Learning to do wheelies was not easy for me. It required several years of practice (and wipeouts) before I began to get the hang of it. Wheeling requires natural reaction to control the throttle - letting off the gas when I see too much sky and more gas when the noise starts to drop. But you can only develop natural reaction by logging in hundreds of hours. And during that period, there was crash after crash. This was back in the mid '70s and at that time I was riding a Triumph Bonneville 650. At first, the crashes consisted of going over backwards until the rear fender dragged on the pavement, loosing stability and then falling over on the side. I recall one time I crashed on a country road and when I came to a stop, my boot was caught between the bike and the pavement. Because I could not get my foot out, I had to lay there in the middle of road until someone came along to lift the bike off me. It was after that when I began to explore wheeling standing up on the seat.
Standing up on the seat fixed the problem of getting my leg caught under the bike and it gave me more control over balancing the bike. But not enough. It got to the point where I would hear the rear fender dragging and I would let go and hit the pavement running. That's right, staying up on my feet the whole time. But when I would let go of the bike, it would drop back down on two wheels and continue on without me! I soon began chasing the bike but I never was able to catch back up with it. You should have seen the show I gave them at the Flint Michigan Auto City Speedway in July of '76. That night, I came very close to grabbing the bike before it fell over. The crowed went wild.
Often times though, it was on some backcountry road. And when I bailed, the bike would run down into the ditch bending the fork tubes when it hit the other side. Over the course of a few years I cleaned out the local motorcycle salvage shop of all the tubes they had.
Now I find standing on the seat works well for me because it gives me more control. Control for lifting the front end, balancing and for steering. At dragstrips I walk the bike all the way through the quarter mile on the rear wheel. The bike is at its balance point in this photo so my speed is constant. I recall when I was just starting to get good at wheelies, how far I could go was a matter of how far I would go before the bike drifted to the edge of the road. Learning how to steer was just as difficult as learning how to ride the balance point. Crosswinds make steering even more necessary. I do not use a motor to spin the front wheel as some of my counterparts do. And the drag from the disk pads brings the front wheel to a stop fairly quickly. If the front wheel was spinning, I could steer the bike by simply turning the bars. But instead, I using small jerk motions much like you have to do when riding a unicycle.
Besides not using a motorized front wheel, I also do not have a rear brake lever on the handlebars. Partly because I like to keep my bike street ready, and partly because that is the way I learned before I ever heard others discuss how key braking is for successful wheelies. One time when I was first attempting wheelies, I had a bad experience when I punched the rear brake as the bike was going over backwards. It corrected the situation as desired but so quickly that the bike rotated around its center of mass causing the front wheel to slam the pavement and the rear wheel to lift off the ground! I decided then that braking while wheeling was not a good idea. Now, the back compression I get when I let off the gas is all that I need. If my H-D goes too far back, the taillight is the first thing to drag. It has happened only a few times to me and in resent years and I have always recovered. The back compression that the big H-D provides helps.
One critical modification to the bike was swapping the carburetor. The stock carburetor would not flow at this angle. I am using a Screamin' Eagle carburetor. The stock dry-sump oil supply works well, unlike the wet-sump systems used on overhead cam style engines. In my early years of learning stunt riding, I attached the oil pressure sensor to the horn so I could instantly tell if there were problems. Replacing the crank and bearings is not something one likes to do routinely.
This bike has a "grab bar" mounted at the back of the seat, which is used for asphalt skiing behind the bike. This is what I am standing on in the photo. You may notice a small tag flapping in the wind down by my heels. This is the "credentials" which you must have to be allowed out on the racetrack. You will also notice that there is a tank-bra that has come loose at the back and is flapping in the wind. The tank-bra is for my dogs who ride with me at the end of my show. You may also notice that the foot peg has folded back into the up position. This is not desirable. Once (just once) I about tore off my leg when I jumped off the seat after doing a wheelie and the foot peg was not there!
My wife captured this photo in 1992 (approx.) at the NHRA Winter Nationals in Pomona CA. I have logged over 200 performances (34 at NHRA events) in my lifetime. I perform these wheelies in second gear. The speed is approximately 40 mph. I run with the front sprocket down one tooth for optimum quarter mile drag racing that I also participate in. So the front end lifts easy in second gear. The farthest I have ever wheelied has been approximately three miles out on El Mirage dry lakebed in Southern Cal.
When I look at this photo two things come to mind. The feel of the throttle and what I see from my perspective. Twisting the throttle is key to the success of this stunt. To a certain extent, you can see where the bike is, relative to the balance point, by sighting down the fork tubes at the horizon. But the number one indicator is how the bike responses to the throttle. When performing this stunt, for the most part I am looking straight into the gas tank. But off to each side, under the handlebars, I can see the sides of the track, which I use, as a guide. It is very exciting for me to perform this stunt and I get a rush just looking at this photo.
Many thanks go to Bartels' Harley-Davidson for their support. Stunt riding is a form of pushing the frontier of what one can do on a bike. For every idea that I've had that works, there are dozens that have not. The team at Bartels' Harley-Davidson has been invaluable in my pursuit of all stunts.