Motherfucking tank slapper from hell

**AllanB** · 27th April 2014, 23:26

Hmmmm - tank slappers were originally something brought on at speed - the bike would be at high speed and the bars start slapping side to side - back in the day the way out was to lie down on the tank and slowly decelerate. Instantly rolling off the throttle only made it worse.

That vid is solely due to a wheelie landing while the front end was turned. Bloody lucky he was not badly injured and I'm impressed the bike will ride again/

**Metastable** · 28th April 2014, 03:30

Originally Posted by Thaeos

So.. is there anything you can do in a tank slapper?

Apart from wearing hi viz.

Best thing is to have a steering damper..... being a hypocrite here since my track bike doesn't have one. That doesn't answer your question though. IMO, the best thing is to let go of the bars if they aren't ripped from your hands to begin with. I don't see how anyone could have any kind of throttle control with the bars slapping around vigorously.... for sure a death grip would make it worse.

Honestly my slapper started... my hands instantly lost control of the handle bars.... and then it went into a weave and I was able to grab back on to the bars and accelerate. The slapper itself probably didn't last more than 2 seconds.... then it was just a weave. The slapper started instantly and went full lock to lock. It was violent, it started instantly and it sorted itself out without any conscious inputs from me.

**Grubber** · 28th April 2014, 07:25

Originally Posted by Brett

One of the California Superbike instructors told me that a lot of people's crashes are caused by poor rider input. IE holding onto the bars too tight and not gripping the tank with their knees. His advice for controlling slappers (the tank slapping kind) is not to try and grip the shit out of the bars, but to grip the bike with the knees, light touches onto the bars and the bike will sort itself out 9/10 times. I Certainly found that I became much smoother on the track once I stopped trying to wrangle the bike everywhere by the bars and rely more on my knees and lighter inputs through the bars.

Correct! Give the man a chocolate fish!

**SMOKEU** · 28th April 2014, 21:52

I'm just glad I've never had the pleasure of a proper slapper*

I've had a bit of headshake on the SRAD, and that was enough to scare me a fair bit. Happened with heavy acceleration in 2nd gear, and that doesn't have enough power to power wheelie in 2nd gear either. I'm light as at around 75-78kg including riding gear.

*tankslapper, you sick, perverted fuck.