough power to loft the front wheel. Commonly clutch wheelies are done because the motorcycle's engine doesn’t make enough power at a certain rpm range to straight up loft the front wheel from rolling on the throttle, or that you're in a higher gear and there’s not enough power to get the front end off the ground by whacking the throttle wide open.

Where you place your fingers on the clutch lever is fairly important with this type of wheelie. By that I mean you want the be able to slip the clutch, yet still be able to maintain a firm hold on the handle bars. So let’s first look at set up. Some people use all four of their fingers to slip the clutch, some use three, I use two fingers, and the very strong can get away with merely using one finger. The fingers that aren’t used for engaging and disengaging the clutch are used to hang onto the handle bar for control and leverage purposes. You want to adjust your clutch lever so that with the number of fingers your using, you can completely pull in the clutch with no slippage or creeping at a stop while in gear. If you can’t adjust your clutch lever, then try different hand positions, or use another finger (thereby allowing you to pull in the clutch a little further). The whole idea with finger placement and lever adjestment is that you want to set up your bike so that you can get as many fingers hanging onto the handlebar as possible yet still be able to comfortable pull the clutch lever all the way in 'cause you don’t want to loose our grip when you pop a wheelie.

Clutch wheelies are almost always done in second or third gears to wheelie the motorcycle at a higher speed (can you say freeway?). When you are about to do a clutch wheelie, you should bring your engine up to the bottom edge of the ‘sweet’ part of the powerband. You can briefly back off the gas as described in the past section to get the front suspension helping you if you’d like.

From there your aggressively opening the throttle all the way. Immediately afterwards pull in the clutch and aggressively let it out. Done right, on the right type of bike, the front end will come up and from here your following the basic wheelie rules at the beginning of this section.

After trying a clutch wheelie, it’ll be obvious that this type of wheelie requires much more practice to get the front end off the ground than a power wheelie. I suggest, for learning purposes, that you practice this at lower speeds first and work your way up to higher gears and higher speeds.

Stand Up Wheelies –Yes these are cool and a lot easier to do than you may think. There are two schools of thought when it comes to doing a stand up wheelie. Do you stand up before you pop the front tire into the sky, or do you stand up as your bringing the wheel up? These are the questions that have plagued motorcyclists for generations. Really it doesn’t matter, so much as whether or not your bike has enough power to loft the front wheel when your standing up already. Nevertheless, I’ve always felt that you have a bit more control if you stand up as the front wheel is coming off the ground. The reason is standing up before the wheelie puts the rider in somewhat of a cramped and unfamiliar riding position. When your not comfortable about the riding position and haven't mastered Yoga, the cramped position tends to take attention away from the actual control of the motorcycle and you'll wind up concentrating more on the weird position your hands are in. Others have been more than happy to argue this with me until we’re all blue in the face. So whether to stand before, or during the wheelie is a matter of whether your bike is powerful enough and what your comfortable with.

With a stand up wheelie, you can use whatever style of wheeling you wish for getting the front wheel up into the air. It doesn’t matter. What does matter though is that as you stand, or are standing, your body works as a lever moving the center of gravity of both you and the motorcycle both higher and to the rear. This means that you may have more instability on the vertical axis and that the front wheel can come up quicker than with other types of wheelies. Again, as with the other types of wheelies, while performing the stand up wheelie you'll want to make sure you can comfortably tap the rear brake should you need to recover from going over the balance point.

Landing the Pig -Problems associated with wheelies: the big problems are torque-over to the left or right while one wheel. Another is the potential for a tank-slapper from landing the front wheel after a high-speed wheelie.
It’s going to happen when your performing a wheelie: at some point the bike will tend to fall to the left or right on a horizontial axis rather than a purely vertical axis. This problem can be controlled somewhat with body position. You may have seen a stunt showman (or somebody) doing a wheelie while hanging off to the left or right. This is to control the direction of the motorcycle. For instance if the motorcycle is leaning a bit to the right as you initiate the wheelie, it’s guaranteed that during the wheelie the bike will continue to track to the right, slowly drifting out of the lane your in. Left uncorrected, this will lead to your demise, as once this problem crops up it always tends to get worse.

When the bike begins to torque-over to one side or another, immediately consider setting it down. The reason is that it takes a brief moment to regain steering control of the motorcycle once the wheelie is landed. If the wheelie is headed off the road into a ditch, or towards a row of parked cars, set the thing down. Remember those who run away (from the problem) live to wheelie another day. If that’s not the case, you're simply not tracking straight down the lane and there’s plenty of space around you, then you can use your body weight to compensate for the torque over. It can be as simple as hanging your right foot off if your pulling to the left, or as aggressive as hanging your whole body over to the left to compensate for the lean you had coming out of a right-hand corner. The point is that you lean the opposite direction than the motorcycles lean angle. Remember not to be in a weird position when you do land the wheelie. If you are, you can loose your grip and all kinds of mayhem may well result.

Another problem with landing a wheelie, especially a long high-speed wheelie, is that the front wheel has slowed down. Generally there’s a lot of force going into the front end when it comes back to terra firma that will help spin the wheel back up to the ground speed. At best it’ll skid a little as it lands similar to an airplane landing at the airfield. At worst it will skid and also set up a weird harmonic that turns into a head shake. If this happens don’t try to immediately correct it out. Let it shake it’s self out. If you do correct it out, you can actually make it worse, by turning it into a tank-slapper or a full on tail wager.  

 
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