Gabe321 posted this informative 10 minute couch-side discussion about throttle control, balance point, and engine braking.  Closes with a discussion of ‘panic reactions’ and wrecking.  Stresses throttle control and not chopping the throttle.  “Throttle is not a light switch that goes off and on. Its a dimmer switch.”

Speaker 1: Okay, basically here we are in your living room and we’re here to tell you about how we learn about throttle control, the balance point, and most importantly is engine breaking.  The balance point is like some people thinking the world is flat, you know what I mean?  You don’t really know if it’s flat or round until you go to chase it, and it feels like you’re going to find the balance point and they’re going to loose it.

But one thing they’ve got in their corner is engine break.  Tell us about engine break.

Speaker 2: Right, engine breaking, the best way I can explain it – let’s say I have a car, it’s a five-speed manual transmission.  First gear, I put it in first gear and I leave it there and I tack the car out, I’m going as fast as I can.  If I take my foot off the gas it brings me forward, it throws me forward quick, abruptly.  On second gear it’s going to do the same thing.  But the higher I go up in the gears, the faster I’m going and I don’t have as much engine breaking.

Let’s say for example I’m in fifth gear overdrive on the highway, I’m doing 90 miles an hour, even though I’m accelerating I might take my foot off the gas but it’s not going to throw me forward in my seat.  I don’t have a whole lot of engine breaking.  So first and second gear we’re going to experience the most of our engine breaking, and that’s where we’re going to do the most of our tricks.

Speaker 1: I was just trying that while you were saying that.  Bro, you’re right.  You’re right, I almost flew through to my windshield in that one as you would see.

Let’s talk about the balance point, that’s probably the hardest to find. Basically what I would do is I just did wheelie after wheelie after wheelie, and then I learned the higher I would get my wheel up the closer I was at the balance point.  Well, the closer I was at the balance point the longer I would go without acceleration.  Eventually when I found the balance point it was like you can do forever.  I mean it doesn’t matter, you can go 30 miles, say you’re running on gas, whatever, first gear makes the difference.

So the balance point is hard to find.  A lot of people think when you get to the balance point you’re just going to flip, like they think that there’s a light switch at balance point and then [I’m dying] [ph 00:01:45].  But basically it’s like this, you don’t really know what it’s like until you get there.  It’s actually manageable, it’s dealable, it’s nice, it’s a cool feeling because you’re in your wheelie and you feel the free acceleration, and then it’s kind of like it’s neutral.

Speaker 2: Right, once you’re accelerating your wheelie, a lot of the pressure is put in the palms and hands to hold your bike.  Once you get close to the balance point it’s almost like it puts the pressure on your butt, and it takes a lot of pressure off your wrist.  That’s when you know you’re getting close to the balance point is what I tell people.

Speaker 1: Yes.  No, that’s good, that’s definitely true.  The thing is, the closer you are to the balance point the longer I would always drive my wheelies.  Every time I say the higher I get the front wheel, the closer I was on driving my wheelies longer and longer and longer, and the next thing you know I’m at the balance point.  The key is I always try to stay at the balance point and I would try not to move my hand at all because you don’t want to put yourself out.  I’m up there and doing my own thing, riding my own, I can go forever.

Speaker 2: Right.  Check this out, if I was to explain the balance point like leaning back in a chair, I wouldn’t tell you to just go pushing off like you do in the back and then hoping for the best.

Speaker 1: It’s like pulling out your skull over on the concrete.

Speaker 2: Right, it does happen and it happens in wheelies too.  We’ve done it, I’ve done it, I know you’ve done it.  But just like leaning back in a chair, I want to bring myself back, I’m going to use my feet as an example in a throttle, pushing myself back is going to be like rolling on a throttle.  While anytime I bring my weight forward it’s going to be like engine breaking.  If I get myself too much throttle, I won’t be able to pull myself back forward.

So I want to be screwed down.  I want to bring myself back, I’m in no hurry.  I’m going to bring myself back to until my body just slight here.  Once it gets to a point where I can pick my feet up, I’m at the balance pint right here.  Notice that I’m not going to make a whole lot of movement with my body, I’m not doing this (rocking movement with his feet).  I mean it doesn’t make sense, you wouldn’t do it in your chair why do it on the bike.

Speaker 1: True.

Speaker 2: Here I am, I’m relaxed, I’m not doing anything.  Majority of my weight is focused a little but forward because if I fall back, I don’t really have a whole lot to bring me back to position.  But I do have throttle to bring me back to the balance point.  So I’m screwing on the throttle until I get back to the balance point, and once I’m here I’m staying pretty consistent on the throttle.  I’m not doing a whole lot of changes staying where I am.

Speaker 1: So talk me through this.  So on my wheelie, I’m in my balance point.  Let me move up, how about this, I’m in my balance point and I’m doing my thing.  Say I get a little bit too much, say I’m going back to far, what do I got to do?  I got to close my throttle, right?

Speaker 2: Close your throttle.

Speaker 1: I got the engine break to bring me back.

Speaker 2: But see how much you brought your back, you brought your back too far.

Speaker 1: So when I’m back, close it, close it and then you got to ease back on.

Speaker 2: You ease it to get yourself into a position.  You’re not throwing your body back and forth here.  What happens when you come forward, you want to give yourself just enough throttle to bring you back into position.

Speaker 1: So, it’s gas off, gas off right there (rocking movement position), it just kind of eases on.  You want nice smooth movements.  I see what you’re saying about being jerky, I wouldn’t be balancing here and just like expect to be jerky like everything.  If I want to balance forward and backward everything has got to be smooth.  It’s the same kind of thing on a bike.  That’s a good theory there.

(Demonstration with a rocking chair) So basically it’s a pretty simple, it’s a cool concept that [Norman] [ph 04:59:00] showed me before.  Basically I’m going up, I’m on my gas, I’m on my throttle and then I do my engine break, it brings me down.  I’m gassing nice and smooth, it brings me to my point, I’m at my balance point, and then finally I get too far – engine break.

Speaker 2: But notice the movement he has there if he’s really abrupt, so he’s going to being himself down forward, he going to actually use a lot more force to bring himself back to the balance point.  If he brings himself back slowly so he can find the balance point, the throttle input is very minimal and it will keep him really smooth.  So let’s show them how smooth you can keep this.

(Demo movements using the rocking chair)

Speaker 1: Survival reactions is something a lot of people don’t really think about, it’s something that people should know about because what we do and what a lot of our racers do we have to defy survival reactions.  Survival reactions – you explain it best – but basically it’s doing exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to be doing.  Your body goes, “What you’re doing now is no good, stop” and you try to stop.

Speaker 2: Right.  For example, I’ve read racing books and it says when you get into a position where you’re coming on a second gear turn and you’re whacked up and on the throttle, your back end starts to spin, the last thing you want to do is shut the throttle off because that’s just going to upset the bike and put you into a high side.  But that is the first thing that your brain tells you to do when in reality it’s the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

You just close the throttle a little bit and stay smooth, whacking it upsets the bike way too much, and it does the same thing in a wheelie.  When we bring our bike back and we get into a position where we’re panicking, our survival reaction tells us to shut the throttle.  Well, greed wants us to keep the wheelie up. So what’s the first thing that we do after we shut the throttle, we whack the throttle open again.  That’s the last thing we should be doing right here.

One important aspect of this sport to understand is there’s always another wheelie, there’s always another stop.  There’s always another opportunity, there’s absolutely no need to try to squeeze the [inaudible 00:06:43] unless it’s the last one that you’re only able to do.

Speaker 1: One thing you got to remember, and Matt always reminds me of this – Matt has a wakeboarding background, and basically he tells me if motorcycles and stunt riding was like wakeboarding the tricks we’d be doing right now would be insane.  The thing is, you can always go a hundred percent in wakeboarding.  You know what I mean?  You just go forward and fall, and fall in the water.  It hurts – I mean don’t get me wrong, it hurts, but you fall in the water.

Like you say, you don’t want to fall in concrete, you got to learn slowly and slowly, step by step.

Speaker 2: Our sport right now is pretty much the only sport where failure is not an option.  Failure can sometimes result in death or hospitalization.  I don’t want that, I know you don’t like that.  I’ve crashed my bike several times, I don’t like to see people crash their bikes.  It’s the worst thing to overcome, collecting your bike and coming back, it’s very hard to do.

