Easier to highside an IL4 than a twin. True or false?

Any ideas people? Someone told me this but didn't explain why. Total b*ll*cks or hard fact?

[Richie]

all depends on how heavy handed you are with the throttle coming out of a corner.
I would think.

Yeah - I can see people coming up with all sorts of theory on this but it, unless the power delivery is incredibly abrubt i.e like a very tuned 2-stoke, it has more to do with the heavy right handed-ness of the rider more than the engine configuration.

From the wonderful wikipedia:

A highsider or highside is a type of motorcycle accident which is caused by a rear wheel gaining traction when it is not facing in the direction of travel. For a highsider to take place, the rear wheel must first lose traction and drift out of the line travel of the motorcycle. The initial traction loss may be caused by a rear locked wheel due to excessive braking or by applying too much throttle when exiting a corner. When the slipping rear tire suddenly regains traction it is not moving in the same plane as the rest of the bike. This causes the motorcycle to straighten up so quickly the rider is almost always thrown off, even at low speed.
Highside accidents are typically caused by over-acceleration or braking in corners, but are also a result of locking the rear brake in an emergency stop while traveling straight at high speeds, such as on a highway.

There's a more technical explanation on there too...
But in short, it's over-acceleration or locking up the rear brake - so wouldn't make any difference either way.

I've been told that V-twins have better traction as the tyres have more time to gain traction between each piston firing? So if that is true I'd suppose an IL4 is more susceptible to highsides since Vtwins are more stable? (probably b*ll*cks)

Id say both are quite easy to highside if you do something silly. Id guess that with this whole crossplain crank, big bang engine thing going on atm that the IL4's tend to have a little less traction than the V-twins.

The explanation from Yamaha its that with the inertial acceleration/deceleration of the crank spining on a scremer IL4 causes the rear wheel to jerk fast - slow - fast - slow very fast and this means that when the bike loses grip it struggles to regain it as the wheel is constantly jerking. Practically every other configuration doesnt have this issue... Parrallel twins and single's will though. But since these are rarely used in bikes that have enough power to really lose total traction its not a massive problem.

I got a mate high sided a RSVR real bad... so its possible!

Im prob wrong but id think it depends on the revs tbh, low down revs in v twin is where the torque is so if you cranked it at idk 3k rpm i could see the rr wheel losing traction but at 7k rpm less likely to where as the IL4 crank it at 5k and nothing but at 10k good night vienna.

If I remember, watching some documentary about Ducati, apparently a V-twin has more usable power coming out of a corner, IE that's why twins always get better drive as they can use their traction better, or something, but hey, only half my brain was awake..

Originally Posted by Holdup

so if you cranked it at idk 3k rpm i could see the rr wheel losing traction

You mean what, the V-twin would lose traction at 3K? Not likely, ive only really ever felt mine drift a little at 7k+ giving it some out of croners. Even then its just a gentle thing.

Originally Posted by Jamiebridges123

If I remember, watching some documentary about Ducati, apparently a V-twin has more usable power coming out of a corner, IE that's why twins always get better drive as they can use their traction better, or something, but hey, only half my brain was awake..

Thats only partly true. V-twins are generally good at getting out of corners because they have a better spread of torque so when further down the rev range they pick up better.

Originally Posted by ThEGr33k

You mean what, the V-twin would lose traction at 3K? Not likely, ive only really ever felt mine drift a little at 7k+ giving it some out of croners. Even then its just a gentle thing.

I just used it as an example for the low down torque as thats when id expect the v twin to lose traction, but as i said i may be wrong