wheelie school write-up

Attendees Simonsgotahardon, AndyFun and Chalky - 18/06/03

1st Write-up by Simon

The day started with a bang. I was riding through Bovingdon trying to find the airfield (which I thought would be fairly hard to miss!!), a Fazer went past me, and stopped. I guessed it was Chalky because it was a black Fazer, and it was. He had already been pointed in the right direction so I followed him. We waited and waited for AndyFun, and I tried calling him. We were a bit worried because he was supposed to be coming in the cage and should be able to get to his phone, but no answer (turned out he had come on his bike after all). I kept trying him and eventually he answered. Because the gate was closed it looked like the airfield couldn’t be got to from where he was, and he couldn’t make out the bikes at the far end of the runway. Luckily we got started about half hour late…..

The day starts off with three runs to the end of a marked out area, no wheelies, just to get the feel for the Bandit 1200’s. The Bandits have one less tooth, so to make it a little bit easier to get up, and less wear on the gearbox, but making the wheelies harder to keep up. The gear lever is sawn off to prevent you from changing gear by accident, and the rest you can see from the pics.

After the three runs, we had a talk about half hour long, which basically centred on rules of the airfield, where you can go and where you can’t, etc. Then the instructor explained the safety issues, how to best prevent anything from going wrong, how to deal with it if it does go wrong, and how many times it has gone wrong before and why. (5 crashes not a bad record, and three of them weren’t even from pulling wheelies!!!!) Then we were told the best method of approaching the wheelie pulling technique. We were shown the best body position and the guys pulled a few demo wheelies, then 3 peeps to a bike and off we went………

Chalky went first (brave man despite his size!!!) first off nobody did great, but after a few goes each our group (Andy, Chalky and I) were doing nice slow, low wheelies and popping them down fairly gracefully. The other group weren’t doing quite so well, but one of the guys didn’t even own a lid, he had to borrow from a mate. Another guy in the other group had a Gixer 750 and posh leathers. He started off okay, but gave himself a bit of a scare and was a bit of a non-starter after that.

I think I did the first ‘okay’ wheelie, but I was incredibly inconsistent and seemed to get worse throughout the day. Chalky was the first to get consistent air and the height was there too, but he was a little rough, which he proved by touching the safety cage down, resulting in it having to be taken off and repaired! (see pics). He was closely followed by Andy, who had a much smoother technique and had a really good day (see pics).

My biggest problem was I didn’t snatch the throttle aggressively enough and I couldn’t get my body position right. My instincts kept making me lean over the front, making the bike go back down. Andy suggested trying to get to 30mph (the take-off point on a Bandit 1200) quicker, and so meaning I didn’t need so much of a flick to get the wheel in the air. This helped me a lot, and I was doing fairly long wheelies, but they were a lot lower than the other two’s. Unfortunately I didn’t get brilliant pics, apart from a few of Andy, but Andy managed to video some of it, so we should have proof of our antics.

The day was brilliant, the weather was excellent, not too cold, no rain at all, and the clouds meant there was no sun to shine in our eyes and put us off. We had a nice lunch of fish and chips, and the instructors were very helpful (they even did a few stunts to show us what can be done). I personally won’t be practicing (not confident enough to risk it), but would consider going back for another day as it was great fun and something completely different from anything I’ve done before. Chalky straight away wanted to go down the airfield on his bike, just to see if he could do it!!!! It is definitely something anyone should try once just to see what it feels like, even the guy who doesn’t have a bike and got treated to the day my his missus was pulling half decent wheelies by the end of the day.

2nd write-up by AndyFun

My day started with an alarm call at 6:00am. I looked out of the window to be greeted with what looked like rain clouds, although the ground was dry. “Here’s hoping!” I thought. Better pack the waterproofs anyway.

Left home at 6:40, allowing myself the best part of 3 hours to do the 156 miles to Bovingdon, 120 of which were M6 and M1. Anyway, cutting to the chase, I arrived at the venue about 20 minutes late, and after quick introductions (there were 6 students…3 of which were FOCcers, myself AndyFun, Chalky and Simonsgotahardon), it was on with the business in hand. Incidentally, for those of you that haven’t met him, Chalky does not have a cone-shaped head!!!

The instructor (Paul?) started by talking about safety issues, expectations, guarantees (or the lack of!) etc. This went on for about half an hour, then we got the chance to have a few runs each to get the feel of the bikes (Bandit 1200).

At this point, I’d just like to say that their website www.thewheelieschool.co.uk says that haven’t modded the bikes to make them easier to wheelie, however, one of the first things he told us was that they’d taken the front sprocket down a tooth!

Paul then demonstrated our first goal, which was to lift the front about 8 – 12 inches in a controlled and smooth manner – he made it look easy! This was followed by another talk about positioning and technique which went on for about an hour!

