Weighting the pegs -physics query.

Recently I saw/heard a professional rider (can't remember who) speaking about cornering a motorcycle. I think he said that pushing the outside peg, in a corner, would help cure a push/understeer/running wide situation.

I can't quite work out in my head how that would work, and I can't remember for certain that's what he said, so that doesn't help.

I'm guessing it's some kind of relationship between the left:right weight distribution and steering input, but I don't really know and none of the literature I have mentions anything further about peg weighting than the basics. If someone has a link to an article covering this particular issue, or remembers who said it, I would be very grateful.

[G]

There is a fair sized thread on this exact topic from when someone else probably heard the same interview.

Have no idea how it works but I've always used that technique on the road and in Moto-x. Seems to do the job.

I believe it's more to do with transferring the weight to the peg going hand in hand with you transferring more body weight and counter-steering more too.

Weighting the peg alone will do a big fat nothing, as various tests (Keith Code adapted a bike to prove that peg weighting alone did nothing) but it's hard to weight the peg and not also transfer you're weight and counter steer more effectively. I push down on the pegs and it does work, but it's not the weighting of the peg itself that does it. Try it and be conscious of your body weight and counter steering - you'll find they're bigger when you weight the peg.

Ron Haslam said in Bike magazine a couple of months back that weighting the pegs helps push the bike down into the road. Not a physics major, eh Ron?

I agree with SVeedy Gonzales, that it's part of a combination of small pressures. I owned 6 enduro and MX bikes before getting sick of washing them, and switched to road bikes. Offroad cornering is similar but different to road cornering. MX riders lean the bike more than their bodies. This means it's easy to weight the outside footrest and side of the tank. Look at this pic of the Greatest of All Time (The GOAT, Ricky Carmichael):
http://www.topcross.hu/108459_carmichael.highpoint.jpg
Weighting the outside peg and side of the tank pushes the tyres downwards, making them dig into the dirt, and grip more.
Theoretically, the same should apply to road cornering, as more downward force should increase grip with the tarmac. This is all OK as far as you continue to lean the bike more than your body, as in Supermoto racing on tarmac:
http://www.amasupermoto.com/gallery_...FJVhROxGckD7sJ
PROBLEM: It's harder to weight the outside peg when your body is leaned MORE than the bike, as in road style. Think of photos of racers losing the front grip, and the foot that naturally lifts off the rest is the outside one, which suggests that it's not weighted as much. But we can put some pressure on the side of the tank with our leg, cos if we're hanging off the inside of the bike, our outside leg is clinging to the side of the bike and naturally putting weight on it:
http://www.motogp.com/en/motogp/moto...=photo_gallery
We can probably exert some of that force down through the footrest too.
Jon.