21 Common Mistakes Made with Dirt Bikes - And How To Avoid Them

hey everybody I'm Kyle with dirtbike Channel today we're gonna be talking about 20 of the most common mistakes that people make in dirt bikes whether you're a beginning dirt bike rider or you're a veteran dirt bike rider and I got feedback for more than 200 people for this list now this isn't a list in any particular order but this is a very good list let's get into it alright guys let's start off with an easy one don't go out there and buy the biggest Rattus bike you can find buy a bike that is suited for the purpose that you're going to do the discipline that you're going to ride and don't be the guy that goes out there and gets a 450 motocross bike as your first bike you need a smaller motor I've got videos on this less power smaller motor more aligned with the type of writing that you're going to do and you will thank yourself later trust me on that one don't buy too big of a bike or too much power we need to check the tire pressure every time we ride I don't care if you have a cheap gauge like this or an expensive gauge like this or something in the middle of the road like this one check your tire pressure every time you ride front and rear I have videos specifically on this because the types of ways that YouTube versus tube lists that type of thing make sure that you're checking your tire pressure every time you don't want to have too much and you don't want to have too little it'll be crucial to your riding another common mistake I see is running tires too long now both of these tires have a lot of tread life in them but just know that the most important thing on your bike is actually the tires it's the only contact patch it has with the ground and a new tire will do more for you than any suspension mods or motor mods that you could possibly do so tires are the cheapest upgrade you can ever have and don't run them too long let's get some new rubber on there get more tread and get better compounds and you will have a much better experience this tip may very well be the most important one and it is to stand up while you're riding almost every single person mentioned this when I'm riding I want to be standing at ninety to ninety-five percent of the time there's a few times well I swear I'll sit down and corners are all sit down to get traction but most of the time I'm up on the pegs that allows me to be on the balls of my feet that allows me to pinch the bike with my legs and it also allows me to let the bike work work underneath me it means if my back tire gets kicked off to one side if the bike just does that and I don't get flipped off the bike there are so many reasons to stand up please please please if you remember nothing else stand up ninety percent of the time when you're doing this type of riding another tip is simply not carrying enough momentum into an obstacle or a hill climb or something like this now I'm not saying that you should go blitzing speed everywhere because you need to work up your speed slowly but what I am saying is if you're unsure about something it's better to have a little bit too much momentum than not enough and get caught on the obstacle so when you think hey I think I've got just enough maybe just add a little more 10 percent 15 percent more in there to give enough momentum to get you up and over a scary obstacle be careful with this use some wisdom but carry enough momentum another common mistake we see is not setting the SAG for your dirt bike that's how much preload this spring has on the bike to hold up your weight also up in the up and the springs on the forks now if you're outside of the 150 to maybe 200 pound range then you might need a different spring on this bike to be able to put the proper amount of preload so the bike can hold up your weight and still take you through all those obstacles with the row my right amount of hole up I have videos on how to do this so go check that out set the sag up for your bike you'll thank me later here's a problem we see all the time not looking far enough ahead of your bike where you're actually going or having target fixation which means you watch the you watch the obstacle all the way in and tell your front wheel you don't want to be doing that a good rule of thumb is to be looking at least one or one and a half bike lengths ahead of you for every gear that you're in so when you're a first gear you should be looking 7 to 10 feet away from you when you're in 2nd gear you should be looking like 15 to 20 feet away from you and so on and so forth the main thing is to look as far ahead of you as you can plan out those lines and plan out those obstacles and don't just stare at it all the way into the front tire another common mistake is having your levers not adjusted properly now what do what I want you mean by that everyone's gonna have a little bit different thing that they want to do but you don't want to have this too high or too low you'll notice that this is just below my handlebar here and I can get to it comfortably while I'm standing or while I'm sitting but if it gets too low you won't be able to get it when you're when you're sitting if it gets up too high you won't be able to get it when you're standing another thing I like to do is I like to slide the lever in on the bar I'll roll in a shot of that right now what that does is it means I don't break the lever even if I take a hard digger [Music] and I mess up my grips I don't break the lever because the first thing to hit the ground is the end of my bar so lever placement is really critical proper maintenance you'll notice I moved over to the four-stroke because you do a little bit more maintenance on these guys but if you have a proper maintenance schedule where you're checking air filters and you're changing oil and you're checking seals and you're greasing bearings you're greasing linkage parts you're greasing your wheels anywhere you can put some grease it helps to go a long ways I'm talking about things like changing clutch fluid and changing all types of things changing your fork oil if you can do just a little TLC even just keeping the bike clean is good maintenance it goes a long way to have a little elbow grease on your bike it will last longer it won't break as much and you'll have a better experience having bling on your bike may make it look better or cool but it does nothing to make you a better rider so there's thousands and thousand dollars you can spend on like gear and bling in parts and pipes and all this other stuff it will not make you a better writer the only thing that will make you a better rider is gas and seat time and tires really just practice on the bike so these things maybe make your bike look cool it doesn't even make it worth more hardly at all pennies on the dollar so I'd spend your money on the gas and tires another common mistake we see is not covering the brake and clutch at all times with one or two fingers covering it just means that my finger is up here in case I need to give a little bit of clutch or in case I need to give a little bit of brake over here on this hand if you're covering those with one or two fingers you were ready at all times to give minor inputs into these controls and it's super important it's okay that you know grab a fistful of Fistful of your grips if you're going up a hill sometimes but you need to sneak this finger up here and give a little stab a clutch so it's a good idea to