Apparently, on a 1200 Bandit, the “sweet” spot in 1st gear is at 30mph. So, the technique is to accelerate briskly but steadily to 30 then “snap” the throttle open about a third of a turn and up she comes! This took a bit of getting used to as Chalky found out. Too much wrist equals aggressive lift equals “oh! Foc!” equals close throttle and slamming the front down equals slamming nuts into tank! OUCH!!! This happened just before lunch – I suggested he spat his nuts out before tucking in to his pie and chips!

After lunch, it was more of the same, and as confidence grew, so the wheelies got higher and longer – what a buzz!

We took some video footage, but sadly the most memorable runs were not captured – isn’t that always the case?

Chalky’s “I’m gonna bend this foccin’ anti-flip guard if it’s the last foccin’ thing I do!” moment, and Simon’s “foc you lot! I can do it on one foot!” moment, to name a couple.

All in all, a good day out (and the rain kept away, which was a bonus!), but was it worth the money? Personally, I’d say it was a tad expensive to say the least, but enjoyable all the same.

AndyFun

FOC-U new wheelie god!

3rd write-up by Chalky

Ok you have all read Simon’s and Andy’s thoughts on the day here are mine:

First thing if any one else goes to this place its supposed to be at Bovingdon Airfield, the first thing you’ll notice is the lack of signs and when you do find the venue its been renamed Bovingdon Market, the reason given for this was the local kids keep nicking the signs, bless em.

Onto the biz now, we started with a brief chat about safety and a few stories about a few of the muppets he had trained and their antics hoping that these tales may put us off doing anything stupid. After this we hop on the bikes and do a few laps of the cones just to get us used to the Bandits, now its Paul’s turn to show us what can be done and then another chat this time and concentrating on all the does and donts and the most importantly the how’s.

The hows were easy to follow and well explained, accelerate to the white line on the speedo which was around 30mph and snap the throttle open, the speed of the snap controls the speed of the lift and hope fully you wont end up on your arse, the timing of the snap being the most important as you don’t want to be vertical and then have the power kick in, then its smoothly down as the power tapers off. Keeping the rear brake covered was another important safety point…. Blah blah blah…zzzzzzzzzzzz you get the idea though.

A quick look at the bikes, 2 Bandit 1200’s religiously serviced they said but leaky fork seals and the generally loose feel of the bikes showed they had a hard life. The gear lever had been removed to stop us accidentally or from habit flicking it into 2nd gear when we were airborne, and as Andy and Simon said 1 tooth down on the front sprocket this was to relieve the stress’s on the engine/gearbox we were told but you can make your on mind up about that.

That its chat over and away we go, I was first off and determined to get the wheel off the ground as soon as possible which I did, it felt great but knew there was more to come. I decided to take off earlier than 30 mph but as Paul had said during his how chat you don’t want to be doing that as it will hit the power band on the way up so I panicked, slammed the throttle off and then crushed my balls into the tank on the way down, did my eyes water, my next f’up was much the same, over enthusiastic use of the throttle and bang bent the wheelie bar, glad it was there though. Time to get back to basics and start again as the day progressed I was getting better and better but something seemed missing, a few pointers from Paul and a reposition of the wrist and it all started to come together, they said the cones were 50 meters apart, I think my longest were between 100-150 meters, according to Paul the wheel was 4 foot ish off the ground.

Andy on the other hand was going from strength to strength, he started off slow and low and built up to full on wheelies well before lunch, you knew when he got it right when he popped it up at the first cone and came down well after the 3rd 100+ meters with the wheel at a constant height and then to top it off a soft controlled landing, he was nearly standing on the bike punching the air with delight and when he climbed off the bike back at our ended he dismounted the Bandit like his balls had doubled in size, you know the John Wayne walk some people do when they are really pleased with them self, we were all clapping,

Now Simon was a different story, it came it went, one minute he had it and the next he didn’t, the ones he did were good but as he said as the day progressed the consistency wasn’t there, what we were very impressed with were the two wheelies he performed for us on one leg even though he was told he wasn’t supposed to be doing those sort of stunts on the bikes. They practically had to drag the bike off him when the day finished, there reason for all of a sudden calling it a day with out warning was that people realised it was their last attempt and went a little OTT.

So finally what did I make of it?

Instruction, every thing you need to know and more

Instructor and his side kick, nice friendly blokes.

Bikes, creak creak but did the biz

Fun, yes wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Cost, in my opinion £190 is just OTT and if I went home like the GSXR rider I would be gutted (even more so as I raced him from the school to the M1 and won)

This would have been a 10/10 day for me but the for the cost.

Now how to apply all this to the old Faz, when ever I walk into the shed it tries to hide in the corner..