3 top myths for riding offroad on an ADV bike

here's a fun piece of advice i've been hearing this one for years when you go off-road you always need to air down your tires and i was kind of wondered about this one and the idea behind this is somehow by airing down you get more traction you have more tire to the ground and there is truth to this and if you look at like serious off-roaders uh jeeps and such what you'll find is that they'll air their tires all the way down to the bottom so they can get out of sand and deep mud and if you look at dirt bikes they're aired down to about 10 psi maybe 8 to 15 is kind of the range but on these big bikes it's not really true certainly if i let the air out i do have more tire on the ground that's not such a good thing airing down does come from a place that has some validity that it has some truth but they're very specific and they're not adventure bikes if you air down in a jeep or a large truck and you're off road and you're rock crawling you're in the sand airing down to very low psi means that you can crawl over those things but the vehicles that are doing that are moving very slow and they have four points of contact and they have very large tires so even when they're aired down they have a lot of rubber and a lot of air between the point of contact and the rim that needs to be protected dirt bikes they're down to 8 or 15 psi but the bikes are very light when you compare that to an adventure bike with a rider on board is probably 700 800 maybe even a thousand pounds of pressure on that wheel when impacts this hard route or a rock on the trail yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense to air down on adventure bike you're going to damage your rim you'll damage your tire you'll damage the tube there's very very rare exceptions when i might air down and so far every video i've ever made i've been running street pressures in my world airing down is a myth all right this myth goes like this if i stand off-road then i lower my center of gravity and the thought process is that if i stand on the foot pegs as opposed to resting all my weight on my butt and when i stand because i'm supporting the majority of the weight down low that i lower my center of gravity that doesn't make a lot of sense because that's saying that if i sit here and all of my weight is supported on my butt that's the same as if i stand on the seat up here because all the weight is support on the seat my center garbage should be the same but if you think about it that doesn't make much sense does it now there is some advantages some very significant advantages to standing and one is that when i stand i always get a better visual or better vantage i can see potholes i can see what's coming up much sooner but it's not a totally a busted myth it's not just about raising or lowering the center of mass it's really about what is sprung and unsprung mass now this is this goes to suspension when we look at suspension the weight of the motorcycle when it's in motion is less important than the weight of the wheels the wheels the brakes all of that sits below the spring that's considered unsprung mass and it can move very quickly and very freely the weight above the bike sits on top of the springs and though it has an effect the most important part is the unsprung mass if you stand on your motorcycle and you become sprung weight and the motorcycle becomes unsprung weight you have two different tiers of suspension the first being the shock or the forks on your motorcycle the wheels below the motorcycle the second being the motorcycle below you as long as i can stay in a position and that bike can move freely up and down underneath me it can move side to side then standing becomes an advantage but you have to be uncoupled from the bike when we lock in at the ankles the knees touch but don't squeeze and the upper body always stays level as the motorcycle moves freely underneath us it's not about raising or lowering the center of mass or the center of gravity it's about changing sprung and unsprung weight you as the rider want to become sprung weight above the motorcycle so the motorcycle itself doesn't have to account for your weight as it runs over obstacles or challenges it's really not simple so the myth is when you stand you lower your center of gravity or your center of mass and that's just not true before we move on to the next myth make sure that you hit subscribe click like and leave a comment so this is the most dangerous off-road meth i can think of at least today and that is the belief that off-road you should only be using your rear brake off-road on-road it doesn't matter your front brake is your primary stopping brake the rear brake for off-road is used for just to have a sand anchor or a sea anchor where it kind of drags the rear of the bike it can be used for turning or pivoting the bike it can be used to assist the front brake as long as you keep that rear brake in a rolling motion but your primary stopping is still the front and that's what i've set up here to demonstrate i made an approach speed of about 35 miles per hour each time it came down this particular surface here is very high traction this shows really decent braking for rear only but it still shows you the difference between using just the rear or using the front right here what i did is i set down a pile of rocks as my marker to give me a point of to begin my braking you can see the rear brake starts to lock every time right about here i'm always within about a foot and the difference in stopping