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Old 26-07-2019, 06:35 PM   #43
Mr Gazza
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Join Date: May 2013
Location: Norwich
Bike: M900sie
Posts: 5,766
Jeff, if you want a real world experiment to help understand counter steering, just get a bicycle wheel and spin it up whilst holding the spindle each side. (yes a third hand is required!.)
This will be a gyro, as you know. Now try and push the left side forwards as if to steer it right. (or pull back with the right.)
It will try and lean to the left... Seriously, try it, the force cannot be resisted.
This is what initiates a turn, after that moment the counter steering effort ceases and the wheel becomes stable in that lean without further input.

The bike now describes a curved course because the curved section (profile) of the tyre has a greater circumference in the centre, to that of the outer edges. In other words it acts like a cone... You can't roll a cone in a straight line! it just goes round in circles.

In this hypothetical model the wheel would be the circular base of the cone, with an imaginary extra long spindle reaching the pointed end.

That's just the principle in a simplified model, as the "cone" in reality would be changing in a complex way with varying lean angles and tyre profiles.
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