Does any one here have a remote control model motorcycle ?

I am trying to get information how they are steered. ie how is the linkage from the servo to the handle bars managed.

Issue: Are they "counter steered" ?

Your not tired of the Monster so soon surely Shooter?

[northwind]

Are you considering fitting the controls to your bike?

Originally Posted by northwind

Are you considering fitting the controls to your bike?

kiwis are an inventive lot. wouldnt suprise me.

Originally Posted by Peter Henry

Your not tired of the Monster so soon surely Shooter?

Not at all. The more I mod it, the more I love it

The question pertains to a debate on counter steering / lean/ how to steer etc..... in another MC forum.

I have moved away somewhat from the thought that "counter steering is the initiation of a turn action". I believe it is part of it but not the whole enchillada and it is given too much credence (especially as advice to new riders).

Shooter...and where is your thinking leading to?

Personally I feel it is weight shift to initiate the lean with countersteering just making things stay on the track you want them to be.

For almost 20 years of riding I knew nothing about the physics of counter steering but that did not stop me from being pretty rapid in the bendy bits.

I didn't know about counter steering until my mate's dad showed me it on his blackbird. We all do it to some degree, with or without realising, but I only tend to actively do it to chuck it into a corner.

Peter, I agree with you.

Keep in mind we both ride very responsive well handling machines and other bikes may require more input / effort and therefore counter steering maybe more apparent to the riders of such. (I would consider and found the SV reasonably high in a list of responsive bikes).

I often try and determine what is the effort or input I am actually making as I initiate, enter and round a big sweeper (for example). It is impossible to fully get a sense of what is making this "thing" happen. (Thought control ?)

So I try different things but primarily: I reduce to the barest minimum, weight and pressure on the bars with my hands on top of grips and controls and all weight carried by my back and stomach muscles. Perfect , smooth cornering results when in combination with a shift in body weight. The shift can be as subtle as an above waist movement in the direction of the corner. Whatever, it is sensed in the relevant **** cheek. (Arses are unacknowledged for there part in cornering)

[northwind]

I was lucky enough to get a go on a stunt Fazer thou with lockable bars... Total laugh. Turns out you can turn a bike without countersteering or bicycle steering- but it's a bit hard.

Sorry guys but I've been selling the top R/C bikes for years and although they all have a weighted front wheel, simply by having a solid metal flywheel in the front wheel, they all counter steer to turn.

One of the best ones was the Kyosho "Leaning Rider":
http://www.kyoshoamerica.com/product...ries-C198.aspx
These were very nice bikes that worked very well. These were a little deceptive in that the rider leaned and everyone thought it turned because of that, but this really wasn't true as the rider weighed very little, if anything at all, and really it was the counter steering action that made it work, the Mk 1 bike didn't have a leaning rider but counter steered so obviously this was just added to make it look cooler and had nothing to do with the performance of the bike.

The latest bikes that we sell, Peter Henry is going to love these, is the Ducati 999R by Thunder Tiger.
Electric Version
Fuel Version
These also work well and are quite large. These don't have a leaning rider, the rider is just a doll that velcros on to the top of the bike, and again they counter steer to turn. The biggest difference between these and the Kyosho ones above is that these are much heavier but they also go a hell of a lot faster, especially the fuel powered version.

The way all of these counter steer is simply by having a servo, a servo is a box with a motor in it which basically turns a cog on the top of the box clockwise and anti clockwise depending on the input, which either pulls or pushes one side of the yoke, they only need very small inputs. So when you push left on the controller, the servo makes the front wheel turn right but the bikes go left and obviously it's the opposite for going right. In fact they all had warnings in the instruction manuals saying that users need to make sure they set up the steering servo to do this as this is how bikes work. One thing to note is that if you hold the bikes upright and then turn the wheel the bikes immediately drop to the side you want to turn, so counter steering actually forces the bikes to lean to the correct side!

None of the above bikes have stabilizers and work very much like a real bike, they are all chain driven and the gyroscopic effect of the motors/engine keep them upright, and they even suffer from the ocassional tank slappers. I think the flywheels are to keep the front wheel down and to help with tank slappers and don't actually make a difference to the turning, so they do work like real bikes and so if counter steering works on them, it must work for the real thing too.

I'm surprised people still argue this one though as if you watch any kind of motorbike racing it's quite obvious from the cameras that face the start of any bend that racers counter steer while leaning in to the bend.

I'll try and take some pics of the bikes and the steering mechanisms if you want next Sunday when I'm back in work.

Edit: Here's some pics I found on www.rcbikes.com of the steering on the Ducati:



And a few more for Peter Henry:


Yes that really is the exhaust!

And here's a vid where you can see an R/C bike counter steering with no rider on it, if you pause the vid with the bike coming towards you it's obvious, I would skip it until you get to the 1 minute mark.
http://www.rcbikes.com/video/sf501_nitro.wmv