Panic comes when a situation exceeds our experience and we have ran exhausted our bag of tricks. There are limits with every outfit. There are limits to everyone's skill envelope. Tarka makes some good points. Taking a class is not a bad idea. Reading things that have been written in this thread is a good thing also. However it will be in the practice after either of these things that thing swill begin to come together. In my previous post I stated that your evaluation of where you went wrong was dead on. THAT means a lot! Consider the ' What If's ' related to what happened what could have happened what could have been done or not done regarding what happened. Also maybe consider the ' What If's ' related to different types of outfits other than what you have. Lighter sidecar? Less rubber on the road. Less experience? Etc etc. Some athletes use what has been called 'imaging'. It is imagining certain situations and what or how to react to them. This can be done as experience grows with a sidecar outfit also. Bad images can be produced by bad experiences if we want to view them that way....or we can evaluate the bad experience as you have done in an effort to see what we may have been able to do differently and turn it into a learning experience. Like you say at the end of your posts "Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue". Good way to look at things. We are all learning and it does take patience.
Slightly off topic I know since this thread is called "going in too hot"......but this guy kinda came out too hot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHHtuemhxkE
I learned a bit more today, I've been to a parking lot and doing some rt circles and straight lines car in the air about everyday. Tonight the woman friend and I headed out(supper ride) I took her and dog to parking lot for some circles she's a lite wt her and dog with jacket and helmet 150-60ish max.It was easy to put her up and do rt circle just a very hard rt, not so easy on the road every time I got a sharp right I tried to pick her up mostly couldn't do it easily(I'm no Dana). My flirtation with diaster last Fri was a total panic on my part, we were working but car was down.It was closing the throttle and stabbing the rear brake. Hell it's a left turn tactic, if you don't get enough rotation from closing the throttle while setting up a left add a little rear brake. A supper ride is usually a minimum of 90 miles I streched it out to 140 round trip to practice the rts.Claude you build a really nice stable rig, it's damned hard to get rig with lite passenger into the air with spirited riding that's sane.I'm sure Tarka and Dana could do it but I'm not that skilled yet,it woud seem Tarka's observation of my confidence passed my skill level and left it for dead was very accurate.DB I loved spirited riding on 2 wheels and was very good at it much better than I am with a chair, haven't been in any real trouble except the occasional speeding ticket in awhile, this sidecar stuff is completely different but we'll get it.DB
You don't have a sidecar brake? Rear brake on mine with the rear ans sidecar linked together drags the car and turns me right.
In repose to the GOOD sidecar brake comment by Bobmw I think that could possibly be a good topic for a different thread. The discussion here may really confuse things as it does have a lot of variables. Sidecar braking systems and what they do or do not do vary quite a bit depending on many factors including the sidecar itself. VARIABLES RELATED TO BRAKES ON SIDECAR: HOW THEY ARE PLUMBED IN, WHERE THEY ARE PLUMBED IN, WHETHER THEY ARE PLUMBED IN OR A SELFCONTAINED SYSTEM, HOW HEAVY OR LIGHT THE SIDECAR IS, HOW LARGE THE SIDECAR IS RELATED TO THE BIKE, SIZE OF SIDECAR TIRE COMPARED TO BIKE AND SO FORTH. Anyone want to begin a thread related to sidecar brakes and how they affect handling on various outfits with various setups?
The wife found out what happens this weekend when you are going into a corner to hot and you lock up the rear brake . She rolled the sidecar over on to her . Lucky she has no injuries only the bike got a bit bashed around . The road was very sandy so that helped a lot with no injuries . One very lucky lady Cheers Ian
BUMP, AGAIN. A bump, after DRONE's suggestion yesterday [ #23, "Jersybiker gets a Ural" / 2014 Nov 16th ] ~ I went and re-read this thread. Bit long, but well worth reading the thread, for stimulating the brain cells and re-thinking this important topic . . . where getting it wrong can easily be fatal. There's no doubt about it. Delightful as a sidecar outfit is, for cruising in a straight line . . . it has devilishly counter-intuitive handling in corners especially involving some braking. And that applies 20 times over, when cornering at the limit ( here, turning towards the car : as the OP is discussing ) . The driver is like the pilot of a small plane ~ it's not like the intuitive learning-by-experience on a bicycle ~ rather, it takes a good foundation of flight theory topped up with a large dollop of air-hours of practice on that particular plane model/type, INCLUDING practising emergency procedures and knowing what you can & can't do, when operating just within the boundaries of the plane's flight envelope. And RE-READING this thread, shows that the "going in too hot" topic has only been 95% nailed down. ~ General handling has been discussed ( and body English, etcetera ). ~ It's agreed that the highest limit of cornering has been reached when the sidecar wheel is skimming the ground, completely unweighted. ( Talking bitumen or hard packed public roads here ~ not loose gravel or