Well a left cross wind is going to push you to the right right? So to counter its effect, you can try to sway your bike towards the left from your hip instead of shifting your entire body. This is much quicker than body weight shifting but only works on small scooties (Dio, Activa, etc) or if you're going slow on a bike ~ 60...

Counter steer to the right (rotate the handle to the right) and you're basically negating the force of the wind.

Wind pushes you right --> counter steer keeps you straight..

Lets say you are on a speed of 100+, and you face a crosswind from left and i do a counter steering to right so it means already the air is putting weight on my bike and pushing me right and i take it more to right and the car comes from the front and i am boom or i break my teeth with the fall.

Can you explain me how you gonna do the same on high speeds.

I don't see how counter-steering can help.
Counter-steering is for turning, whereas in this case the cross-winds are pushing you (the bike) to the other side almost making the bike hit the ground on the other side (& not pushing just the handlebar to make a turn). Counter-steering would help if something is pushing your bike's handlebar in one direction, & you counter-steer to make it go the other way.

Am I wrong here?!

Yah you are right bro, hey when you got the ducati ??

an you explain me how you gonna do the same on high speeds.[/QUOTE]

You're confused here Shrinath and tibby... When you're going 100+, rotating your handle to the right will make your bike go left. Simple enough right?

So when the wind is coming in from the left, its trying to push you towards the right (read: your bike tends to bank to the right)... But your counter steering will keep the bike from banking to the right... Got it now?

Ducati??? Where'd you read i got a Ducati man??

You're confused here Shrinath and tibby... When you're going 100+, rotating your handle to the right will make your bike go left. Simple enough right?

So when the wind is coming in from the left, its trying to push you towards the right (read: your bike tends to bank to the right)... But your counter steering will keep the bike from banking to the right... Got it now?[/QUOTE]

Still on straight 2 lane road how can you do it ?

Well see it doesn't matter if the road is straight or curving... When you encounter a cross wind, you want to do whatever you can to continue on your path... If its a straight road, the wind from the left tries to push you to the right into oncoming traffic.
Your counter-steering helps you keep going straight.

Tell you what.. Why don't you both go to a straight road which has a lot of cross wind and try out what i told you...

If the wind is coming from the left, rotate the handle right so you continue going straight. Of course, only with practice will you understand how much to rotate the handle... Its not much though. Just a tiny degree or two is enough

Sorry my mistake.. I thought you quoted my post somewhy..

VKA and other experts please correct me if I am wrong.... if you going on a straight road or lets say, if you going in plains and a cross winds hits you then if you take your hip out to counter steer against the direction of winds then I think you are asking for problem, as we talking about R15s here and when we facing cross winds, as per my experience the bike tilts a bit and taking your hips out would affect the CG of the bike, which can make you loose your balance very soon as your body and the bike is getting hit by the cross wind together.
VKA how many kms on ODO on your bike buddy.

that would be boom bang man down....

As per me you are absolutely right Tibby, cross winds you cant counter steer

atleast I didnt....

thanks a lot! guess i'l just wait for an year and then get them fitted. thinking of getting white color.

The moving hips thing works only for scooties or low speeds as i said...

And though i'm only at 5800kms on the odo, in my daily commute, i encounter a 2 km patch of road with strong crosswinds.. strong enough to sway a 220 (my bike) let alone a R15 (no offence: just in case we have some short tempered people here).

So really... I wouldn't be so persistent on the matter if i didn't counter steer in cross winds everyday.

Are you counter steering against the wind or correcting yourself after being blown off course?
As i've only been riding for just over 2 months, I only learned about countersteering last night, whilst it's something we all do naturally, being concious of it makes a big difference. I couldn't understand why when I leaned into a corner at a descent speed why the bike would pull me to the outside of the corner/bend, so after watching some video's on youtube last night, I began to understand countersteering, so on a 100km round trip I applied the theory, although it will take some time to become second nature, it made a big difference to my confidence and ability. However on my return trip I firstly came accross a buffalo who ran in front of me, with countersteering I managed to swerve around the bugger, normally I would have made an emergency stop, then the second incident was on a decline, i was overtaking a bus, as I got a couple of metres ahead of the bus, a gust of wind took me into the opposite lane, a car coming in the opposite direction decided at the same time to overtake a truck, I counter steered back into line, it certainly help me to correct the bike quicker and more accurately than leaning or shifting in the seat would have and the danger was diverted, until next time.

Still I don't understand if it's possible to use this against a constant flow of air (cross wind) I do notice that when you tuck in snuggly (on the R15) with heels against the heel pads, knees locked to the tank and upper body fully crouched over the tank, elbows tucked in and visor down, that the effect of cross winds is considerably lesser, obviously this is due to aerodynamics.

If it's really windy then best to just go slower, if it's just the odd gust, then you just need to countersteer to correct yourself. This is just exaggerated on the R15 due to the weight of the bike, not much more you can do really.

Well the 2km patch i go through has constant cross winds throughout so counter steering works well when i'm 'counter steering against the wind' as you said.

And like you said, the R15 is much lighter so the effect is larger. I guess its also accentuated by the fact that its fully faired...

Anyway... Good luck with the counter steering without any cross winds.. It can really work wonders..

Though this actually is sort of off-topic on this thread, but keeping in mind the context of the info and the level of confusion prevailing with respect to riding in cross-winds, I am putting up a detailed explanation for the same here itself.

Riding in cross-winds is a problem on motorcycles as there's a lopsided force acting on the bike from one side which tends to roll it over. All pretty unnerving and all the more so if the wind is gusty and not steady. nevertheless, the motorcycle's geometry makes it inherently stable even under such conditions provided of course you let it do so.



Don't get rigid on the bike, relax your grip on the handlebars, crouch a little and tuck in to reduce your exposure to the wind and reduce speed to make things controllable. The bike leans into the wind without actually turning into it. (see other bikes ahead of you lean like that and you'll understand) The wind in fact holds the bike against any tendency to turn into the lean. Which is where the danger lies if the wind is suddenly interrupted, say by a passing bus or truck. The sequence is depicted in the fig below.



You don't consciously steer into the wind to 'counter' it and the corrective action has nothing to do with counter-steering per se. Also, it is very important to anticipate the effect of wind-breaks as you ride along. These will not necessarily be oncoming vehicles. A building adjacent to the road will also act as one. And do slow down more than usual while taking turns in a cross-wind. The fast changing direction of the wind relative to your bike when in a turn will make it very difficult for you to control the bike. And yes, if the wind is blowing in strong gusts, better stop and wait for it to die down.