So to eliminate that, if I was to start all over again, I would tell myself that throttle control is the most important thing that I need to understand.  I don’t need to be overzealous with the throttle here.  I’m not looking to get arm pumped when I ride my bike, I’m staying consistently smooth on the throttle.  That’s what’s going to keep me in track and straight.

If I bring my bike back I notice that it’s always smooth when I’m binging it back.  When I chop the throttle and come off, when I get into a situation where a survival reaction kicks in, I chop the throttle and then I’m like, “Okay, I’m fine” and then whack the throttle open again.  Then I get back to that point because I used the throttle, I’m not being smooth, and that just translates to the bike to being really all over the place.  So that’s the main objective of throttle control is just to be able to maintain a smooth wheelie.

Speaker 1: My biggest problem growing up with throttle control always, I mean…

Speaker 2: Like when you were a kid?

Speaker 1: (laughs) Some people wet their pants, other people are sleep walking, me it’s with throttle control.  I had the biggest problem.

We all know, I know there’s some of these people out there – in your family; may it be your dad, your mom, friends of yours.  Did you ever drove a car with somebody and you’re chilling and you’re back in your seat, and the dude speeds up and slows down for no apparent reason?

Speaker 2: You think he’s messing with you but he’s looking out the window like it’s no big deal.

Speaker 1: It’s just like that’s the way it is.  That is the classic throttle chopper syndrome.  Now pay attention, that’s the worst kind of syndrome to have.  It’s right up there with a lot of other main diseases, it’s called Throttle Choppers.

Speaker 2: TC’s.

Speaker 1: There’s one way to correct that.

Speaker 2: TC’s disease.

Speaker 1: You have to teach the people that the throttle is not a light switch.  It’s not on and off, on and off, it’s more of a dimmer switch.  You can give it a little more light, a little less light.  Whatever you feel your movement is, it’s a dimmer switch, just relax.

It’s like the dude, he’s got this problem (acting with his hand and feet), you shake his hand and he’s like this all the time (shaking hand rocking movement).  What’s the problem? (laughs)  It doesn’t have to be on and off, relax.

Speaker 2: Throttle control is something that’s consistent throughout your whole life, it either exists or doesn’t exist.  Driving, are you going to be that guy who hits the throttle, get off the throttle, on the throttle and off the throttle?  We’ve all ridden with that guy.  I sure… (demonstrating an abrupt drinking motion with a glass) … wouldn’t drink like that.  Why would I ride my motorcycle like that? (laughs)

Speaker 1: A serious issue that a lot of people are embarrassed about is the throttle control issue.  It comes out in a lot of people and a lot of things.  See, the main ways you see it is in the highway with the people in the car and the foot (revving motion with the foot), that kind of thing or doing a wheelie and they’re throttle chopping it the whole time.

Well, obviously in Matt’s case you see it kind of extend a little bit further than the highway or the drag strip.  I mean it’s actually involved with drinking and things like this (abrupt movements) or other people where the strobe light was invented because someone had a throttle chopping problem with a light switch.

So once you work these problems in, you figure out things and how they go – I mean just smooth things out, ease them out.  Once you learn to be smooth and easy I think you can kind of work that with the rest of your life all in general.  So let’s see what happens.  Just work on that a little bit and I think you’ll pull through.”

- END -

Posted on youtube by SportbikeWrench and OntheThrottle, part 1 is all about how to clutch up a basic power wheelie. They cover safety gear, where to find a good place to practice, and setting your bike up with cages. Things you need to know include: RPMs, clutching up the wheelie with one finger vs power wheelies, covering the rear brake, and ‘stagger step wheelies’.

Part 1 – How to Ride a Wheelie

Nick Apex: Alright, so here we are at my secret location here in Las Vegas, Nevada.  It’s an abandoned warehouse which most common stunts spots are.  What we always try and find is basically any area that’s either an industrial or set back from the public where you’re not going to find a lot of spectators, and something that’s safe.  In other words, you’re not wanting a whole bunch poles in the way.

As you see here, I got a huge, wide open area where if anything goes wrong my bike’s not going to hit anything, I’m not going to hit anything.  Over all, basically we’re just going to hit some principles today that are going to teach you a safe wheelie.

You are going to see that Ernie and I are going to be wearing – of course, what you should be wearing.  Motorcycling is not a safe sport, so always have your helmet and appropriate gear.  We chose these Rush Deal jackets because they’re super lightweight, and even though they add a lot of protection, and even in the heat like what we find here in Las Vegas we can wear our gear it all day long.  I know that a lot of people that start out, they wear t-shirts and they end up with a heck of a lot of rash.  I know I did, and you don’t have to live through my pain so just learn from my mistakes.

I’ll let Ernie go over the principles here about wheelie.

Ernie Vigil: Today we’re going to kind of go over the basics of starting to learn how to do your first wheelie.  There’s a couple of different things you need to know I guess when you’re first starting to do wheelies.  One is how you pick the wheelie up, there’s two different methods.  You can either use the clutch or you can do it all throttle.

People I know, people at first when they’re first starting they get kind of confused because they hear a lot of different things when it comes to doing a wheelie.  But believe it or not, the safest and easiest way to do it is using the clutch.  We’re going to go over some of the basics of that, of learning how to pop it up and whatnot.

The second thing we’re going to show you today is the coverage of the back break.  We have hand breaks and we have foot break, and today we’re probably going to go over just the foot break, which is when you’re starting off to do wheelies it’s the most basic way and it’s the best way to learn control.  So we’ll be going over how to use the foot break in a wheelie and when to use.

Another thing we’re going to be going over is all the different positions in a wheelie.  There’s so many different positions to start off with.  The basic though when starting a wheelie, the one that most people are the most comfortable with is the stagger stand wheelie, which is one foot over the foot break and your left foot over the rear passenger peg, it gives you a little stability when it comes to standing up.  It takes a little bit of pressure off your arms and keeps you from wanting to gas it and move out.

Of course the bikes, they’re all completely set up.  We don’t come out here in the middle of nowhere with a bike that’s not set up.  I mean it definitely helps to have the crash cages on and everything on the bike because when you’re learning of course you are going to wreck.  There’s riders who have gone down and there’s riders that are going down.  It can go either way, it’s better to be prepared.  We’ll go over some basics today in the wheelie and hopefully we can get your guys wheeling soon.

Nick Apex: So I’m Nick Apex and this is my partner Ernie Vigil.  We’re Team Rush Deal North America, and today we’re going to go over the basics.

So what I’m going to do is introduce you to the idea of how exactly to work the clutch.  Now obviously this clutch is a little bit shorter.”

Part 2 – How to Ride a Wheelie

Part 2 is about riding wheelies and finding your ‘balance point’ by using throttle control and covering your brake. Then he demos on a regular street bike instead of his stunt bike.

Nick Apex: Alright, so here we are at my secret location here in Las Vegas, Nevada.  It’s an abandoned warehouse which most common stunts spots are.  What we always try and find is basically any area that’s either an industrial or set back from the public where you’re not going to find a lot of spectators, and something that’s safe.  In other words, you’re not wanting a whole bunch poles in the way.

As you see here, I got a huge, wide open area where if anything goes wrong my bike’s not going to hit anything, I’m not going to hit anything.  Over all, basically we’re just going to hit some principles today that are going to teach you a safe wheelie.

You are going to see that Ernie and I are going to be wearing – of course, what you should be wearing.  Motorcycling is not a safe sport, so always have your helmet and appropriate gear.  We chose these Rush Deal jackets because they’re super lightweight, and even though they add a lot of protection, and even in the heat like what we find here in Las Vegas we can wear our gear it all day long.  I know that a lot of people that start out, they wear t-shirts and they end up with a heck of a lot of rash.  I know I did, and you don’t have to live through my pain so just learn from my mistakes.

I’ll let Ernie go over the principles here about wheelie.

Ernie Vigil: Today we’re going to kind of go over the basics of starting to learn how to do your first wheelie.  There’s a couple of different things you need to know I guess when you’re first starting to do wheelies.  One is how you pick the wheelie up, there’s two different methods.  You can either use the clutch or you can do it all throttle.

People I know, people at first when they’re first starting they get kind of confused because they hear a lot of different things when it comes to doing a wheelie.  But believe it or not, the safest and easiest way to do it is using the clutch.  We’re going to go over some of the basics of that, of learning how to pop it up and whatnot.