competition loam. ) # WHEN you find that you had misjudged it and are going in too hot, for that corner . . . you had better hope that you had previously placed yourself on the inside of your lane, so that you have a few feet of space to use, before you would cross into the oncoming lane . . . because whatever you do when at the cornering limit, will involve straightening your line a bit, so that you can slow some, and then tightening the corner ( at the new lower speed, which makes it possible to tighten! ) . And hoping those few feet will be enough. And that there's no SUV coming the other way who's clipping his apex of the corner. THE last 5% is the question of what options the cool calm & collected highly-skilled driver will CHOOSE to do, in the "emergency situation". Mandatory slowing WITH mandatory (unavoidable) veering [before tightening the line] seems to be the only first choice ~ that is the "First Parachute" used in this emergency. [ And it needs a skilled driver not to over-react and worsen the "minimum line" ~ and where better to practise, than on an absolutely empty 4-lane road . . . of which there are ever so many to be found !!! ] Patience please ! . . . after the above waffle, I'm now coming to the end-point :- which is . . . the SECOND PARACHUTE. A number of posts earlier here, had hinted/suggested that a second parachute might exist for the ultra-skilled driver [which ain't me!] . ~ That if the First Parachute looked like it wasn't likely to do the job (before Mr SUV's arrival) . . . then the cool and superbly ultra-skilled driver would quickly choose & activate Plan B . . . the Second Parachute i.e. he would smoothly fly the chair high and . . . somehow . . . tighten the cornering line tighter than was possible with the First Parachute method. And my point is : that Second Parachute does not exist. It is a VUM . . . a Vague Urban Myth. .
I assume that is a poem or just an elegant poetic story, either way, it brought my mind back to when I was a young man, half a century ago, as I was returning home in Conn, in an old Chevy station wagon, towing a D sedan race car (Abarth 1000) home from a SCCA regional race, up a mountain in the glorious summer sunshine. As I crested the peak, going down the opposite side of the mountain, too hot, into a dark cloud and into a long right sweeper turn, suddenly, hard rain, I wound up the drivers window and coming up the hill, in my lane (I believe it was a black Camaro) no sign he was going to swerve. I had no choice, I swerved to the left, no where else to go! Of course, towing a trailer, very wet road, torrential rain, no time to activate wipers, blind, in a spin, thousand foot drop to the left, I was going home to my maker! Then, just as fast, there was no motion, just the sound of light rain drops on the metal roof and sunshine through the windows. Baffled, I opened the drivers door and stepped out onto soft soggy earth. I just happened to spin off the mountain road where they had just constructed a scenic overlook parking area! And, with the trailer, we just fit! For some reason I was amazingly calm and surprised and happy I hadn't lost the car off the trailer. I never told my wife or anyone that story for many, many, years. Who would believe it?
Claude's a multi faceted being. Younz liked your story. po·em ˈpōəm,pōm/ noun noun: poem; plural noun: poems a piece of writing that partakes of the nature of both speech and song that is nearly always rhythmical, usually metaphorical, and often exhibits such formal elements as meter, rhyme, and stanzaic structure. synonyms: verse, rhyme, piece of poetry, song "Lydia saved every poem that Marshall wrote that year" something that arouses strong emotions because of its beauty. noun 1. a composition in verse, especially one that is characterized by a highly developed artistic form and by the use of heightened language and rhythm to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the subject. 2. composition that, though not in verse, is characterized by great beauty of language or expression: a prose poem from the Scriptures; a symphonic poem. 3. something having qualities that are suggestive of or likened to those of poetry: Marcel, that chicken cacciatore was an absolute poem. "you make a poem of riding downhill on your bike"
Dave...Hmmmm .... so this old former sprint and midget car racer turned sidecar nut is a poet? LOL. That article (poem) does depict some facts though that many will not experience and probably should not try to on most outfits. The technique of holding the front brake while under power in a turn toward the sidecar is, however, worth practicing as it 'confuses' ( for lack of a better word) the rear tire and does increase the slip angle of it which does Allow an increase in cornering speed while keeping the sidecar more stable.. Taken to an extreme a true drifting effect can take place when the slip angle is exceeded and rear traction is lost. ( oversteer) Hooking back up at the wrong time can be messy and very dangerous. So, sprint and midget racer or sports car racer, no matter, this is a technique that should not be taken lightly with a sidecar outfit and is not recommended if taken to the extreme.
Showed the owner of the Gus bus the front brake rear tire drift full opposite lock on a roundabout when he came to pick it up. He quite liked it. I can't wait to grow up and see what I'm gonna be .
I thought i was all grown up once and it was terribly boring so i decided to go back to being young and silly. Ride safe Flodder
I'm only grown up when I shop for clothes, and that's more like grown out! Frustrates the heck out of SWMBO!
