Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech BA unstable at low speed?

Hello, after a test ride on a new Rocket III the other week I started to look at the behavior of my BA with new eays!
The main difference (except the power of course) I found was how stable and easy to drive the Rocket III was at low speed. With my BA I experiance it very unstable from 0 to like 'walking speed'- the front wheel like to go in any direction except straight forward! Making driving in a traffic jam very nervous! As soon as speed picks up its stable as a rock. My question is if this behavior is built into the model or if it is something funny with my bike alone?
Hasse

i rode my buddies suzuki C50 and i could turn it around in the tightest of places, my BA is much harder to ride at slow speeds and tight slow tunrs compared to his or even a v star 1100. but at faster speeds i would not trade either of them

Frank

Hasse,
Not a problem, just the way the front ends are on the bikes. The rake makes them longer than a regular non-cruiser type bike and does make you pay attention in the 0-3mph range a lot more than a standard.

Bikes with their forks raked at more than around 30 degrees tend to be a bit wobbly at very low speeds. There are other factors in the design that come into play as well, but the Triumph twins are very well done in that respect. All else being equal, rake angles from around 26 to 30 degrees make a bike easier to manage at very low speeds, but not terribly stable at speed. 31 to 35 degrees make a bike hard to manage very slow, but they ride almost like they have an autopilot above 15 mph. Way back when, extreme choppers had up to 50 - 60 degrees of rake. It was a lot of fun watching those guys paddlefoot their bikes up to about 35 MPH and then miss turns because their bikes were too stable at speed and had to be coerced into turning.

And hey if all else fails, just keep your feet off the deck when you're in stop and go, that way you can be sure your ride won't be going down. I think I've got pretty good slow speed control of the Speedmaster, but there are still plenty of times when I'll just drop my feet rather than running the risk of dropping my bike in traffic.

Another thing that helps at very low (slow race) speeds is to remember that the rotating bits inside the engine can be used as gyros to help with stability. Unse a little bit of clutch and brake to gain some stability, then slip the clutch and run the engine up to maintain it with the gyroscopic forces.

Greybeard is correct...again.
Though a bit noisy, it works. Remember the "friction zone" lecture in your MSF course?

Palmer

Better tires would help. I've noticed a diiference when I added my Avons.

It's all about trail and rake. The TBA and SM are not exactly the nimblest machines at low speeds but track like a bike twice their weight on the go.

Glad to see this thread. As a relative newbie I thought it was just me. Was practicing in my kids' school parking lot for the MC license exam (been riding w/o one for a couple of months) and found I had a hard time not wobbling at the required speed. I've got a lot of practicing to do if I'm gonna pass the test on the BA. Don't have any problem out on the road, of course I've yet to encounter a series of cones eight feet apart that I have to slalom through.