Last Friday I was at Learn2Wheelie (www.learn2wheelie.co.uk) funniliy enough learning to wheelie!
They are based at Dunsfold Airfield (home of top gear)
Weather was good, I arrived at 9am eager to learn one of the biking holy grails.
Tea / coffie and biscuits on arrival while Nick gave us a safety briefing, quick change into my leathers and Nick set about explaining the mechanics of how to wheelie. Nick uses the clutch method so you can use this on any bike, rather than doing a power wheelie.
Nick breaks a wheelie down into steps, getting you to do each step over and over until you are proficient, then moving onto the next step.
We started off on quads (with normal bike controls) to get us used to hoisting the front without it tipping sideways on landing.
We then moved onto the standard Fazer, these were slightly different as the power comes in differently than the quads, but after a few goes we were getting the hang of it again.
By the end of the day I was doing 20-40m wheelies for 80% of the time.
A day sounds a long time, but when you are battling with your own fears about tipping, flipping and crashing you do need all day. We didnt cover ballance wheeling. That’s where you can use your body weight to keep the bike up, (once you have hoisted it up with the clutch) we kept the bike up with the throttle, using this method of course when you hit max revs the bike will come down, but that would require more time…well for me, some of you with less fear and better skills might do it on the first day.
All in all a fantastic way to spend a Friday, I will be going back so get more proficient!