| Author | Message | ||
     Ridenusa4l |
Hey guys i just got some new leather riding pants with kneesliders and was wondering if u guys could give me any pointers on getting my knee down through the corners?????... THANX, Jake | ||
| Hooliagn |
Take a track class | ||
| Tasmaniac |
there's a small instruction clip on you tube | ||
| Zack3g |
getting your knee down on a public street is asking for trouble. plus, the novelty of it soon wears off. learning to hang off the bike is no small task. it will change nearly everything about how you ride, but, true enough, once you've mastered it, you WILL be faster through corners. I'm not suggesting that once you learn you'll be hanging off all the time or anything, that's retarded. But, it is a great increase in risk for rather limited reward on public streets. Be smart about it. (Message edited by Zack3g on January 09, 2009) | ||
| Smoke |
track days! tim | ||
| Duggram |
Just go fast enough to lean over to the contact point. Last fall I took my 1125 off the street and since then use it on track only. Once I got fast enough to get my knee down one of the "go fast" guys at our track told me to now learn to pick it up ASAP and maintain the same lean angle. So what's really wanted is a dab, not necessarily dragging it through the corner. I only ride my FJR and sportster on the street now. There's no chance of knee dragging with them. That's the great thing about track riding/racing. I don't feel the need to put my life at greater risk on the street now. | ||
| Hitman44139 |
Dagging knee on the street is asking for it! Take a track class or 3 so we can see you here on the boards, That said.... the knee is a guide. Messing up on the track @ 90mph and on the street are as different as night and day.... maybe Im old. My low side in October taught me alot. $5,500 in damage to my 1125r was a eye opener. and that was on the track with lots of run off. my advise take a few classes if knee dragging is your goal and learn to do from a pro! videos only take you so far. | ||
| Jaimec |
Belt sander... | ||
| Chadhargis |
I can kill a slider at the track, but I've only hit my knee once on the street, and I was being REALLY stupid. It's not happened since. The best thing to do is work on your body position. Not "dragging" your butt across the seat when you move, but instead lifting and sitting it down smoothly. The knee down will happen all on it's own as you get more an more comfortable. Just PLEASE do it on the track. If you just go out trying to deck a knee, you won't do yourself any good. Go out to a track day and focus on being smooth and riding well. The rest will follow. Let's face it, none of us here are going to make it to MotoGP anytime soon. LOL!  | ||
| Xl1200r |
track day. I've been riding sport bikes for only three years. I went to my first track day this past October and had my knee on the ground by the second lap of my second session. | ||
| No_rice |
im just guessing, but i think what they are trying to say is do not do this...  do this instead...      | ||
| Chadhargis |
Or man up and do it on a big old heavy adventure touring bike. LOL!  | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Dragging a knee is the end result of a culmination of many, many components of skills training. If you are trying JUST to drag a knee, you may do such, but you won't really have any of the benefits that go along with that. If you haven't gotten a knee down before, when you do It's usually a surprise. Kinda like when you drag a peg for the first time. The first time I drug a knee was at a track day. I thought "what is that weird sound?". The pucks I had on were SUPER hard and didn't translate much vibration. I worked for two years on body position before I was able to get a knee down. This was at the end of year one:  This was the end of year two:  Trying to get a knee down without the rider work that goes into it is like wanting to hit a home run without training how to bat. | ||
| Teach |
I ended up dragging a knee once, only the bike was stopped. (You have to remember to put the kickstand down.) | ||
| Chadhargis |
Now Fatty, you wouldn't be riding like a hooligan on the street would you?? Shame, shame! LOL! | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Now Fatty, you wouldn't be riding like a hooligan on the street would you?? I was riding with Barker. What do you think? THAT, though, is a very calculated turn taken no less than 100 times that weekend with LONG sight lines (except for the school bus that was hanging over into my lane). If I hit a knee on the street, it's a complete surprise. I have tapped it a time or six on Richard Russell though.  | ||
| Dentguy |
Ridenusa41, Concentrate on good form and don't worry about dragging a knee. That will come later with the good form. Too many times I've seen pictures of people hanging way off the side just to try and drag a knee. Instead of looking cool they look like an idiot. (Message edited by dentguy on January 09, 2009) | ||
| Ridenusa4l |
WOW thanx guys ..ill be looking for the soonest trackday and/or class.. Hitman i know what u mean i dont do wheelies anymore the last one cost me 5500$ also...well at least not in parking lots lol.. Thanx JAke | ||
| Buellborn |
Great pics in this thread!!!! | ||
| Sethbuchbinder |
"Or man up and do it on a big old heavy adventure touring bike. LOL!" Quit sissying around with two hands on the bars, try multitasking for a change..  don’t worry about getting a knee down, just focus on riding faster and using good body position ( Im not claiming to know what that is) as your speed increases your knee will find the ground. then just use it as a lean angle gauge. DO THIS ON A TRACK!! Have fun, be safe Seth | ||
