Heavy Braking Front Wheel Hop
 

There is a long straight just before I get home that I like to speed down and lately I have been breaking very heavily to slow down in time to make my turn... I have been experiencing a sort of bouncing action or wheel hop from the front tire with heavy use of the front brakes. Is this normal? In my head I can justify why it would be happening; the wheel is essentially stopped and the inertia of the bike keeps pushing it forward therefore the wheel is acting like a stone skipping across water... Or I may be crazy...

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Pray that you may be crazy. Pray really, really hard. If you're locking the front tire and leaving it locked, you've just been insanely lucky not to highside yet.

Another possible scenario, slightly less dangerous, is that you've fully compressed the front forks with the hard brake. And now the only reaction the front end can do to road irregularities is bounce.

I think you might be going a tad to fast... slow it up bro.

Maybe I exaggerated thinking the wheel was fully locked but I am thinking that it is reaching the point where it wants to lock and thats why its feeling like its hopping.

From your reaction I'm thinking that this is not normal... The full compression scenario seems plausible; I'll have to throw some zip ties around the forks and see what is going on there. My suspension is set on the stiff side but obviously the f4i's forks aren't the best of the bunch.

I'll play around with my suspension and see if I can't remedy it. Hopefully someone else can chime in with some definitive answers.

Our bikes don't have abs (as far as I know). So when you're going hard on the brakes, if that tire doesn't keep spinning smoothly, it's going to catch, and jump, just like you're describing. Imagine it in a car, it's just going to skid. The fact that it's happening on a sportbike though, says that you're going and braking too hard and late. We all have our certain sections of road we like, but just either brake sooner, or slow it up a bit. The fact that it happens on a "long straight just before I get home that I like to speed down" should tell you something.

My reaction may be a bit exaggerated as well. Can a person ride out a sliding front tire? Yes, if they know what they're doing. But, and I mean this as nicely as possible, if you're asking about it then it's prolly safe to assume you don't have the skill to be doing it intentionally or controllably on demand.

I'm gonna go with fubbzie and say you're going too fast. Or braking far too late. How much rear brake are you using under these situations?

Edit:
go with fubbzie and Zero1080, who types faster than me :)

Dont mean to sound stupid but check the tire pressure. I had the same issue. I inflated the front tire to 42psi as that was stamped on the tire. Little did I know you go by the bikes spec which says 36psi in the front. I fixed mine and the hopping went away.

Note I only experienced this from practicing emergency stops. Anyways check tire pressure and see if it helps

Thanks for some great feedback guys...

I put some zip ties around the forks and rode into work this morning and did some hard breaking that induced a little "wheel hop" and the forks never bottomed out. In fact the farthest they compressed was about a 1/2 inch from the bottom triple; so thats not the case. zero1080, thats really all I wanted to hear was that it is somewhat normal under such extreme circumstances.

I would like to clarify that I do this more or less, like skameigh said, to "practice emergency stops". Hence why I only do this on that specific stretch of road that I am comfortable with.

On a side note, Can anybody tell me how much space is between the top of the clip on and the little retention ring around the top of the forks? I seem to remember installing them with the rings meeting the clipons but it appears the forks may have shifted up a little bit because now there is about 1/8 inches between the ring and clipon.

Again, thanks for your feedback.

Another thought could be through a serious of hard stops ur starting to get some small flat spots on your front tires.. that are causing it to hop under hard braking... but thats prolly not il lol... could also be a warped rotor grabbing and letting go that could cause a hoping feeling... because your forks would load and unload back and forth quickly

I had the same thing happen.

The fix was to thoroughly drench your rotors in BRAKE CLEANER. Both sides inside and out.

When i changed my tires i guess i got a tiny teeny bit of grease or lube on the rotors somehow. Even touching your rotors with sweaty hands or greasy hands can make braking feel bouncy. Lots of brake clean fixed the problem now braking is super smooooth.