Say No to Slow : How to Wheelie an Adventure Bike

[Music] hi I'm Chris Burch I've been riding and racing motorbikes my whole life raced motorbikes and extreme enduros of Red Bull Romaniacs is big roof of Africa that sort of thing had some good results and some good wins there race the Dakar Rally New Zealand and Giro champs Australian enduro champs African enduro champs pretty much my whole life's been dedicated to motorbikes a big part of my life these days is travelling around the world and teaching people so I'm lucky I get to teach and the elites or three or four hundred people a year at the moment but unfortunately can't be everywhere so one of the questions I get asked the most is how to do wheelies on these big bikes so that's what we're gonna run through for you guys today the basic skills and the techniques involved of doing a wheelie controls wheelie on the big adventure bikes so there's lots of different reasons for learning how to do a wheelie when you've got control working you a good controlled functional wheelie it's possible to get over terrain much safer much more efficiently it's a good kid out of jail for free car so if you're going a little bit too quick you're gonna head an obstacle sometimes lifting the front wheel will lessen that impact and make it easier to traverse that sort of stuff and of course the main reason reason you're all here it's really good fun if you can't do wheelies I'm an adventure bike you're really missing out on a lot of the good times [Music] so before we get started we need to do a little bit of setup work we're laying off Road it's really important that we have a correct tire that's going to give you the traction that you need you're not just going to wheel spin you can actually accelerate and obviously we're talking about doing wheelies offroad because doing wheelies on the road is naughty so if you've got a more Road focused tire you're gonna find this really difficult you're not going to get the acceleration the drive that you should do so we're looking for a more aggressive block pattern offroad style tire that's going to give you that lift at acceleration that you need to do this properly it's also really important that you have your rear brake set so that you can access it properly when you're standing up if the back brakes set too low like it would be for a street setup when your hips are right back trying to lift that front it's going to be hard for you to reach the back brake and make this much more dangerous so it's really important that you have that rear brake set in a position that you can access it when you're standing up especially when you've got your hips right towards the back of the bike so we want to have the back brake pedal set so it's slightly above parallel with the foot Pig if it sit down too low you're gonna have to reach for it and at moments when you really need it and bad things are going to happen so as well as having the right type of tire that good block pattern you're also going to want to make sure that your tire pressure is correct for offroad if your pressure is too high you're not going to get the traction that you need so it's a little bit high want to feel a bit more flex than that so let it down a bit more with the heel of my hand I should be able to get just a little bit of flex in there that way I know my pressure is going to be about right and I can get some traction out of it that's probably somewhere around 22 22 23 psi for the terrain that we're in today so there's two sides to doing this wheelie there's the body movement side of it and there's the engine a clutch side of it we're going to practice each one individually then put them together and hope that we get a nice sweet looking wheelie so as you guys have probably discovered one of the hardest parts of doing the wheelie on the adventure bikes it's giving that traction to make the front end come up it's not just tuning into wheel spin and a really big part of that is creating that compression that load down through your suspension into your tire to create the traction and the way of doing that is exactly the same it's kind of doing a jump you're loading down into it it's springing up so you're creating pressure but also creating lift the way to do that is exactly the same as doing a jump so load up spring up compressing down into it making the bike light really important is that you're moving your ankles if you don't move your ankles it doesn't work as well you've got to get that spring going through your feet that creates that compression creates that load creates the traction creates the wheelie caught so we're compressing down to that suspension loading down into that tire and trying to make the bike light so it's down and up there is two sides where those two steps we're not just wanting to compress not lift up and try and pull the bike off the ground we're not trying to do a bunny hop here we're trying to do a wheelie so we're going to compress and then push your hips back to make the front end light and push the back tire down to the ground and create that traction and trying to create the rotation and the motorbike we're not trying to pull and lift the bike up into a wheelie we're trying to rotate the bike around onto a wheelie so it's compress up back 1 2 3 back to there right along the paddock nice and smooth constant travel setting get that going right practice it until it feels boring you don't have to think about it anymore and then you're ready to move on to the next step so once you've got that body movement side of it practice and that's easy and familiar it's time to move on to the engine and a clutch the throttle on the clutch so you can cheat this wheelie with just using your throttle not worrying about your clutch too much but the problem with that is you'll tend to get a slower lift in the front end so you'll have more ground speed more acceleration to do the wheelie when you're on the trail if you've got to have a heap of acceleration to lift the front wheel up by the time he gets that log rock tree root ditch whatever it is you're going to be going really fast and that's possibly not a great situation if you can use the clutch you can pop the front wheel up a lot quicker and that results on this forwards acceleration and more control on the trail also we want to be using the clutch to create a slap a crack of power not a long slow release of power a really sharp aggressive launch of power so you're covering the clutch one or two fingers really important no more than two if you're using your whole hand on the clutch when you pop the clutch just like you're leaving go the handlebars and we don't want to be doing one handed travis pastrana stuff just yet so I use one finger two fingers is okay any more than that you're starting to run out of things to hang on to the handlebars so you're starting off you're slipping the clutch and you're building up a little bit of ribs in the engine or then as you feed the clutch in you're also winding on the power so it's wrap right right after a short spike of power you're feeding the power and with the clutch you're taking it away with a clutch good way to think about it this is your generator your clutch is your distributor you give a generator up and running and you feed that power and using the distributor [Music] so the really important thing now is in the timing of those two different sides of it put together in the right way as you're compressing down into your suspension as you're loading up into your foot pegs your clutch comes in and you start building up a bit of revs in the engine so clutch comes in now compressing down into that suspension match a maximum point of compression when everything's as far down as it loaded up as it can be clutch comes out of that point so it's clutch in down down down down down clutch out back to their clutch back in again to control it really important to remember is your bike's not going to roost out of control with a clutch and it's not gonna backflip with a clutch in it's not going to shoot off across the paddock into the fence with a clutch in if you leave the clutch out if you abandon the clutch you can't have on autopilot the clutch is a really important part of your safety here so make sure you're keeping that controlling at the whole time so the timing perfect timing is to have that power come out when the tires as compresses it can be when the suspensions as depressed as it can be that's the perfect point when everything's as heavy as it could possibly be if you can't quite do perfect though a little bit too early on the clutch is better than a little bit too late if you think about what's happening to your back tire as you're compressing that back tire compressing that suspension down to the ground the tires getting more and more pressure loading it into the ground if you're a little bit too early on the clutch you'll still hit that maximum compression point with the power release so being able to do a wheelie is way more than just getting instagram likes it's a really useful tool for getting over terrain such as logs rocks tree roots drains compressions that sort of thing it's also as a training exercise a really good skill builder because you're gonna have to work really hard in your clutch control your throttle control your balance your timing all real key skills of riding a bike off-road they're gonna get improved hammered and challenged in practicing this wheelie so I really hope you guys have enjoyed this I hope you've got something out of it and you can do nice safe fun wheelies now we're looking at putting together an instructional series of videos for big bike adventure riding techniques if that's something you want to see please like this video comment on it and let us know what it is that you guys want to have in that series what techniques would you like us to go through what would you like to learn on your adventure bike what is it you're struggling with just let us know we'll put it together and hopefully it can be a really good thing for you [Music]

Channel: Chris Birch - Off Road Coach

Views: 1,043,622

Rating: 4.9735856 out of 5

Keywords: How to wheelie, Adventure Bike, Skills, Coaching, Motorbike, New Zealand, Red Bull, KTM, Wheelie, Clutch, Motor, Chris Birch, 1090, Adventure, Thames

Id: 6oh95eTdsNs

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 24 2019