| Jumpinjewels |
Ok, I have a dumb question. I would love to get a knee down, but at 5'3" is it harder to do this than a taller person? | ||
| Duggram |
Comfortable after 4 weekends. Notice that the knee is not on the ground.  | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Glad to see someone else is a fan of NJK Leathers! Could you get any larger pucks? How do you like your leathers. I have considered having him make me a set. | ||
| Smoke |
jumpinjewels, get your bike seat foam cut down to give you better availability to get your knee in the correct position: this< instead of( it worked for me at 5'6" tim | ||
| Duggram |
When I started track riding last October I hit Cycle Gear and got a pair of Frank Thomas one piece leathers. They would be just fine if you didn't fall. I low-sided once and went over the bars twice. The track owner at Arroyo Seco suggested NJK and he had a set which I liked. They fit right, are actually comfortable and look like they are put together real tough. Kelcey, the owner, told me that he's had riders get of in the 160 MPH turn at Willow and not get a scratch on them. After wearing these leathers just once I believe him. BTW I'm a noob. Those are the pucks that came with em. Where do you get smaller pucks? | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Kelcey is a great guy. I can't say enough good about him. I have been trying for a while to get him to be a sponsor here. You can get pucks just about anywhere. I prefer the Woodcraft pucks. They wear like iron. I didn't know Kelcey was putting "hero" pucks on his leathers. | ||
| Chadhargis |
I have debated the fact that taller people can get a knee down easier. At 6'5" my knees are many times WAY above the tank cutout meaning they are pretty far from the ground. It's also very hard for me to move off the seat much because my knees are already wadded up and trying to bend more just doesn't work. I've seen shorter guys wear a set of pucks out in a single day. I think it all comes down to you body position. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
I agree completely Chad. I'd bet you can get your knees down easier on the Uly than you can the GSXR for precisely that reason. I rode Barker's 9R for about 150 miles at Buelltoberfest. I COULDN'T get my knees down because the pegs were so much higher. I couldn't get untucked enough to get them on the ground. I have a lot more room on the Uly and even though it's much farther off the ground, I can get my knees down easier. | ||
| Pariah |
If you want to drag a knee, there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind. Let's assume that your tires are warmed up, and you don't have to worry about losing traction. I know this is naive, but even with this assumption, the problem is not trivial. Other than tire traction, your main concern with picking aggressive knee-dragging lean angles is balancing the torque generated by gravity (that's trying to slam your bike into the ground) and the countering torque generated by the centrifugal force which occurs when rounding a corner. If you insist on an aggressive, knee-dragging lean angle (after all, it looks cool), to maintain a balance between these two torques (and avoid slamming into the ground) you must either: 1) go fast enough (which is why aggressive lean angles should not be recommended to beginners at the track); 2) pick a line with a sufficiently small radius. The slower you go, the smaller the radius must be. Doing some analysis, you can show that there is a square relationship here... that is, if you want to round a corner at half the speed of Valentino Rossi, but still want to use Rossi's aggressive lean angle, you must pick a line that has a radius of ONE-FOURTH Rossi's. This is a drastically different line, and doesn't work at track events because they want you to learn "good lines." That's why it can take a long time to get to knee dragging. You must first have sufficient speed on the correct line. And that's why, for safety, you should wait to drag a knee until long after you're really comfortable on a track and know the "correct line" like the back of your hand. Theoretically, if you want to drag a knee but don't want to go fast, you should go to a parking lot and practice using some lines with "small" radii. How can this work? This is interesting. I get that theta = arctan(g R / v^2) where theta is the complement of the lean angle (90 degrees minus the lean angle), g is the gravitational field constant, v is your speed, and R is the radius of your turn. I derived this by assuming an inverted pendulum model of the rider/bike system and balancing the torques for static equilibrium. I'm an electrical engineer, keep in mind, so I rarely work with these things! What does this mean? If you want a lean angle of 50 degrees (theta = 40 degrees), easily enough for anyone to drag a knee whether or not they want to, but go no faster than 25mph, you need to be on a circular path corresponding to a radius of: R = v^2 tan(theta)/g = 32ft (or 10 meters) One can easily fit a 32-foot radius circle on a large parking lot. And your bike's lean angle doesn't have to actually be 50 degrees, because by body positioning you can make your effective lean angle greater. So I would argue that knee dragging on a parking lot is a much safer proposition than knee dragging on the track, where R can't be small by virtue of the fact that you don't have that kind of flexibility. Which is also why (at least in the US) taking Lee Parks's Advanced Riding Clinic is probably the best place to learn to drag a knee... (Message edited by Pariah on January 11, 2009) | ||
| Duggram |
Pariah, that is crazy good!! |