The second thing we’re going to show you today is the coverage of the back break.  We have hand breaks and we have foot break, and today we’re probably going to go over just the foot break, which is when you’re starting off to do wheelies it’s the most basic way and it’s the best way to learn control.  So we’ll be going over how to use the foot break in a wheelie and when to use.

Another thing we’re going to be going over is all the different positions in a wheelie.  There’s so many different positions to start off with.  The basic though when starting a wheelie, the one that most people are the most comfortable with is the stagger stand wheelie, which is one foot over the foot break and your left foot over the rear passenger peg, it gives you a little stability when it comes to standing up.  It takes a little bit of pressure off your arms and keeps you from wanting to gas it and move out.

Of course the bikes, they’re all completely set up.  We don’t come out here in the middle of nowhere with a bike that’s not set up.  I mean it definitely helps to have the crash cages on and everything on the bike because when you’re learning of course you are going to wreck.  There’s riders who have gone down and there’s riders that are going down.  It can go either way, it’s better to be prepared.  We’ll go over some basics today in the wheelie and hopefully we can get your guys wheeling soon.

Nick Apex: So I’m Nick Apex and this is my partner Ernie Vigil.  We’re Team Rush Deal North America, and today we’re going to go over the basics.

So what I’m going to do is introduce you to the idea of how exactly to work the clutch.  Now obviously this clutch is a little bit shorter, but your stock clutch is still disengaged with one finger.  It’s safest to pop the clutch with one finger simple because you have the rest of the hand gripping the bar and you’re not compromising anything.

So what Ernie’s going to do is he’s going to pull the clutch in with one finger and he’s going to have the [inaudible 00:03:46].  All he’s going to do essentially is probably give it about a quarter turn of gas as he pops the clutch in just one movement.  It’s all one and the same.  As you whip the gas, you’re popping the clutch.  It is fairly violent, you’re not slipping the clutch, you are popping it.

(Demonstration)

A nice thing to do is in a wheelie – see exactly how he initiated the clutch?  You’re going to be able to hear the RPMs raise up as he does.

(Demonstration)

That’s just standard clutch wheelie, you hear the RPMs jump up.  He’s literally giving it gas and popping the clutch out all in one.  You don’t bring your revs up, you’re not going to sit there and put the revs at 4,000 RPMs and then drop the clutch down and expect it to happen.

(Demonstration)

What happens is without a lot of throttle movement, you can get the thing to damn your balance off red line.  We all know that you can just give it a little bit of gas without any load on it and the RPMs are going to raise, and that’s the reason why you’re popping it and giving it gas at the same time.

Now realistically on a stock bike, I’m assuming it’s going to be right around 8,000-9,000 RPMs of your bike, and that is almost every modern 600 or a thousand CC class bike is going to be able to pop up.  Now again like I said, it’s not 8,000 and dropping the clutch, that’s blibbing the gas up to about 8,000 RPM.  So you’re probably going to want to blip up to 4,000 and then yack as it goes.  It’s kind of hard to explain, it is something that you need to feel out.  Every bike is different, every rider’s weight is different.

What Ernie’s going to do is he’s going to pull the clutch in and he’s going to be rolling about two or three miles an hour.  He’s going to pop the clutch with a squirt of gas, which is going to pop the front wheel of about a foot.  What he’s going to do there is chase that balance, about only a foot off the ground.  He’s not going to shoot for balance point, he’s just going to power wheelie.  As the clutch got him up to a specific height he’s going to try and catch that height and run with it.  So go ahead Ernie, clutch up a power wheelie.

(Demonstration)

So as you can see he just basically popped it out and chased it out.  What that gives you is that gives you the principle, how to get the front tire off the ground safely because you don’t want to try and clutch it up really high at first.  Here it comes again, he’s going to go ahead and do another one.  He’s going to pop the clutch up which is going to jump the front tire off the ground and then he’s going to chase it with the gas.

(Demonstration)

A wheelie like that is perfectly safe.  That’s one of the ones where if he popped that up and he shut up the gas, at no point would that wheelie ever consider flipping over.  You want to be again in a safe environment of course when you’re learning this, a long, wide open area just like this.  So go ahead Ernie, pop it up and bring it a little bit higher.  But not balance, just under it.

(Demonstration)

As you can see there, he’s carrying the wheelie longer but the RPMs are still growing.  The reason why the RPMs kept raising upwards of course is because he’s still under the balance point.  Again, as you saw, he just clutched it up.  So he brought it up with the first two or three feet.  The reason why he did that is because if you try and power wheelie up, to that sage first two or three feet, you’re in the gas and you’re getting massive RPMs and mass of speed as your bike slowly gets up to that speed.

So all you’re doing by clutching it is jumping the bike up to a specific height, and then from that height you can easily manipulate the gas by simple throttle and push.  It’s all throttle control, and we’re talking minute 16^th of a turn in the throttle is what’s going to bring it up to that specific height.  I’m going to have him go ahead and do it one more time. And that’s just chasing it out as he goes.

(Demonstration)

Now Ernie was doing all those wheelies sit down.  The reason that we’re going to teach you this next step, standing up off the bike gives you a lot more control of the motorcycle.  It’s also very easy for you to gauge how high the bike is and if everything goes wrong get away from the bike easier.  So we’re going to do now the staggered wheelie.  Ernie again is going to pop the clutch and chase out a power wheelie just as I want you to do in your first attempt, but he’s going to do a staggered now with his left foot placed on the passenger peg.

(Demonstration)

Really easy set up, crouch, and chase it out.  Now as you can see he didn’t just go and pop the clutch and stand straight up.  He wasn’t standing straight at first, he was crouching and making body loose.  He’s going to do it again.

(Demonstration)

With your body nice and loose, and his knees were slightly bent.  The reason why you want to have your knees slightly bent is it gives you that cushion of being able to come back into the bike.  So as soon as you feel uncomfortable you can always bring the bike down with your body still.

So this time, clutch it up just underneath balance point, but go ahead and chase it out, let the RPMs go.

(Demonstration)

That’s just underneath the balance point.  Again, that’s a nice, safe wheelie, chase it out all the way the red line, he had a lot of distance with that for our small area that we have here.  If that was a stock rear bike you would probably have gone four times the distance.  Again, we’re running [inaudible 00:09:13] on our stunt bike.  Later I’ll bring out the full turning bike that we have and show you exactly the way it sounds, the way it looks on a stock full turning bike.  Go ahead Ernie, do it one more time for us.”

(Demonstration)

The following post was written by motopsyko32 in soflasportbikes.com’s stunt forum, and what follows is what I think its the most well written description to date on how to ride a wheelie on a motorcycle that I’ve seen online. He explicitly said we could post it on other websites, if we gave credit… so not only do we want to give him credit, we want to give him mad props too! What awesome information! Thanks for sharing!

Disclaimer: Following this advice won’t keep you from crashing, getting hurt, and breaking stuff, but it may help you from doing these things less often:)

Bike setup for wheelies:

Oil: Many bikes will become oil starved when riding long wheelies, and doing 12 o-clock wheelies. Gixxers and cbr 900s (’93-’95 893cc model) are the most notorious for this. To keep the bike from becoming oil starved, either move the oil pickup in the oil pan back, or overfill the oil. Myself and some others on this forum run 1 quart over. Overfilling doesn’t seem to cause any problems with hondas, but I have read of problems with gixxers as a result of this. So the best thing for a gixxer would probably be to fix the oil pickup. You can buy modified oil pickups for gixxers from www.stuntex.com.

Gears: For learning, gearing the bike down is unnecessary. Almost every sportbike will wheelie in first gear without any problem (maybe the ex250 is an exception). Also gearing to make second gear come up easier is kind of pointless, because it just becomes more like first gear with big sprockets. If it doesn’t wheelie in first gear, it isn’t the bike’s fault. For the most part, gears are unnecessary until you are ready to learn highchairs (on a weak 600), no throttle hand wheelies, and circles.

Tires: When doing high-speed wheelies make sure you have a good rear tire. A tire with a flat spot in the middle can cause wobbles. I learned wheelies on a rear tire that was almost down to the cords in the middle, and it would often wobble like crazy when doing balance point wheelies. A new tire almost completely eliminated that problem. Run the tire pressure lower than stock. For doing wheelies above 20 mph, have the tire pressure between 20 and 30psi. For doing wheelies slower than 20 mph, lower the pressure to between 12 and 20. 18-20 psi makes for a good all around psi. Lower tire pressure makes the wheelie more stable from side to side.

