Knee Down - Nonsense?

[mav617]

Hi All, I read a poll of bikers in PB recently that asked what percentage of riders got their knee down on a regular basis and something like 51% (and this PB, knee scraping loonies) responded by saying "Never - and neither did Mike Hailwood" so I wondered about riding styles and whether any of you guys have any theories on whether hanging off is a practical way to ride or is for poseurs only? I do hang off on occasion, but usually it's done when I'm consciously doing it, i.e. roundabouts when I give it a bit of opposite lock and then hang off to get round but most of my fast riding doesn't involve dragging my knee. So where do you fit:

1) Hanging off is a valid way to ride (titanium knee-sliders)
2) It can be useful when the alternative is a hedge/wall/lamp-post
3) Knees in to the tank, spine perpendicular to the seat at any angle

[boze]

if i tried to get ma knee down on the sr i would end up leaving half my skin on the road.....

[Andy M]

On the road on a modern bike I think it probably is nonsense, but each to their own. I move in the seat where things slip or if the bike has loads of power, but more off road style, back and forth, weight the outside peg etc.

The Bonnevilles stand scrapes first then the footpegs. The MZ puts the stand down as well, both when your knee is about a foot off the deck, so no chance of any antics with knee sliders there. Both the above and every bike I owned over 100cc would break every speed limit in the country, had rubber that (in the dry) would allow you to almost lay the thing down and non were capable of stopping in the visible distance on most roads if you took them to the point where you might need to lean off to corner at the best possible speed. There is also the question to me about the ability of a road rider to change direction, many roads having things like kerbs, lamp posts and changing surfaces, not gravel traps. If you hang off to the left and someone has left a skip or a dead sheep can you move right? You can if you you are central on the bike and know the limit. Obviously not a concern on a track where you set up for each corner, but to me a real issue on many roads where you have any chance of riding like this.

I'm therefore sort of glad that all those blokes wearing knee slides are making the scuff marks with a black and decker (or on tracks), it proves that while they might be daft enough to want to pretend they are Rossi on the road, they don't all want to end up in body bags and most might actually be riding to the road, not thinking it's the TT.

As a track skill I think the knee down approach is maybe easier to learn? You just take the same corner that the instructor knows 5 mph faster each time until your scraper touches? The alternative way involves finding the maximum speed/angle/slip and probably involves falling off? I know that the track day I did taught me a lot about adhesion (but not half as much as off road days), so perhaps we should all learn how to do it. It would sure help a few of the rice rocket muppets who'll pass you at 100 mph on a B road and then slow to walking pace at the first corner. After that, why do you need to?

My big dissapointment BTW was BMW twins, the stands scrape first there as well. Still, we had a good laugh with the power rangers at work mounting sliders a mate had used on a track on the engine bars! A few even believed it after I had the sidecar mounted and had done a bit of chair flying in the car park!!

Andy

[pigafetta]

I've never had my knee down in my life and I'll try not too unless its the only way out of a brown-trouser situation. I'm just never in that much of a hurry to get anywhere and there's usually somewhere that I need to be going that requires me to have my skin still attached when I arrive. I like to blow the cobwebs off occasionally but I'm pretty much a 'safe' kind of rider. Besides, I can't be treating every corner as an experiment to see if i can stay on, I can't afford to break my bike or myself. And I'm too scared. I know I'm a boring old fart but I reckon its best kept on the track.

I'd feel a bit of a tw*t walking round Saisbury's on a sunday afternoon in full racing leathers and knee sliders. doesn't seem to bother some folk though. Good luck to them.

Dave B

[guest27]

Horses for courses.  DT250 would not respond to hanging off like a monkey, Triton ditto, RD500 seemed happier with weight shifted inside - mind never had a knee dragging, but I did get the fairing / footrests etc of the RD down a few times without dropping it. 

Is it needed - probably not, but for a given speed your bike is more upright and thus all the physics etc are working in your favour for the wheels not to step out etc, and then if there is a hazard on the road you can always sit back up a bit and pull the bike down further etc and be at the same angle of lean as the spine inline guy in front, but more room for error.

Mind most plastic projectiles will go faster than the rider can and probably do not need the hanging off style.

There is a difference between hanging off and knee down mind - and to get your knee down you do not need to hang off far - just get the knee nice and poky out, shifting weight to the inside and thus the COG is a different thing.

I never had any troubles getting from side to side when 'making progress' on the RD and personally I feel more in contact with the bike / road with the weight through my feet rather than through my bum on the saddle - and being as legs are already loaded the movement is quicker to initiate than if sitting.

Monkey impressions were also needed on R80 BM - but that was to prevent bits of metal hitting the ground.

Agree that off road riding (of which I have not done anywhere near enough) is of excellent use in learning road riding skills.  Remember reading about a French instructor - back in the 90s - who was doing lock up cadence braking with his students.  His way of getting them to feel the bike was to kneel on the saddle (of your road bike) and then ride it at 30 mph on to grass and stop using the front brake only.  Apparently his students had brilliant feel within one day and very few dropped the bikes on the grass.  Later in the day when they were locking the front from 70 to 100 mph on the track they were fine - many of them not even realising that they had locked and unlocked the front so many times.

