Say No to Slow : How to Wheelie an Adventure Bike

Hi, I'm Chris Burch. I have been riding and racing motorcycles my entire life. I raced motorcycles and extreme enduros at Red Bull Romaniacs, the big roof of Africa. That sort of thing had good results and some good wins there, competing in the New Zealand Dakar Rally. and Giro champions Australian enduro champions African enduro champions I have practically dedicated my entire life to motorcycles. A big part of my life these days is traveling around the world and teaching people, so I'm lucky to be able to teach the elites or three or four. hundreds of people a year right now, but unfortunately we can't be everywhere, so one of the questions I get asked the most is how to do

wheelie

s on these big

bike

s, so that's what we're going to explain to you today, the basic skills and the techniques involved in doing a

wheelie

control the wheelie on big

adventure

bike

s, so there are many different reasons to learn how to do a wheelie when you have control by working with a good controlled functional wheelie, it is possible to overcome terrain so much safer. efficiently, it's a good kid who gets out of jail and gets a free car, so if you go too fast you'll hit an obstacle, sometimes lifting the front wheel will lessen the impact and make it easier to go through that kind of thing and Of course, the main reason you're all here is so much fun if you can't do wheelies.

I'm an

adventure

biker and you're really missing out on a lot of good times, so before we get started we need to do a We're doing some off-road setup work. It is very important that we have the correct tire that gives you the traction you need. Not only are you going to skid but you can also accelerate and obviously we are talking about doing wheelies off the road because doing wheelies on the road is bad so if you have a more road focused tire this is going to be really difficult for you. , you're not going to get the acceleration and handling that you should be doing, so we're looking for a more aggressive block pattern all-terrain style tire that's going to give you that lift in acceleration that you need to do this properly, it's also very important that you have the brake rear brake on so you can access it properly when standing if the rear brakes are too low, as they would be for a street setup, when your hips are back trying to lift the front you will have a hard time reaching the rear brake and this will make this much more dangerous, so it is very important that you have that rear brake is placed in a position where you can access it when you are standing, especially when you have your hips towards the back of the bike, for that we want the rear brake pedal to be positioned so that it is slightly above parallel with the Foot Pig, if it feels too low you will have to reach for it and at times when you really need it and bad things will happen, in addition to having the right type of tire, that good locking pattern, you'll also want to make sure your tire pressure is correct for off-roading.

If your pressure is too high, you won't get the traction you need, so it's a little high. You want to feel a little more flexibility than that, so let it. down a little bit more with the palm of my hand I should be able to get a little bit of flex there that way I know my pressure is going to be right and I can get some traction which is probably around 22 22 23 psi for the terrain on the one we're running into today, so there are two sides to doing this wheelie: the body motion side and the engine side and the clutch side.

We're going to practice each one individually, then we'll put them together and I hope we get a nice, sweet wheelie, so as you've probably discovered, one of the hardest parts of doing the wheelie on adventure bikes is giving that traction to make it the front end lifts, it's not just about tuning the spin of the wheels and a really big part of that is creating that compression that loads through the suspension into the tire to create traction and the way to do that is exactly the same: it's like doing a jump, you're charging down, you're jumping, so we're creating pressure but also creating lift.

The way to do it is exactly the same as doing a jump, so load, go up, compressing down, making the bike light. The really important thing is that you are moving your ankles if you don't move your feet. ankles doesn't work as well you have to get that spring through your feet that creates that compression creates that load creates traction creates the trapped wheelie so we're compressing that suspension loading that tire and trying to make the bike light so it's down and up, there are two sides where those two steps we don't just want to compress, not lift and try to lift 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 our hips back to make the front lighter and push the rear tire into the ground and create that traction and try to create the rotation and the motorcycle. We're not trying to pull and lift the bike on a wheelie, we're trying to rotate the bike on a wheelie so it compresses back 1 2 3 back there along the paddock nice smooth constant travel setup, make it work Well practice it until you feel bored, you won't have to think about it anymore and then you'll be ready to move on to the next step, so once you've learned that side of body movement and it's easy and familiar, it's time to move on. engine and throttle the clutch so you can cheat this wheelie by just using the throttle without worrying too much about the clutch, but the problem with that is that you will tend to get

slow

er lift at the front. so you'll have more ground speed, more acceleration to do the wheelie when you're on the road if you have to have a lot of acceleration to lift the front wheel by the time it hits the log tree root ditch, which let it be You are going to go very fast and possibly that is not a great situation.

If you can use the clutch, you can lift the front wheel much faster and that results in forward acceleration and more control on the road. using the clutch to create a slap, snap of power, not a long

slow

release of power, a really sharp aggressive release of power, so you are covering the clutch with one or two fingers, very important, no more than two if you're using your whole hand on the clutch when you open it right when you're going, go to the handlebars and we don't want to do one-handed Travis Pastrana stuff yet, so I use one finger, two fingers is fine, nothing more.

You're starting to run out of things to hold on to the handlebars, so you're pulling away, you're slipping the clutch and you're building up a little ribbing in the engine or then as you engage the clutch you're also winding the power so it winds up just right. after a brief power spike you are feeding power in and with the clutch you are taking it out with a clutch, a good way to think about it, this is your generator, your clutch is your distributor. you start a generator and you feed that energy and you use the distributor so the really important thing now is to synchronize those two different sides together in the right way as you are compressing your suspension as you are loading on your pegs, your clutch comes in and you start to rev up the engine a little bit, so the clutch comes in and now it compresses into that suspension, it reaches a peak compression point when everything is as low as it was loaded. it may be that the clutch comes out from that point, so it's the clutch down, down, down, down, down, out, into your clutch, back in to control it, it's very important to remember that your bike is not going to run out of control with a clutch and it is not like that. it's going to do a backflip with the clutch on it's not going to rocket across the paddock towards the fence with the clutch on if you leave the clutch out if you leave the clutch out you can't have autopilot the clutch is a really important part of your safety here, so make sure you maintain that control at all times so that the perfect moment is for that power to come out when the tires are compressed as much as possible when the suspensions are as depressed as possible, that's the perfect point when everything is as As heavy as it can be if you can't get it perfect, although a little too early in the clutch is better than a little too late if you think about what happens to your rear tire as you compress it. that suspension hits the ground, the tires get more and more pressure and load into the ground, if you hit the clutch a little early, you'll still hit that point of maximum compression with the power release, so you'll be able to do a wheelie.

It's a lot more than just getting likes on Instagram, it's a really useful tool for overcoming terrain like logs, rocks, tree roots, drains, compressions that kind of thing. It's also like a training exercise, a very good skill development because you will have to work very hard. on the clutch, control the throttle, control balance, timing, all the real key skills of off-road biking, will be improved and challenged in practicing this wheelie, so I really hope you enjoyed this. I hope they did. anything outside of this and you can do fun and safe wheelies. We are now looking to put together a series of instructional videos on riding techniques for great bike adventures.

If that's something you want to see, like this video, comment on it, and tell us what. is that you guys want to have in that series what techniques would you like us to go over what would you like to learn on your adventure bike what are you struggling with just let us know we'll put it together and hopefully it can be something really good for you