Tip over sensor: Most (or all, I?m not sure) bikes with fuel injection have a tip over sensor. This can cause the bike to shut off when riding wheelies high. This should be disabled. For Hondas this can be done by cutting the wires going into the sensor, connecting the two outer wires, and leaving the middle one hanging. For gixxers, that method doesn’t work. The brass ring in the sensor must be removed, or immobilized with something such as silicone.

Steering Damper: While it isn’t imperative that you have a steering damper for doing wheelies, it might save your ass. If you come down from a wheelie with the front wheel crooked, it could cause a tank slapper. This shouldn’t be a problem, though; if you make sure the front wheel is strait when you put it down.

Exhaust pipe: If learning 12s, the pipe may have to be shortened. The stock pipes on some bikes touch the ground at about the same time as the tail when doing a 12 o-clock wheelie. If the pipe hits the ground, it may cause you to crash. My friend just went down a week ago because of this. The pipe can be shortened by simply cutting a few inches off the end of the pipe, and then re-welding / re-riveting the end of the pipe back on. Short pipes can also be bought from www.starboyz.com.

Cage: In the process of learning to ride wheelies good, you will most likely drop your bike. Continue reading “How to Ride a Wheelie on a Motorcycle, by motopsyko32” »

Tips on how to wheelie your sportbike. Explains power wheelies, rolling on the throttle, slipping the clutch, and throttle control. Originally posted on youtube by Crociffixio

“Hey people how’s it going?  We’re at Super Bike.  We’ve seen a lot of people struggling on track base out on the roads – the closed, private roads mind you – trying to pull wheelies.  It’s kind of a basic stunt really, it has been year.  But it’s amazing people still hurt themselves learning how they try to do to much too soon.  It’s never going to work that way.

I’m going to try and start here from ground level here, the most basic kind of fundamentals.  Getting comfortable, fun and just feeling light on your hands.  It’s going to be similar to going over a rollercoaster, dropping over the top of your stomach drops.  You feel panicked.  You need to go over that, relax, deep breaths, talk yourself through a little checklist here.  Let’s start with your basic roll on simple power wheelie.

This is going to be the most basic type of wheelie; it’s just a roll on power wheelie.  This is just an introduction so you’re not even going to try and sustain it.  This is the beginning, get used to the front going light as they say.  So let’s give it a shot here, we’re going to take off in first gear, accelerate hard and you’re going to see the front end is just going to gently come up, gently roll the throttle off just to set it back down.  First gear, take off, open the throttle up.

(Demonstration)

It’s as simple as that.  I’m not crocking the throttle open, there’s no clutch involved.  But if I don’t roll of throttle, it will flip right over.

The next step is to just simply hold the throttle in kind of a neutral position.  Once the front starts to get light and comes up, you just back off by a fraction.  Here we go, same thing, take off first gear, front comes up.  You’re just carrying it a few feet further.  On each time a few feet further, a few feet further.  Take off first gear, open the throttle, front comes up, take it a little bit further, there’s nothing to it.

I hyped that one for you.  There’s not a lot involved there like I told you, it’s basically letting the bike do the work.  Sit back, relax, roll on the power, the front is going to come up no matter what you do.  I mean if you’re on it, it’s up.  So keep that in mind.  Now go practice that.  Shut this video off and don’t go bother watching the rest because until you have that down, until you have your throttle control down and until you can create a front wheelie consistently without any of these any lunging back and forth and jerkiness the rest of this tape is meaningless.  Roll on the power is all you need to know.

But, if you’re comfortable with that, the next thing is here slipping the clutch.  Slipping the clutch, a lot of people don’t even know what it means really slip the clutch.  I’ll show you what it means, I’ll show you how to do it, it’s your next step.  But remember, don’t move on until you master the first step.  Having said that, step two, slipping the clutch.

To bring the front wheel up, it’s going to involve a slip of the clutch and a slight acceleration at the same time.  Instead of holding a steady, neutral throttle position, you just want you to accelerate like that as you slip the clutch.  On the first few times the front wheel is just going to crust, it’s going to come up three or four inches.

(Demonstration)

Just like that, the front wheel came up six inches off the floor.  You’re just getting used to the sensation, it’s the same thing.  You just want to understand that it’s going to lunge.  Now you can see the front comes up a lot more violent than just by rolling on the throttle.  Rolling on the throttle is a smooth way to bring the front wheel up.  But it’s not really efficient because you need a long stretch of road and you need to really kind of wind out the gear.  It’s just the slip of the clutch.  You can see the higher you go the slower your acceleration actually is, and that’s all slipping the clutch involves.

(Demonstration)

Alright, so now you know how to slip the clutch.  Hopefully you’re still in one piece after that.  If you’re doing what I told you and taking it slow, not trying to move on too fast, not trying to impress your friends or yourself, you’d be alright.  Slipping the clutch, that’s the way to bring it up.  There’s a bit more involved there, but once you can piece it altogether there’s nothing else you need to know.  People talk about going into these top gear wheelies at 150 miles an hour, there’s not really any reason to do that.  Bikes are happy to stay in second or third gear for as long as you’re happy to sit and the road is straight.

So here’s a little example of putting steps one and two together because obviously you can’t do step two until your step one is finished and mastered.  Just let it burn about two miles straight stretch, [inaudible 00:06:03] and pull up in second gear and sit in third gear basically.  It’s just minor throttle adjustments, slipping the clutch to bring it up and just holding on, and being happy and relaxed really is about the best friend that you’re going to have.

You have a look out here, you got a nice, straight piece of road.  Take off on first gear, click up to second and now you’re going about 4,000 revs.  That’s normal on this kind of big, strong bike like this.  It’s going to slip the clutch and come right up.  Here we go, slip the clutch, throw it up, and now in second gear.  It’s really windy though so we’re kind of all over the place.  [unintelligible due to background noise].  No clutch though, just slipping it in.  So you’re about 7,000 revs now and you can pretty much just kind of hang around there all day.  Really windy out here though.

[unintelligible due to background noise].  It’s not too bad actually.  Bring my front wheel up and my wheel will drop down.  See, there you go.  Pretty much, you go right into third gear, the [inaudible 00:07:32] as long as you want to hold it there.  Now I’m going to front kick the front wheel going here which is accelerated a little bit.

So that’s roughly two miles in the back wheel.  It sounds like a lot but it’s really nothing once you get comfortable slipping the clutch, pulling it up.  Go on through your checklist, be sure to breathe, you can’t hold your breath for two miles.  But just relax up there and bike will cooperate all day.  As long as you want to stay up on a back road you’re fine.  Having said that, you got to slow the wheelie down now, that’s using the rear break.

A sad fact that I’ve noticed is that a lot of people don’t know where the rear breaks even is on their bike.  That’s their fault and that’s something you need to learn.  You need to learn how to incorporate the rear break into your everyday riding.  Riding through heavy traffic is the most important time to use it, some people unfortunately don’t even know how.  Ask any professional racer on a racetrack how they use the rear break when they’re riding, they’ll use it to keep the front wheel on the floor.  That way it gets powered down to the rear, we’re going to use the rear break to keep the wheel up.  But it doesn’t involve anything more than dragging the rear break for the entire wheelie, applying more or less pressure to raise or lower the front wheel.

Having said that, take a look and see how it goes, start small.  Just remember, start small.  Too much too soon means you get hurt.”

- END -

How to do wheelie seat stander. This is one part of ‘Trick Tip’s and How to Wheelie’, from CRAZY IN SEATTLE trick tips with J-boogie, posted by clickproductions

“Hey this is J-Boogie in Seattle and I’m going to show you how to do a free standing wheelie.  All you stunt riding fans, fanatics and foes out there, this is the basic stunt from what I learned to step up to all my technical tricks.  So this is the bread and butter of the beginning.

(Demonstration)

First things first, with the free standing wheelie, I ride my RPM between 3,500-4,500 RPM; pointer finger on the clutch, middle finger on the hand break, RPMs coming at 3,500-4,500.

I always cover my clutch, that’s my safety zone so I don’t get crazy or out of control, I got the clutch to save my skin.  You always want to cover your break, that’s a given to stunt riding.  Pretty much what makes the stunt is that rear break.  So if you have a hand break, always keep a finger on the hand break.  I use my middle finger and I always keep my pointer on the clutch.

