Sep 06, 2003 05:06 AM
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(Updated Sep 06, 2003 05:06 AM)
First let us see the rear brakes. As the real wheel is always at the back of the vehicle, locking it up under hard braking is very easy and the weight of a bike it transferred to the front under braking and that makes the rear of the bike lighter, that means less weight on the rear wheel and hence it can be locked without much effort. Here we also have to notice that almost all of the riders and the bikes weight are on the front wheel and the a locked rear wheel is just pulled along.
Now we know that under braking the front wheel takes almost all of the weight and with all that weight, it requires a LOT of braking power to lock it and it is almost like impossible to lock the font wheel and enjoy a slide as that of the rear one.
It has been proved that in a good bike with good brakes and proper braking, about 60+% of stopping is carried out by the front wheel alone while the remaining 30+% is taken care of by the rear wheel.
No wonder why all the bikes over 500 cubes of capacity have two big discs on the front wheel and only a single small disc on the rear. Next time you watch a Moto GP, look at the rear wheels of those 500CC race machnies just before they enter any tight turn after a long straight. You might notice that some of them might be lifting their rear wheels a centimeter or two. That tells us how much the front brake can be used.
IMPORTANT: We always should make sure that the bike(or even the car for that matter) are in the top of their conditions. Its not just the brakes that have to be good but it needs good tyres, proper balance(alignment) and every little bit that adds to the performance - be it to speed up or to slow down.
I have tried sharing some knowledge and hope you might find it interesting and helpful but if you think it is over here then you are wrong. We haven't yet checked on the most important factor.
Is it all about a good bike/car and the right technique? It takes a little more than that. To be able to control the bike, first you will have to control your MIND and it is the MIND Control that can help you get a proper control over the bike. It requires a lot of MIND to drive/ride.
It takes a lot of concentration and reflexes to place urself on the road and know what is going on around not just in the front but also on the sides and the back(that is what the rear view mirrors are for). Keep an eye on not just the vehicle in front of you but also on atleast 4 more ahead of it. When on road, we should always read the body language of the vehicles and its drivers/riders around us and make sure we always maintain a Safe distance and line.
Today let us discover RC. RC stands for Reaction Coefficient. It is a measure of the time you take to react. On road, it refers to how quickly and efficiently you react to anything that happens near/around you. A delay of even 0.5 seconds in reacting can make a huge difference. This fraction of second comes into play even before the bike starts to stop and the fraction depends on how well you control your MIND which will then be controlling the bike.
So along with a good vehicle, one needs a cool mind which can THINK under pressure rather than panicking and locking the wheels. Panicking will stop us from braking efficiently and stop us from looking at the options we might have and it is here that a cool mind can make a difference. You never know what options you might find in that fraction of a second.
So along with the braking practise, we need some training sessions to train our mind. Probably some games like shooting, archery etc can help up build up on this. Just like braking, such sports require the aim, the concentration and like anyother thing even this requires a lot of practise.
Next time you have a holiday, instead of a movie you can try going out for a drive/ride and probably spend some time and fuel on practising this and I am sure you will feel more confident on the road. Probably if we can get sometime together, we can try and spend some time together and help improve each others skills. You have my email id:)
Make sure you don't get too confident as too much of anything is bad.
Those were some tips of braking that I had to share with you all. Hope you find it useful.
Feel free to get back to me with any comments/questions.
Wish you all and safe and happy journey.
Regards,
Yaser
