Oh. My. God.
I'm glad middle-school science teachers aren't building motorcycles, or we'd all be doomed to die a horrible death!
A few points you guys need to get your head around:
- The lighter you make the wheels (i.e. LESS gyroscopic force) the BETTER and FASTER it will turn. There is no limit! There is no magical number at which the motorcycle will no longer turn. Gyroscopic forces only HINDER steering, they do not help it in any way.
- When a motorcycle is leaned into a corner, the center of gravity does NOT move in relation to the motorcycle's original path. If you make the bike lean into a RIGHT turn, you DO, in fact, move the tires' contact patches to the LEFT.
- This does not happen because of gyroscopic force. It happens because you STEERED the tires to the left! (Actually, you steered the FRONT tire to the left - the rear tire will always follow the front because they are connected by a motorcycle).
- Once you steer the front tire to the left, the motorcycle will immediately fall to the right - GRAVITY - until you tell it to stop falling by steering the front tire back to the right until you find the balance point of the lean angle you want.
- Give us a break with the damn bicycle-wheel-sitting-on-a-stool-and-turning-it science experiment. It has nothing to do with this!
- I'll repeat that: IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!
- When you turn into a corner, you don't turn the bars NINETY FRIKKIN' DEGREES to either side. You turn it a few degrees at most. The faster the turn, the less you move the bars. As in,
less than 5 degrees.
- The gyroscopic forces caused by the crankshaft and other engine parts also do not help steering. A motorcycle is perfectly capable of being ridden - and turned - with the engine not even running.
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You guys all correct about
some of these things, and completely off-base about some other things. But this myth about motorcycles turning BECAUSE of gyroscopic precession is the biggest fallacy in the world of motorcycles.
I'm still waiting for someone to show me that Kevin Cameron is actually helping to propagate this story...
