Smooth Riding

I went for a beautiful drive today, from
manchester >congleton > cat and fiddle and back > leek > long hill road > buxton > cat and fiddle > through macclesfield > congleton > manchester (about a tank of fuels worth)

it was pretty cold at the top! but worth it. I was trying to make my riding as smooth as possible, but find myself on/off the throttle and flicking through the gears the whole time. I was also finding it difficult to find the right line as i couldn't see the whole corner when entering it. (maybe i just need to get really familiar)

Has anyone got any advice on how to make my riding smoother and generally better?

cheers

hi m8e

i sometimes ride with a couple of ex-traffic bikers and boy do they make it look so easy

is all down to using your side of the road to its max and carrying speed through the corners

be as relaxed as possible

watch the point where the two curbs meet as a guide to where the corners going

that what they keep telling me

Hard to tell from your description if you're smooth or not. Riding with a pillion generally makes you ride smoother.

yeah, i ride with a pillion a lot. And the bike feels so much more planted!
i find i end up back on the thottle mid corner. I don't know if 3500 miles on the oe tyres through winter may have squared them off.
It amazes me watching some of these guys on 1000cc il4s driving like lunatics, they look like they've been born to ride. However i did see a ducati overtake right in to the path of a car - i was behind him and even i noticed it!

Take a ride with the IAM. I think you can have an "assesment" ride FOC and they will give you good feedback. Ask if you can follow one of them for about 15 minutes, follow his lines etc, let the engine do the work not your brakes and you'll get smoother.

Smoothness isn't as easy on a vee twin as it is on an IL4.... My Blade's silky smooth, it's just my riding that f&@#'s it up

.

I was out the other day, up the A24. On the really twisty bit i just stuck to 3rd or 4th gear, whatever left me at about 5000rpm. This is where I have the most usefull part of the engine (mine restricted, lets not forget) and that made my ridin alot smoother..

Still a slow rider though

Matt

[Biker Biggles]

Firstly,never allow yourself to be influenced by riding Gods on Dukes who may just have a premature wish to meet the real God.There's plenty of them about and they look really good until it all goes horribly wrong.
As for being smooth,how about doing a Bikesafe day,and,or some tuition from IAM or similar?There's a vast amount of knowledge to aquire,and the truth is we all learn something new every time we ride.Here's a starter for you.----Ride a familiar bit of road for several miles and try to do it without touching the brakes.This makes you practice forward vision,and anticipate bends and how to plan for them.That will make you smoother without thinking about it.

thanks for the repsonses. i think i'll be booking myself on a IAM course as soon as. One thing i struggle with is i feel i can either hang off or countersteer. But by countersteering it puts the bike down whilst leaving me still upright on the bike. I'll check out the bikesafe courses too, although there appear to be none in manchester itself

[fizzwheel]

As others have said, IAM or Bikesafe will help you loads.

What I found made a big difference in my riding, was to get better at reading the road, that way I had more notice of what was coming towards me which meant I had more time to prepare for corners etc. Also by slowing down a little I found I was actually faster as again I had more time.

Pick up that head and look forward down the road. Use things like roadsigns, fence posts, hedges, telegraph poles. Stuff you find at the side of the road like that marks out the path the road is taking so you can quickly workout if your approaching a sequence of bends, how sharp they might be, or if the road is opening out onto a straight etc etc.

Just did a no luck search - what's an IAM?
John