How to Wheelie on a Motorcycle

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.”

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