distance had to do with the front stop somewhere around here versus this it's a pretty huge distance for a surface that's considered decent if you take this same premise of using only the rear braking you add it to something like a downhill as an example when paul and i did the review on the tender 700 when i locked that rear brake that bike slid all the way to the bottom of the hill and if i didn't grab the front brakes or use the front brake i'm going to launch right off the bottom of that trail into a tree when i used both brakes i was able to stop the bike anywhere in the first half of the hill and on the bottom half at least i was able to control my descent use both brakes off-road thanks for watching my channel and for subscribing and if you're interested in attending training that i might be conducting around the states joining me for an international training tour or you just want to attend a lecture at a dealership or a show somewhere around the u.s you'll find all those dates go up at bretax.com that's my website as those dates get finalized 2022 isn't up yet but i am working on that schedule and you'll start seeing those dates come up fairly soon and if you would like to join in those that help fund this channel to keep these videos produced you can do that on patreon but until next time remember smile while you ride because attitude really does matter i reckon this air pressure's just a little too low here's the question we didn't ask we said well we're supposed to air down but the question should be what air pressure should we have what is the proper air pressure because what are you wearing down from and there's a couple places to go commonly there's two places that are recommended and that riders go to one is the sidewall of the tire if you look at the sidewall you'll find a maximum load at a given air pressure that is the maximum load for the tire for that measured air pressure it doesn't mean that if you go slightly higher that the tire is going to blow up on you and it doesn't mean that it's the optimum air pressure just maximum load if you go to the manufacturer's book or if you look on the motorcycle it'll also give you a recommended air pressure that air pressure is based on the original configuration of the motorcycle on the original tires after a few years most of us aren't running the original tires and often before it leaves the dealership we've already added luggage crash bars a passenger a trunk and some fuzzy dice to the windshield that means we're no longer at that original configuration so the answer is this your tires and the air approach they give you are a balance between the performance which is not only deflection the tire but more about heat regulation the less air the more tire it the more the tire flexes and the more it wears out the more air means that you're going to last longer but it also means that it's not going to get as sticky it's not going to get as hot and it may provide much greater life and longevity of the tire for off-road considerations here's what we're looking at when i go over this really stiff root or if i go over really tough rocks what i want to make sure is that that tire isn't rebounding it's not bouncing off of that rock or that root kind of like if you have a soccer ball or a sports ball that's over inflated and you just you can't juggle you can't kick it you can't keep control of it because it's too inflated then we know we have too much pressure the other side of that is if we don't have enough pressure to maintain stability on the motorcycle or if we drop the air pressure so much that we risk damaging the rim or the tire then we know we're too low somewhere in the middle is a good starting point for me i go to the tire manufacturer and i asked them given the bike that i put it on what do they recommend i start at and from there i can add or delete air based on how the bike performs tire pressure for most of us mere mortals without calipers to measure deflection and temperature and and to change them instantly from one setting to the other is like suspension it's kind of a an art that you have to fill out you start with the base and then you increase or decrease that pressure based on the performance of the bike i have yet to find a rider who can tell the difference between deflating the tire six or seven pounds or leaving it at the street pressure another reason why i don't believe in it i haven't felt a difference in pressure i haven't been able to measure that performance difference and when riders don't know there's a change they don't notice it if i tell somebody to air the tire down and they say it feels better now but i never change the pressure that's all in our head it's not in reality now with that said this tire is definitely definitely under inflated [Music] you

Channel: Bret Tkacs

Views: 133,062

Rating: 4.9424129 out of 5

Keywords: Brett, adventure, adv motorcycle, mototrek, instruction, teaching, ktm, BMW, honda, yamaha, suzuki, husky, R1200gs, r1250gs, f800gs, f850gs, 1090, 1190, 1290, 790, klr5 650, dr650, xt650, t700, tenere 700, vstrom, dl1000, rawhyde, tkacs, takas, tacks, pssor, puget sound safety, learn to ride, advcamp, tips for riding, adventure r, 890 adventure, Africa twin, at10, at11, DCT, R1150gs

Id: aBa601NpLQs

Length: 14min 31sec (871 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/OOMKilla]

Bret has some great content

[u/Simply_Convoluted]

Airing down the tires was a good point. Nice video!

[u/Ih8Hondas]

Wait. People actually think you should only use the rear brake off road?