(Demonstration)

I start the seat-stander with knees bent, bodies tucked into the bike.  As soon as I clutch up and get close to balance point I straighten my legs out.  It’s more of the key to riding a smooth seat-stander wheelie is having nice straight legs; you don’t want to ride it with bent knees because it kind of throws you off balance or you wobble.  With straight legs you can control the bike in a straight line and steer it all along the parking lot.  Throttle control, you want to have a steady wrist, no throttle stopping.  You want to have a wrist like you’re turning on a real [inaudible 00:01:48] button, just nice, smooth rolling movement.”

A very nice (first person) guide to how to wheelie a supermoto, performed on DRZ400 by ktmforum, on a ‘closed course’. Stresses using only one finger on the clutch and brake. However, he doesnt use the clutch while shifting gears while the bike is up. He shows both popping the clutch and powering the bike up… through traffic.

“This is going to be my pathetic attempt at a little documentary.  I’d like to call it a tutorial but I’m not really teaching anybody.  I don’t claim to be the best that’s for sure, but I do alright sometimes.

So I’m just going to show everybody what I do.  This is the bike, it’s a ’05 Suzuki DRZ 400 SM.  It’s in great shape, hardly ever ride it actually.  Hopefully by the time this thing is done it would still be in great shape.  Let’s see if I can explain a little bit about the technique I use before we actually get moving here.

One finger, the one finger on the clutch, one finger on the break, it’s just how I ride all the time.  I’ve changed the clutch lever, you can see it’s an ASV clutch lever.  The reason I like this lever, for one it folds away.  For two, it’s adjustable.  The stock lever, you can see my gloves, I had to cut down the plastic.  I usually use the finger, pull the clutch, release the clutch.  When the plastic was on there, and the stock lever it used to hit on that and I never got enough release.  Now I get enough, and you may have the same problem.

Anyway, always remember, cover the rear break.  Give this a couple of shots, do what I do.

(Demonstration)

Like I say, with one finger, cover the rear break.  That’s a [inaudible 00:02:43], so I’ll take it easy for a little bit there.  Like I said, that was sucked into fourth gear, I clutched it to second, shift through third, shift through fourth.  Don’t use any clutch on shifts while the wheel is up.  There’s a little bit too much traffic in here, I don’t know what I’m going to do about this.  Let’s see what happens when I get down to the [inaudible 00:03:15].

Now as I said earlier I don’t really ride this bike that much.  It actually has 1,860 miles on it.  [inaudible 00:03:28].  This seems to be the one that everybody has the most questions with about on how to wheelie so that’s why I’m using this one.

(Demonstration)

I’m going on the third gear here.  Obviously you can just hammer it while I’m taking a stand up.

(Demonstration)

That was first to fifth gear.  This is the throttle, bring on to fourth, down to third.  I was pulling it up to third going to fifth.  I actually have to break there for a second.  I’m down to second just so you could see how my fingers work there.  You could see how I shift fifth and fourth and release, it’s all timing.  [inaudible 00:05:42] is they don’t understand that all you’re doing is releasing the clutch – or maybe I should say pulling the clutch in or whatever.  Let’s the RPMs go so the motor gets into its power range and pump the clutch.  What you’re not doing is pulling the clutch and then releasing.

Alright, we’re coming up to a nice section of road here, it’s up road, it’s pretty sweet, up roads are easy.

(Demonstration)

As I was saying, I’m pulling the clutch, throttle, let the clutch out, it’s all in one motion – if you understanding what I’m saying.  This is my favorite section of the road.  I’m giving traffic a little time to clear out here.  It’s nice and straight with really nothing on the sides of it.  I’ve always said cover your rear break.  Once you bring down the clutch, first gear, second gear, kind of like [inaudible 00:07:46].

(Demonstration)

Third gear, and fourth gear, fifth gear.  Just by listening to how the motion is, how the engine sounds, you’ll be able to realize how the timing goes.

(Demonstration)

What you’ll notice once you become more comfortable around the bike.  A lot of times when I’m doing this and I’m on my street bikes, I notice what the odometer says, sometimes I’ll see the speedometer.  It’s easy to look at it on the video, but when you’re doing it on real time it’s really different.

The truth is there’s a hundred things I’ve missed.  But if you pay attention to the sounds, the speed, of the gears as I was trying to pull them out, just being observant you’ll get some ideas.  It’s always easier to pull out when you’re standing too.  I don’t really like to stand because I change shifts when I’m standing, a lot of times I always carry the gear out.”

- END -

A fairly comprehensive series of video tutorials on how to ride wheelies, by professional stunter, Jared Cummings.

Clutching up wheelies

“Hi, my name is Jared Cummings.  I’m here with Expert Village.  We’re talking about how we wheelie.

All right, now we’re going to be talking about clutching it up, or the clutch wheelie.  It’s the basic principle of the power wheelie, except we’re going to be using our clutch at the same time.  So, instead of riding up, easing off, leaning forward, and cracking it back open, what we’re going to do is we’re going to have our one finger covering the clutch and what you’re going to do is you’re going to bring it up to about seven RPMs, you’re going to just slip the clutch, and that’s basically pulling it in just enough to release the clutch.  Give it gas up to about eleven, twelve RPMs, and drop the clutch.  You’re going to let it drop back out.

So, one more time, we’re going to go through it.  You’re going to bring it up to about seven RPMs, you’re going to slip the clutch, give it gas, drop your arms, and snap back.  Now, it’s all going to be in one motion.  So it’s going to be a little bit quicker.  So you’re going to go up, slip, drop, and pull back.

One thing you want to think about – when you’re pulling it back, it’s much like a bicycle.  When you’re doing a wheelie and you’re pedalling, you’re going to pedal it real hard, give it that extra oomph, and you’re going to snap back on your handlebars and that’s what’s going to bring it up.

It’s not all just the power, because you’re relying on just the power, you’re going to run out of your RPMs before you get to your balance point.  So you’ve really got to make sure that you’re always going to snap it up, and that it makes it a little bit more consistent, too, every single time.”

Starting Out by Doing Small Wheelies

“All right, whenever we practice wheelies, we’re never just going, jumping on the bike and cracking it up and bringing it up to 12 o’clock every single time.  If we’re learning a new wheelie, we always start small.  You always work your way up.  So you’re going to start with bringing it up about two inches, three inches, four inches, and just be comfortable with it.  So, when we’re going out there to practice, we’re just going to practice nice and small, bringing it up, and bringing it back down.  Bring it up a little bit higher and bring it back down until we’re comfortable with that same motion every single time bringing it back up and back down, and then we can start bringing it up a little bit higher to where we’re more comfortable holding it up.

So we don’t want to just overpower ourselves because that could cause us to crash.  So we just want to work within our abilities, work within our comfort zone, and we’ll work from there.”

Standup Wheelies Tips

“The stand-up wheelie has a bunch of different variations.  You can go ahead and stand up on either your front two pegs, like this.  You can do one in the front and one in the back – it’s moving your left foot to the back peg here, but leaving your right foot covering the brake on this side.  So you’re going to be holding this position.

You can also do where you have both feet on the back pegs.  This one is not as safe because you’re really not covering your back brake at this point, unless you have a rear handbrake on your actual hand right here – on your left hand side.  You can mount those up there.  But we don’t have one on bike.  So, we’re going ahead and just stick with a couple of different variations where we have our back foot covered with that brake.

The other variation is where you have your one foot planted on the back of your seat, like this, and the other foot covering our rear brake like that.  There’s one more where you go ahead and put your foot in the 12-bar here, right on that 12-bar.  Then you bring it up.  Again, your foot is covering your back brake right here.”

Twelve O’clock Bar Motorcycle Wheelies

“All right, now we’re going to be talking about the twelve o’clock wheelie.  Over here, we have my bike sit up on the back end on the 12-bar.  As you can see, it’s pretty stable up here right now.  This is what it’s going to be doing when we hit the tail while we’re actually doing the wheelie.

Now, there are a couple of different variations in doing this wheelie, too.  What you can do is you can always, again, put your foot in the 12-br here, and you can have your foot covering the brake because once you’re at this point, we’re going to need to be able to hit our rear brake, because that’s the only this that’s going to bring us back down again.

Letting off our gas and engine braking is not really going to work enough to bring it back down to where we need to be.  So we’ve always got to have that foot now covering that back brake, unless, like I said before, we have that rear hand brake on our finger over here, on our left hand.

The other variation is foot in your back seat, other foot right here covering that back brake.  You can be standing up here.  You can be standing down below.  Just, however you’re comfortable doing your wheelie right there.