I guess this in not one to be tried at home?

R

[beeman]

The only times I have had my knees down is shortly after one or both tyres have decided to leave the road and shortly before I try to learn to avoid hitting anything solid etc.

 Maybe its because I don't use knee sliders that this happens!
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Or maybe its a lack of skill/common sense or my innate stupidity.

[guest27]

Or all of the above - it is the reason I fall off.

R

[MrFluffy]

Ive never had my knee down except when ive been falling off, I have however had my foot down a fair few times, when it goes pear shaped a mighty dab can save things if your quick enough and a few times ive been nursing a poorly ankle from booting the road at speed in a last ditch will try anything no matter how implausible to stay on manoever on diesel, but thankfull for not having gravel rash when it worked.
There used to be a bunch of us go out for a play of a weekend, some who could if the fancy took them get their knee down , some who didnt, we all seemed evenly matched despite the different styles and some of them raced. Sunday morning we used to go the local track and play motocross and trials together. We used to laugh at the posers with kneesliders with angle grinder marks on them, and if they got upset invite them out for a sunday jaunt.
I think its a racetrack only technique that you use when 10/10th on the limit permanently on smooth predictable surfaces, theres so much road furniture and poor surfaces and potholes and manhole covers in the real world to get stuck in that it should be kept for the track.

[guest27]

Foot down - have some nasty scars on some bike boots (maybe they have gone in the bin) where I got my foot caught under the RD5 on a loooonnnnggg corner which also tightened on me - was not so good having foot under bike as we went round - mind better than hitting the ditch.

(I have never had a knee down) - mind I do have a letter from Rupert Paul telliing me how to do it and how to make sliders out of gaffer tape and newspaper - that is how old it was.  He had met me a few weeks before and was at odds to ppint out that I could be going a darn sight slower and get a knee down - OR - I could have been making better progress and not have held the rest up.  Knee down and making progress in a corner are - it seems - different things.

Saving a slide on the knee - IS a MotoGP/WSB only thing though! - I tend to find curbs do a fine job of stopping the bike when the knee fails.. (ahem)

R

[Steve Lake]

it's all boiiocks as far as i'm concerned, done loads of track days on me roadgoing srx  and me trackbike, seem to make satisfactory progress. Was a guy there last year on a monster, begging the instructor to show him how to get his knee down, in the final session he managed it, with the whole of his arse hanging off and his knee sticking out so far i had a job getting past him....and god was he chuffed...daft i call it...If you want to see how 'knee down' really works look at the picture of Toseland on the back page of last weeks MCN..... knee feathering the track, but only sticking out from the fairing by a couple of inches.....lesson.....first get the bike down......the rest happens almost automatically.... and the knee seems to be used mainly by the race gods like rossi, toseland etc to haul the bike up as the front starts to wash out.....oh...and who is the hero who has ELBOW sliders...

[squirrelciv]

Never have got the knee down and never will. Most of my steering is done with the upper body dropping into the corner, chin leading the way sort of thing. Mind, riding a big trailie that's enough to move the C of G far enough for my turning needs :-)
Seen many a rocket jockey hanging off a perfectly vertical bike thinking himself a total Rossi mind. Gave me a laugh :-)

[guest7]

I bang my knee out occasionally on wet corners because of exactly why the racers do it, it alllows you to corner at a given speed with less of a lean angle. In the wet this is sometimes a very good thing.

However, on dry roads, I'm with the "Hailwood didn't do it" school of thought. I always think, well if he could set a TT lap record (in 79) of 114mph without leaning off, then I have a looooong way to go before I can go around saying I need to get my knee down.

Mind you it was in the process of trying this once that I parked a 400/4 in Pontypridd B&Q's car park. When i say parked, I mean horizontally and some distance from where I landed. Forgot about the the differential in grip between public road and private car park. It was all going swimmingly until I touched the car park tarmac.

GC

[hondamichael]

i never got my knee down , its maybe something to do with my
 old fashioned riding style or with the fact  i grew up on
moto cross bikes startet moto cross riding with the age of 5 ,
 so i always try to keep my upper body in a
90 degree angle to the road , means i push the bike
 into the corner and dont pull it .
so in my opinion knee down hang off is more for the race track
where you also can ride on the ideal line and without oncoming traffic
into the corner  then it makes sence , but on normal
roads its in my opinion just posing to be a racer and for showing off
 the scraped kneesliders and as mentioned you may hang on
the other side of the road while doing it so i just dont fancy my a...
 being the new "car mascot " , as i dont think i fit
right as a human" spirit of extasy"

[bullet350]

the whole hanging off the bike thing started in the 70's when some wes cooley and the rest were handed a 120bhp GS1000 and asked to get it round corners, fast.
these pig heavy four pots don't like bends so you have to muscle them round anyway you can. after that it all just carried on until the days of knee down.
i was at brands hatch on monday on my cb500. i ride in an old school style, moving my upper body a little and keeping my lower body still. i went round the outside and up the inside of 600s 750s and 1000s.
its all the proof i need that its mostly just a style (or should that be fashion?) and not any quicker.

350 bullet

[Steffan]

I am always dragging my knee on the Bullet. It acts likes a cats whiskers you know.....