just let these things kind of be trained to come out here and cover these controls almost all the time another common mistake I see is when people buy like a bargain-basement helmet or boots please don't scrimp on helmets please don't scrimp on boots and when you have a really good knocking on your head you hit the ground really hard it's probably time to retire that helmet they're only designed to withstand about one really really hard impact and the boots are gonna save your feet and your toes and your ankles and everything else so you got to spend some high dollar on the boots and the helmets a major mistake that came up again and again was not carrying water so find yourself a good hydration pack something that you can carry water and tool and food and anything else but water is paramount so make sure you bring plenty of water this is a three three liter water hydration pack and I try to have this mostly full every time I go ride another common mistake we see is not having your toes pointed in towards the dirt bike if you point them in like this it helps you to pinch the bike better with your legs and with your body but it also keeps your toes from getting wiped off by rocks and roots and other things there's a lot of benefits that come from pointing that toe in it doesn't have to be like clear like this but just a little bit just point it in just like that I lit this it'll help you in so many ways and when you get lazy and you get this thing out here your leg starts flapping around you can't hang on the bike and your foots gonna get ripped off so turn that toe in you'll be glad that you did also make sure to ride on the ball of your foot here and not on the arch if you're riding on the arch it's a it's bad thing for you and you're always going to be hitting the brake you just have more leverage on the bike and better balance if you're back here on the ball of your foot and then you'll just shift the weight you'll just shift the thing forward when you need to get to your brake but you want to be back here on the balls of your feet more often than not do yourself a favor and start slow you don't have to go too fast or go into the gnarliest terrain ever when you're just learning you want to have fun with this and you don't want to get injured and one way to get injured is to be going way too fast through obstacles that you're not familiar with or going too fast for your familiarity on the bike the speed will come over time the ability will come over time with patience don't push it too fast in the beginning another concept that was brought up over and over is the idea of buying an old clapped-out bike that needs a ton of maintenance and a ton of work just in order to save some money now I'm not saying that everyone has to go out there and buy new that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is if the bike needs more work and more maintenance than you even know how to do you've got enough on your plate with just learning all the ropes of all this stuff without having to fix the motorcycle every time or put hundreds of dollars into it just to make it seaworthy it might be better for you to spend a little bit more money to get it a little bit better maintained lightly used bike than buying one that Super clap clapped out and broken just to save a few bucks another common mistake that we see and was mentioned was not bringing tools with you now this is a toolkit that height that straps to my hydration pack where I've got basically most of the tools in here that I'm going to need I even have some medication and have a way to start a fire I've got a bunch of different things in this in this thing I've even got a way to check tire pressure make sure that you've prepared and bring the type of stuff that you might need it also might include like a way to communicate via you know satellite to communicate with emergency services there's a lot of different things and you just need to make sure that you're prepared for the things that might happen to you out on the trail away from the truck another common mistake that was mentioned was learning not to skid the rear wheel pretty much goes without saying we don't want to skid the front wheel because we're gonna crash we do that but what we want to do is see if we can maintain traction and AB and have just the right amount of pressure on this rear brake so that we don't break it loose the second that we brake at least we've lost traction now that doesn't mean there aren't times that we want to skid it sometimes you want to skin it to help yourself into a turn but it would it would you would do well if you'd learn to apply just the right amount of pressure to give you some good stopping power but not break traction and skid that rear wheel another common mistake we see is not having realistic goals yes it's important for us to progress in this sport and over time we're gonna get faster but we don't we shouldn't get hard on ourselves when we don't turn into like Eli Tomac or Graham Jarvis within our first few weeks this is gonna take some time and you need to set some realistic goals and expectations for yourself and be patient with yourself the whole idea here is to have fun and to not get hurt to push yourself a little bit and to expand your horizons but just have realistic goals I know that you're not gonna be a pro rider or a pro racer at least most of us are not but that doesn't it shouldn't discourage this another common mistake that was mentioned is not respecting the land and not respecting landowners and and shutting gates and these types of things leave it better than you found it let's not tear up the land let's not tear up the trails if it's too wet to ride it's too wet to ride let's not damage everything if the if this person says don't ride on my land let's not ride there we just need to be respectful and that will help to keep trails open for future generations and everything is going to be better if we take a little bit more responsibility as writers and part of the OHV community guys I hope you enjoyed this video and you learn something if I've earned your subscription go ahead and click Subscribe and click the notification Bell icon so that you get notified when we put out these videos you can also also follow us on Facebook and Instagram and check out some of the stuff we're doing over there if you want to support our channel you can go to my website dirtbike channel comm I have links there where you can make a monthly tip amount on PayPal or you can go to patreon and support us there I also give away dirt bikes all the dirt bikes that you've seen in this video will be given away to you guys relatively soon the beta and the Yamaha will be a will be Sweepstakes bikes that will be happening in the April May June timeframe so you can Whitney's bikes by visiting my website during those times and this KTM I will also be giving this away but it'll probably happen later in the year in like around December timeframe anyway thanks for watching guys and let's leave a singletrack you

Channel: Dirt Bike Channel

Views: 754,632

Rating: 4.9278216 out of 5

Keywords: enduro, motocross, dirtbike, ktm 2016, ktm motorcycles, shootout, ktm, range, erzberg, graham jarvis, johnny walker, best dirtbike, 125, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, 525, exc, sx, how to, 2 stroke, 4 stroke, video, review, husqvarna

Id: BsO59Ky33J0

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020