The other one, which we are going to see later on today, is we’re going to have our foot on our back peg over here, and we’re going to have our foot up here like this.  This allows us to keep our legs locked out and our arms locked out if we want to be back here or pull it in a little bit closer to the bike, we’ll be able to hit that back brake pretty easy.”

Proper Motorcycle’s Sprocket and Chain Set Up to pop a wheelie.

“All right, now we’re going to talk about the sprockets we’re using.  My sprocket right here is a Vortex 56527 sprocket.  The sprockets you can use vary from when you’re just riding normal to when you’re stunting or racing or zero to 60.  We have a big sprocket on here for the stunting.  It gives us the ability to go a lot slower in our wheelies with a lot more control.  This particular sprocket will take about 35 to 40 miles off the top end of my bike right here.  But I’m going to use it for racing so I’m not too worried about that.

If you want to keep a street bike and a stunt bike at the same time, and still want power, you can do the 520 conversion.  You can drop one down in the front and two up in the back, and that’ll give you a pretty good amount of power there.  But I went eleven up in the back for my stock to give me a lot more power in my lower gears there.  I’m using a 530 chain over here because my sprocket is a 527.  The stock sprocket for this bike is a 525.

The difference here is actually just the width of the sprocket itself.  So, a 525 is going to be a little bit smaller than a 527 because we have a 527 chain.  The 525 chain will work on it.  So we need to get a 530 chain, link it through here, for our new sprocket.”

Proper Motorcycle Tire Pressure for Doing Wheelies

“All right, now we’re going to go ahead and talk about air pressure in our bike.  The tire pressure that we’re going to run on our back tire is going to be a lot lower than our stock or racing pressure.  If we’re running 32 PSI on our bike, what’s going to happen is we’re going to have a very, very narrow area for us to balance on our bike.

So, when we lower our bike to about 28 it will give us a little bit more space on our actual balance point on the tire.  When we go down to about 15, it will give us that much width on our bike tire to be balancing on and that’s going to be a lot more stable when we’re going here, and it’s not going to wobble as much so we don’t have to control it.  It’ll just balance right there all the time.

The front tire we’re going to keep at about 30 PSI because we’re going to be doing some stoppies here.  Should we ever do some stoppies or anything like that, we don’t want our tire flat.  We want to keep a little bit more pressure on that front tire.  So we’re not going to lower that one down.  We’re going to keep that one about 30-32 PSI.

Right now, we’re at 31 so I’m going to lower it down to about 15 here.  That should be about perfect.  Good.  I like to keep it closer as I always ride so it’s consistent every single time. Even if it’s a couple pounds of pressure off, it can really make a difference in your riding.  So if you’re going to be riding fast or such, you’re going to want more PSI.  If you’re going to be doing second gear wheelies, third gear wheelies, high chairs or something like that, you’re going to want a little bit more pressure in that back tire.

But we’re going to be doing some slow stuff today, so we’re going to lower it to about 15.”

A roadside video tutorial for the beginner, which teaches how to perform clutch wheelies, by a rider who is learning how to wheelie himself. Split screen shows you different shots, originally posted on youtube by downshift83

“HI ladies in gentlemen, I’m in a halfway discrete location where I pulled off the wheelie video, where I was practicing for myself and practicing with [inaudible 00:00:39].

I’m going to be going on the wheelie tips again, it’s going to be fairly quick because I want the time to be a 10-minute video.  So I’m going to go to beginner to I’d say intermediate and advanced.

So beginner is going to be in first gear, recommended first gear.  What you’re going to want to do is go through your gear and pop the clutch with one finger.  So if it doesn’t come up you’re gong to want to increase the throttle just a little bit more and see how it goes.  You’re going to be able to see it on both cameras, throttle and clutch motions.  So that’s probably what it’s going to look like to begin with, feeling ore throttle, it’s going to be a harder jump.  If it doesn’t work for you give it some more throttle, and it will continue to progress.

As you give it a more throttle you’re going to want to keep the – pretty much your only base on is going to be your clutch hand.  So if you pop the clutch the same way every time, it’s going to be pretty easy to figure out how much throttle you’re going to need depending on what speed you’re going at.  So, let’s try and increase the throttle a little bit more.  You’ll start feeing the front wheel come up just slightly.  A little bit more – now that’s a lot of bit more than what you would normally be used to.

If you don’t get it just go slow and increase your throttle inputs just slightly, you don’t want to increase it a lot.  So a good way to gauge that is also by your gauge cluster.  Let’s say you’ll see that you’re going to pop it at 6,000 RPMs or 8,000 or 9,000, 10,000 or whatever.  You don’t want to go that high, but I’m using that as a “for instance.”  But that’s also going to depend on how hard or how far back you’ve cranked on your throttle.  So that’s going to pretty much depend on everything.

(Demonstration)

Also another thing is you’re going to want to slow down every time when you’re restarting your wheelies.  If you don’t slow down you’re not going to have a good enough baseline, so you’ll be continually trying to get more RPMs, get more RPMs to bring the front end up.  So this is for just popping the clutch.  I don’t do any throttle chopping to get the front end up on power wheelies or whatever.  But that’s just preference, I feel that the clutch standing up is safer.

So let’s give some more throttle, this should be somewhat intermediate in first gear which I only recommend for 600s, thousands you might want to put it in second.

(Demonstration)

Alright, now let’s do a second gear, these are all sit-downs if you’re watching the Go Pro.  These are all sit-down wheelies.  So second gear, now second gear is a little bit different – by the way, first gear I was leading the throttle in one position.  You’re going to have to give it more gas as you go on first gear.  Second gear is a little bit trickier, you’re going to want to hold in the clutch, give it throttle and then release clutch – you’ll see it on the Go Pros – and that will get the front end up.

(Demonstration)

Need I remind you that you should always cover the rear break, I came down fucking hard as shit.  So give it a throttle.  You’re going to want to modulate your throttle hand to be able to keep the front end up or drop it to come back down.  So that’s for second gear.  Now depending on the speed of your second gear, sit down, you’re going to want to give it a little pull back or a yank back.  I can give you a short demonstration on that, but I’m not going to be able to get up to a lot of speed here.  So the body motion is going to look pretty much like this (demonstration), you’re going to snap back to pull it up.  That’s if you want to go a little bit faster, first and second gear.

I am geared right now at a minus one plus two, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it in a normal gearing.  I learned how to wheelie on normal gearing.  All the wheelie tips that I did before where all normal gearing, so all the wheelie tips for normal gearing.  Alright, second gear again, cover the rear break.

(Demonstration)

Alright, and let’s go over some stand-ups.  Stand-up is something you’re going to be using on long straightaways.  You’re going to want to drop the peg, cover the rear break, stand up, bring the foot back, and do it just like you would do a second gear clutch up.

(Demonstration)

But that was in second gear, I can do the stand-ups in third.  I don’t think I was able to get in stock gear, I don’t remember if I was able to do it or not.  So, pretty much you just want to learn slow.

(Demonstration)

Now finding your balance point is a nice, tricky subject.  Finding the balance point is all you, I can’t tell you how to do it.  You just have to get out there and practice, but you got to be very careful on how you do it.

So second gear, I’m going to shoot for a balance point, but I can’t promise anything.  You’ll be able to hold the RPMs in pretty much the same position once you find balance point.  Make sure that when you wham that your bars are straight.

(Demonstration)

I’ll show the other video when I was doing the wheelie practices on this road with Nick to show the little bounce effect that you’re going to want to do for the wheelies.  I’ll do I guess a slow motion clip of it or something.  But you’re going to want to thrust your weight down on your rear feet right as you’re popping the clutch.  Let’s try it again.

(Demonstration)

As you get more advanced and stuff like that and you learn your bike, you can do it right off the stoplights in first gear.  It’s kind of fun, you just see people like, “Holly crap.”

(Demonstration)

Now you see the bike swaying back and forth, that’s going to happen with normal tire pressure which is what I’m at now.  If you got a normal tire pressure it gets your balance a little bit easier, and better balance is also good with acceleration.  If you’re accelerating and you continue to accelerate, your bike is more likely to stand a straight line.”

Wheelie Tips (Part 1)

“I’m downshift 83 here.  Today, I looked at the videos that I have up on YouTube and I noticed something.  The people that watch my videos seem to be looking towards like pointers and tips.  I’ve got more views for my counterbalancing than downshifting than I do almost anything else.

