South West Bikers | Motorcycle Forum

Hello All

Im New on here but have been on bikes for years, I have a t595 and a KTM950sm at the mo.

I am off to the South west wheelie school tomorrow and I will give a report if needed.

Bryn Spencer ( Almostafish )

Alays fanced a wheelie school. Go the sit down ones sorted ok but still having issues with the standup ones!

Just got back from a day with the South Coast wheelie school.

Overall I had a laugh but learned little apart from those little anti flip devises on the stern of the bike are a pain in the arse as when you are up and just about to balance the damm things shut of the engine and send your nose diving to the floor again.

There were 6 of us and to be honest I don't think we really took anything away with us apart from sore wrists ( Heavy duty clutches ) the loss of £175 each and a deep dislike for 600 Bandits with anti flip things on.

The guy could talk for England and was very nice and all but did seem to consider 10 min of tuition enough and then just left us to it. He did demonstrate all sorts of wheelies but only on his trick supermoto, not on the kit we were all on. Guys were leaving mid afternoon ( 1400 ) as they had gone as far as they could and were just bouncing off the anti flip device.

In all fairness I did wheelie the bike for longer than usual and could do that at will ( part from the anti flip ) but left with the impression that It was an Ok ( £175 and no lunch?) day out but all a little too Macho. Cant wheelie then your not listening and not doing as I told you! We all listened and did what was asked but it just never seemed to work that well. Mabey it was just us..

I will just keep riding like Tw@t and scratching everything I can!

I will just keep riding like Tw@t and scratching everything I can! [/quote]

thats the spirit

Jason on the site is the man to ask about how to wheelie.

He use's the snap throttle trick as he has a 1000cc which works well on that bike. He gave me advice on this and on my 600 i just couldn't get the hack of it.

Dropped the front sprocket a tooth and if i get it right in second gear with a little help from the clutch it loafs up lovely now at about 40mph.

Just got to practise and practise but they say your never a great till you have flipped a few and i ain't going that far.

what i am saying there is free advice out there if you ask the right people and save yourself £150

I spoke to someone who can wheelie the other day, and his only advice was to ALWAYS cover the rear brake and get use to using it, i.e even if your not worried, back brake it to get the front back down so that you are confident to use it IF you ever need.

Hes never flipped a wheelie, touch wood!

Apparently riding a bicycle is the best way to learn the balancing point and using the back brake.
Then moving on to a 'real bike'

anyone fancy getting together and buying a stunt bike

Blimey wrote:Jason on the site is the man to ask about how to wheelie.

Cheers. my way of learning is not necassarilly the right way it just happens to be the way I went about it. Others far better than me might well have different opinions.

The thing with wheelie schools is that it is just a day. Unless you’re a complete natural it takes a looooong time to learn to do them half decent, you can’t learn it in days or weeks, hell you even get it in months, it takes a lot of plugging away at, It took me ages. The sure fire way to crash is to try and do too much to soon. Anybody can do half decent wheelies on any bike you just need patience.

Are wheelie schools worth it? Well if you have a good day out and it makes you smile then yes they are. But will they teach you anything useful? I doubt it especially with those stupid ant flip devices. And £150 is a track day or a dozen laps of the Nurburgring which has surely got to be more entertaining then bunny hopping on a crappy Bandit for a day.

I never cover my back brake by the way (but then I never use my rear brake anyway in any of my riding), you can’t effectively on standups anyway unless you completely adjust its position.

If all you want to do is normal sitdowns and standups then you can learn without ever looping a bike. You actually have to be very ham fisted and have a rubbish sense of self preservation to loop a bike whilst learning as fear of crashing will always make you feel much higher than you actually are. As long as you don’t try and run before you can walk you should be ok (there are more important things to get the hang of on a bike first).

I think if you want to learn to be able to wheelie really well and have walking pace tailscrapers and highchairs on your mind then yes, crashing numerous times is a certainty and its time to buy a stunt bike to practice on. I accept that I might crash my bike as s hit happens but I sure as hell don’t want to make it a certainty. So if I suddenly decided I wanted to have a go at something a bit more adventurous I would definitely buy an old blade or something to do it on.

A stand up on my old K6 1K:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIinxgNdJHw

A couple of sit downs from years back on my K1 750:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCZfeCJDOys

R6 STU wrote:Apparently riding a bicycle is the best way to learn the balancing point and using the back brake.
Then moving on to a 'real bike'

Thats me fudged, I could never wheelie a push bike for more than 2 pedals

Don't worry to much about the push bike thing. I could never wheelie the push bike. kept falling off lol. But I can wheelie a motorbike






lol

Can i just point out something that is very important about wheelies now everyone is buzzing after watching Jasons anticts on you tube.

The nights are drawing in and if like me you finish work and riding home in the dark don't go wheelieing on an unlit road like i did the other evening.

Its amazing how everything goes suddenly black and dark and you can't see sh*t when your headlight is facing the moon.

Now that did frighten me and stupid really when you think about it

But it wasn't in the manual about wheelieng in the dark

Looking at Jasons Post I'm just going to buy a cheap winter hack/trick bike and keep on trying.

Cheers! B