How can motorcycles lean so far

Yeah, swingarms do look very sturdy and strong. It connects the rear wheel to the shock absorber, right? Yes, but it also performs other important tasks. Engine power is what turns the rear wheel and the friction created between the tire and the road is what propels the bike forward. In simple terms, the power is transmitted from the engine to the front sprocket, then to the chain, then to the rear sprocket, then the wheel and tire, and finally to the road surface 2.

When that happens, the chain is pulled with tremendous force and the swingarm bears that force. How the swingarm bears the force? But the force is not transmitted in a strictly horizontal direction. The triangle is formed by the line between the front and rear drive sprockets and the swingarm pivot point on the chassis.

This diagram explains it 6. This force tries to shorten the length between A and B. However, the distances between A and C and B and C are fixed and do not change. As a result, C, the top point of the triangle, rises as you can see in the right diagram. Because the tire is in contact with the road surface, only the front of the swingarm rises, and keeps rising.

Of course, how much it rises depends on the swingarm angle. So, the feeling of the rear of the bike squatting under acceleration is really just an illusion while in reality, the rear of the bike rises when you accelerate. When you think about how these detail technical aspects are at work, it makes races even more interesting to watch. Thank you! But when I watch the start of a MotoGP race, it still looks like the rear of the bikes are squatting.

MotoGP bikes accelerate so hard that the front wheel sometimes comes off the ground. These wheelies just make it look like the rear of the bike is squatting 8. It really does feel like riding any other motorcycle, but with lots of front-end feel and the tires feel really planted on the road.

There are a lot of plusses with the LMW platform, but the feeling of stability and front-end confidence you get is definitely the biggest draw. That unique, almost mystical feeling of stability you get with them is probably irresistible for some riders. There are a lot of people at Yamaha that ride them to work.

So, an LMW feels stable in crosswinds because it has two front wheels. But some people say that because it has more tires, it also gets more flats. He took it to a shop right away to get it fixed and heard some customers chatting about LMWs being susceptible to punctures. I see. Actually, the chances of getting a flat can be less with an LMW. Most punctures caused by nails are said to happen when the front tire rolls over a nail lying on the road and tips it up, so it punctures the rear tire which is rolling right behind the front.

I kind of felt that I usually end up with the rear getting flats more often, so that makes sense. Punctures caused by nails and other foreign objects while riding are said to occur most often to the rear tire.

Because rear tires get more punctures, some bikes use tubeless tires only on the rear wheel because they lose air pressure more slowly. Mayu, did you know your Serow XT is like that? Is that true? Professor Max, can you teach me about horsepower and torque this time? How would you explain it? A twisting force? Do you mean like how you twist a wet cloth or towel to get the water out? You could think of torque as the force generated when twisting a towel 1.

By the way, this only applies to engines that create rotational force. Well, you could say that motorcycle and car engines are basically devices that rotate to produce drive force. They power things through rotation. Ultimately, the key is confidence, and the route to that is little steps. Riders who just go out one day and decide to wang the bike over as far as they can usually end up scaring themselves, or worse.

You need to start by going back to basics and concentrating on the principles of cornering. Quite often people do the opposite when they want to increase lean angle, by making the corner as sharp and difficult as possible so they have to lean the bike further.

The lean angle will come. Above: This is the important part from a confidence point of view — if you get the entry right, everything else should flow smoothly.

I find many confidence problems are routed in the start of the corner. And before you know it, your lean angles will have increased without it ever being a conscious priority. The quickest way to cure confidence problems is to follow an advanced instructor with an earpiece in your helmet.

Hearing and seeing exactly what they are doing, and receiving direct feedback will fast-track you back to confident riding. How to increase your lean angle on a motorcycle.

Since the velocity vector of the motorcycle is changing, it has an acceleration even if it is at a constant speed. This means that a fake force pushes the rider in the opposite direction of the acceleration. The acceleration for an object moving in a circle points towards the center of the circle and has a magnitude of:. Where r is the radius of the circle and v is the speed of the motorcycle.

Of course, you can probably guess that we have a special name for this fake force—we call it the centrifugal force which literally means "center fleeing force". Don't confuse this with centripetal force which is the force that causes an object to move in a circle.

When a car or motorcycle takes a turn, some external force pushes on the vehicle in the direction of the center of the circle. This force is almost always the friction force between the tires and the road. This frictional force will be important when looking at a turning motorcycle. Now we can get to the leaning motorcycle.

Suppose that I have a motorcycle that is going around a curve and NOT leaning. Since the motorcycle is turning, it is accelerating towards the center of the circle. It turns out that this is easiest to explore in the accelerating frame of the rider such that there will be a fake force pushing away from the center of the circle. Here is a front view of the motorcycle along with the forces acting on it.

The motorcycle is turning to the left as seen from the viewer. In this reference frame, all the forces add up to zero. However, all of the torques do not add up to zero. Try this. Put a pencil flat on the table and then push with two fingers in opposite directions on the pencil. If these two forces are at the same location on the pencil, the pencil remains stationary. If you push at the top and bottom of the pencil, the pencil turns. Just as a force can change the velocity of an object, the torque can change the angular velocity.

With zero torque, you would have no change in angular motion. The torque from a force depends on the magnitude of the force, the distance from the location of the force to some rotation point and the angle the force is applied. If you wanted to write this as an equation, it would be:. Technically, torque is a vector, but let's just leave it like this for now.

Going back to the diagram of the non-leaning and turning motorcycle, you can see the problem. Just like the pencil, the friction force and the fake force are not at the same location.