So today, I’m going to talk about wheelie tips.  Now I’m learning wheelies myself, so I thought it might be helpful to share some pointers that I might have for you.  Before you do anything, you want to be sure that you’ve got a clear, open road or a parking lot or something that you’re able to do these wheelies in without hurting anybody or causing any damage to anything.  I’ve chosen this road which I use to do a high speed run in a couple other videos ago.

Basically I started trying to do wheelies about a month ago, and just recently I’ve been getting better at them.  I’m going to add a video in the link description over there that helped me out to start wheelies up.  It basically it was an instructional by – I think it was MCN, Motorcycle something or another.  It’s like a British or European kind of channel on YouTube.  But I’ll have that on this description over there on the right.

But what you want to do is you want to always start off slow.  I was starting off with letting it hit about 9,000 RPMs and then I pop the clutch.  Now for this bike, I’m on a 2008 VX6R.  It’s been discussed on the forums that you cannot do power wheelies depending on, I don’t know, weight, size, height.  Stuff like that.  But most people cannot do power wheelies, like just wide open throttle.  It’s almost impossible for most of the people on this bike.  I’ve tried it myself and I can’t do it just on power alone.  So I’ve had to learn to clutch it up, which honestly is less scary than wide open throttle because it’s more controllable, you can just let go of the throttle when you come back down.  While on the other one you’re already doing 85 miles an hour at the top of your first gear.  So for this one it’s a little bit easier.

I’ve learned recently that I can pop it at about 5,000 or 6,000 RPMs, and that’s with almost wide open throttle.  You have to kind of balance your throttle and your clutch to be able to pull wheelies off.  You want to make sure that your tires are warm so they grip, just little stuff like that.  But in this case, let’s see if I can do it.  I haven’t practiced at all for awhile.

Warm up the tires a little bit.  But I’m in first gear, it’s quite simple.  I’m going to start off slow.  I’m going to have my break covered by my foot just in case I go too high or I go 12 o’clock then I’m going to want to set it back down.  Let’s give it a shot.

(Demonstration)

Just something simple to start, you don’t want to go too high or too fast, too far.  I don’t think I broke 30 miles an hour on that.  But what you’re going to do is once you get to your power band range, you’re going to kind of blip the clutch.  It looks kind of like this.

(Demonstration)

Kind of like that.  Now it’s going to feel weird at first and you’re going to get the ‘balls in your stomach” feeling the first time you do it, high enough at least to get a good feeling for it.  It’s a lot of play with the throttle hand and your clutch hand.  It’s a lot of play.  So, let’s try it again.

(Demonstration)

That didn’t look good.  That was a little better.  I popped that at 5,000 RPMs.  Now I found that you need to hit your balance point pretty quick for you to be able to hold a good wheelie.  I found that my balance point on this bike is 6,000 RPMs at a pop, at almost wide open throttle.  Now when I first learned it, I was doing two-thirds throttle up to 9,000 RPMs and then popping the clutch.  I didn’t like that because I was going too fast.  I want to be able to do it fairly quickly from like a dead stop.  So what you want to do is be able to learn your bike, learn your RPMs.  You want to be extremely comfortable with your bike before you attempt to do anything like this.

Okay, let’s try it again.  I’m going about 18 miles an hour at 3,500 and then I’m going to bring it 6,000 and pop the clutch.

(Demonstration)

That’s why you got to have warmed up tires, my tire just spun on it.  You got to have warm tires.  Alright, let’s try it again.  Just continually practice, just slow down and do it all over again.

(Demonstration)

Now some people think that you need to be an experienced rider to do this kind of stuff.  I’ve been riding since April, and it’s August something?  That’s four months that I’ve only been riding, ever.  I’m already doing wheelies and those dragging knee – well, almost.  It’s coming close.  You just want to be able to know your bike, you have to know your limits and basically just be safe when you’re doing it; like I’m not doing this out of town, that’d be suicide here in Italy.

(Demonstration)

Let’s try another one.  But it’s all about practice, it’s about finding that balancing point.  Like I said earlier, your balance point when you’re standing up it’s going to be something like this.  But when you’re going, it depends on where you’re at and how fast you’re going.  But you’ll be able to feel the balance point.  Your pure balance point is when you’re able to let go of the throttle completely and you’ll just stay there.  It’s a lot of feeling for that kind of situation.

People are also worried about the clutch and stuff like that when you’re doing these wheelies.  I’m telling you, stunters use the stock clutch and they can still get 12,000 miles out of their bike, and they do hundreds of wheelies a day.  So you don’t really need to worry too much about your clutch, especially on the VX6R where we had the slipper clutch stock.  It’s a great clutch to use.  Another worry is forks; as long as you don’t come down seriously hard you shouldn’t worry about your fork too much because you’ll be pulling away so you’re still accelerating through your wheelie to where you can just land fairly soft.  But you always want to cover the break, make sure that you pump it and it’s working.  Alright, here we go.

(Demonstration)

See what I did there?  I came up a little bit too quick for my comfort, so I just shut off the throttle and I came down.  That hurts.”

Wheelie Tips (Part 2): 2nd Gear Clutch up

“What’s going on everybody downshift 83?  Back again, I’ve gotten a lot of view for the motorcycle wheelie tips and the motorcycle wheelie progress.  Now where I’m at now in my motorcycling wheeling is better than of course the motorcycle wheelie tips and the wheelie progress videos that I’ve done.

Just yesterday I learned how to pop up in second gear.  Let me tell you what, that’s a completely different ballgame, at least with this bike it is.  I had to do something completely different with the throttle and clutch situation.  What I was doing before was I was rolling on a throttle, leaving it in a certain position and then popping the clutch.  That was in first gear.  That was my tip.  Now I wasn’t getting like that great of wheelies, but you got to learn your balance point once you get there, and your balance point is pretty high.

But for second gear wheelies you got to do something completely different, and I better go I got a tractor coming up.  But for second gears wheelies, it changes the whole subject.  You got to clutch, roll on the throttle and then release clutch all in one quick motion.  If you do that on first gear you’re going to loop your bike, so I don’t recommend doing that.  So I guess I’m going to do another tips video I guess?  I guess that’s what you could call it, is another tips video.

It’s odd seeing cars on this street though, it’s really odd actually.  I don’t see them too often.  But as you can see I’m back on my infamous straightaway.  I love this place, it’s absolutely great.  It gives me just about enough space to do what I got to do and have some fun.  I’ll wait for everybody just so I don’t have them call the cops on me.  All these are farmers, so I don’t want to disrupt their good nature and fund and whatever they’re doing, growing these oranges.  Most of them seem to just actually stand out here and watch me do some of these, probably hoping that I crash. (laughs)

Let’s see if I can get a good wheelie in first gear, show you maybe the progress that I’ve made a little bit.  I don’t know if I can get a good one on two, but we’ll see.  I’ve actually been popping a lot lower in speed.  The last time I was popping at about 4,000 RPMs, I can pop it at like 3,000 or start rolling on in 3,000 and then just popping it so I’ll be like going this fast.  Let’s try it out.

(Demonstration)

So that’s getting close to your balance point, you get a lot higher.  I think when started doing it, it was like – let’s see if I can do how shitty I was doing when I first started.

(Demonstration)

That was probably what I was doing when I did the first video tips.  Now after progressing it’s more like…

(Demonstration)

I know I got better wheelies in the progressing videos than that too.  But the reason why I wanted to do second gear wheelies was I was running out of RPMs in first gear.  I was ripping through them, I wasn’t actually finding the balance point, I had to actually rip all the way through the RPM range.  I did the video tips and then I did the progressing, and I still wasn’t hitting my balance point.  I still don’t like to, it feels weird.  But like I said first gear I ring it all the way out.  So that’s why I wanted to try second gear.  It’s a lot easier and I can go a little bit longer because I still haven’t gotten comfortable with getting my true balance point.

That’s the difference between the first gear wheelie and the second.  I can go longer without running out the RPMs and ringing them all high and stuff.  So that’s kind of the difference between the first gear wheelie and a second gear wheelie.

So for a first gear wheelie, I don’t know, it’s different for everybody.  But for me, I roll on the throttle and then I pop the clutch, mostly leave it in that throttle position.  Then when I want to come down I shut it off or if I go too high or too fast I just shut it off.

Second gear wheelie, I’m going at 30, I hold the clutch, bring down the throttle, pop the clutch.  That’s really, really hard on the throttle.  I’m like I think I’m at full throttle for that.  When I’m doing the first gear wheelie I’m not doing really full throttle.  I don’t know, it’s all about feel, you got to feel it.  I don’t know what exactly area I’m at on throttle position.  But for a second gear wheelie I’m almost at full throttle, at least that’s what it feels like.  So first gear wheelie, rolling on it, and then pop.

(Demonstration)

Wind man, I got head wind so it’s kind of like shifting me back and forth.  Alright, first gear wheelie is what that was.  Second gear wheelie I’m going to be in the mid-30’s, pull the clutch in, yank on the throttle, release the clutch all in one quick motion.

(Demonstration)

If you’re practicing always bring your RPM range back down, always bring your RPM range back down to – watch this.

(Demonstration)

I used to be that kid in that window (laughs).  I always wanted to see a motorcycle do something.  I’ll give him something else (laughs).  I love that.  Thank you all for watching my videos, please rate and comment.  Of course I always do video requests.  Thanks guys, take it easy.”

Wheelie Tips (Part 3)

“What’s going on everybody?  Downshift to 83 back again.  I think today I’m going to do a part three for my motorcycle wheelie tips.  I had a lot of people ask me for more videos on this subject, so I’m going to see what I can do.

So where I left off, I was doing second gear clutch-ups, talking about that I’m popping at 30 miles an hour or so.  I found that a little it difficult.  I can now do clutch-ups that are lower RPM in second gear, and I found that the power band will carry it a lot better if I start at a lower speed.  However, I used another YouTube video to be able to help me do a second gear clutch-up at a higher speed.  What I do is I’m riding, I’m going to get low and then I’m going to pop all the way back.  I think it was – I don’t know, I’ll send the link in the video after I write of where I was.

I think anything over 35 I have to do that, otherwise I can just use clutch alone.  I had another person request what it looks like on the controls when I’m actually riding.  I don’t know if I can actually do that but I’m going to try and use my peripherals to look forward while I’m looking at the hand when I pop a wheelie.  I can’t guarantee it will come out good, but at least you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about.  So I’m going to look at my hand, I’m going to do it in first gear, I’m going to roll on the throttle a little bit and then I’m going to pop the clutch.

(Demonstration)

I hope that came out okay.  I’ll see it when I start editing the film.  Now for the clutch hand…

(Demonstration)

I hope that shows you good enough what you’re actually going to be doing with your hands.  I got to look forward so I can’t really stay focused on my hands, sorry.  Now what I’ve come across is now that I’m doing wheelies longer, I start drifting off to either the left or the right.  It’s more depending on body position and wind.  But what I’ve learned to do is I’ve learned to steer it, sort of.  I’m not doing any stand up wheelies right now, I’m too much of a bitch to do it.  Eventually I’ll get there but not yet.  But what I do is basically when you’re in the wheelie you’re going to tuck down and you’re going to look through your fangs.  So either way, whichever way, you need to turn or whichever way you’re drifting towards, you need to get into that side of the bike to kind of counter that motion.  So, I’m going to do one over 35 miles an hour and see how that goes, second gear pop with a backward thrust.

(Demonstration)

Somebody asked me about third gear clutch-ups.  No, I’ve tried that, even with the rocking motion I don’t perceive me being able to do a third gear clutch-up.  Maybe a third gear roll on with a bounce, but I’m not doing any bouncing; 1) it looks ugly and 2) I’m not standing up yet.

(Demonstration)

Alright, let’s try one a little bit slower so I can show you what I’m talking about making it easier to pop it.  I’m going to do it at 20.  How’s that?  Twenty, give or take.

(Demonstration)

A lot easier to pop it.  Slow down a little bit.  Let’s try 17, I know I’ve done it at 17.  This is a really low RPM in second gear.

(Demonstration)

A little bit more throttle for that.  It will come up a lot quicker.  If you’re doing stand-ups, you’ll be able to get your balance point a lot quicker when you’re going slower.

(Demonstration)

I don’t know what the hell that was, I can’t read the time.  Just long as it doesn’t say “policia” I’m okay.

(Demonstration)

If you keep seeing me looking towards the trees, my backpack’s there and I have a funny story about that.  I was practicing wheelies earlier on, maybe about a month or so ago, and I was up at the top of that hill and I saw a car down here.  I was like, “That’s weird” because it was just parked, it wasn’t going anywhere.  So I’m on my way back and I see this car take off and I’m like, “What the fuck?”  I’m like I know that dude didn’t just take my backpack.  So what I did, I mean I was practicing wheelies but I know how to launch my bike and go.  I took off after him.  It took me like about a minute to catch up.  He was in an M5 and he was bolting.  I still caught him.  But I mean usually somebody with a motorcycle comes up next to you, looks straight at you and just start pointing at you, he’ll scare the crap out of you no matter who you are.  I was wearing my icon helmet.  So I had my face shield down and I have the Mohawk thing going on, the dude is like looking at me like he’s just seen a ghost.

(Demonstration)

I’m not an expert, I can’t get a wheelie every time.  Give me a break.  Expert Village, that’s what it was, I remembered.  (laughs)  That’s where I got the leaning from or the body shifting, it was Expert Village.  I don’t like their videos because they’re not that in detail, but it does give you some help.  Neutral.  It’s nice up here.

(Demonstration)

I think I’m starting to learn how to shift through those things.  A red line, second gear on that. (laughs)  I was like, I don’t know, 103?  Kind of freaky especially when a bug hits you right in the face.  That’s the only way I can get a good sound quality is if I leave the visor open.  So I’m wearing sunglasses and I still caught one right in the nose.

Alright guys, it’s been a great video.  Please keep sending video requests and keep watching my videos, I do this stuff for you guys.  Alright, you all take it easy.”

Wheelie Tips (Part 4) Stand-ups

“What’s going on friends and subscribers? Downshift83 is here.  If you’re not a subscriber, go ahead and click Subscribe over there.  This is going to be more wheelies video – another one.  I had a couple of requests now to do stand-up wheelies.  I finally just got the last thing that I needed to be able to perform this.

There are three things that you need to perform stand-up wheelies -one, a bike; two, real passion for pegs; and three, you need some balls.  So I finally got the balls to do this [expletive].  Let’s do a practice run before I start teaching this [expletive].  Yup, good practice run.

All right, the steps for being able to do these wheelies.  When you stand up, you’re going to stand up on both pegs that you use.  Then, you’re going to shift your left leg back to the rear passenger peg.  Gripping your tank with your knees and then perform just like you do in the second-gear clutch up described in my second-gear clutch up video.  It’s the exact same way.  You’re just using a lot less throttle and more thrust backwards.

Let’s try it again.  Always cover your rear brake on this because you’ll get a lot higher to the balancing point than you are on your seat down, at least I am.  [inaudible 00:02:30] because I’m standing up.  I don’t know.  But I am performing this in second gear.

The second gear is the most controllable, I guess you could say.  So, yes, it’s more controllable.  I’m getting close in third gear because I know somebody asked me that.  But, yes, you can perform stand-up wheelies in third gear because you got a lot more weight to thrust backwards.  That’s just going to bring your bike up and you’re going to be able to use a lot less throttle when you’re standing up because most of your weight is going to be on your pegs and then the rear pegs are here.  Make sure that it is always down Otherwise, it’s not going to be there for you to step down when you [stand in] [ph 00:03:17].

[Motorcyclist performs the stand-up wheelie approaching the camera]

Now, when you’re doing stand-ups, you’ve got a seven degree leeway from hitting your axle balance point to like seven degrees each way.  I don’t recommend going seven degrees backwards but you have a seven degree leeway to be able to cruise at the same speed.   So you don’t actually have to be actually on your perfect balance point.  You have about seven degrees to play with.

[Motorcyclist performs the stand-up wheelie going away from the camera]

[inaudible 00:04:13] went over.  You’re going to stand up on both of your pegs.  Then you’re going to shift your left leg back to your rear peg.  When you’re standing, you’re going to grip your tank with your knees.  You’ll be standing here over your bike.  You’re going to clutch it up in second gear.  Then, cover your rear brake.  After that, it’s all about having fun.

Like I said, it took me one day.  You saw how it was for my second-gear clutch ups.  You need to be proficient at those before you attempt this because you’re using a lot of the same skills in doing this as it was for the secondary clutch ups.  The only difference is you’re not sitting down.  And your balance point is a lot easier to get to.”

[Motorcyclist performs the stand-up wheelie approaching the camera]

- END -