steady throttle thru turns questions...

Lots of good advice so far, possibly too much! The best riding is when you don't think too hard, but I guess that comes with experience.

One thing no-one has mentioned yet is gearing. If you go in with too low a gear you won't have the drive to hold you through the bend and if you are too high you'll run out of revs as you come out. Changing gear mid-bend has the same effect as backing off the throttle - it throws you upright and puts the weight on the front wheel.

As you approach a bend you should:
1) Check behind (I'm assuming you are also checking ahead!)
2) Road Position (see below)
3) Speed (go in at the slowest speed you will do through the whole corner)
4) Gear (as I said above)

Then you are ready to negotiate the bend itself. Your line though the bend should start as wide as you can while staying safe and don't aim for the apex! On a track that may be the fastest line, but on a road the most important thing is your view of the road ahead, so stay wide which means you can see that crucial few yards further round the bend. Resist the temptation to move in until you can see the bend start to straighten out and then ride through the curve so you come out riding on your chosen position in the road. This should give your turn the largest radius which means the fastest line (the tighter the bend the slower you have to go). As everyone else has said, keep the engine pulling through the bend until you start to move in, when you can start to build the speed and as you exit you are accellerating (unless of course there's another bend/hazard ahead).

Of course there are tweaks and exceptions to all of this and the best way to learn is to get training as you say you are.

 

Do these 4 things & you'll be just fine on the street.

1) ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS complete ALL of your braking before the turn. (if you know how to trail brake, that's fine but most people don't know how so just follow this rule)

2) ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS choose a speed that allows you to maintain the same throttle opening thru the entire turn or one that allows you to roll on to the throttle thru the turn. Traffic circles are a great place to practice this if you know one that doesn't have a lot of traffic.

3) ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS look thru the turn. This is actually a catch 22 in MSF classes. You get points for riding out of the boundary but you're not supposed to look down. This & this alone can improve your cornering technique greatly. Once you pick your turn entry point, you should already be searching for an exit point. Once you find that exit point & you outside, inside, outside, you should already be aiming for a point down the road past the exit point. This is a continuous process. As someone has mentioned, target fixation can get you in a LOT of trouble.

4) NEVER, NEVER, NEVER chop the throttle in the turn. That is the single biggest thing you can do wrong. When in doubt, lean the bike more. This may sound crazy but I make believers of this during my SportBike classes. A person can use body position to fix lousy entry & hot speed. What you can't fix is the laws of physics. The front tire only has so much traction. If you use it all up, you go down, that's simply how it works.

KC-10 FE out...
lane: :usa2: