Ok, you guys know in "Knight Rider", they would load the car into the back of a moving trailer via a ramp which was essentially the back door of the trailer with wheels? This always looked cool, but I was thinking of all the details of the loading process, and couldn't help but think that it is almost impossible to do this on a bike. Mostly because the tires go from pretty high speeds to very low speeds in a short period of time. If the truck with trailer is moving at the average speed limit for U.S. highways (55), the car has to be moving at least 10 mph faster (65) to be able to get up the ramp. When it hits the ramp, it has to go over a sizeable step, because since it has wheels, the door is a bit higher than street level. At the point that the wheels contact the ramp, the speed of the trailer is subtracted from the speed of the car's wheels, meaning the tires go from 65 to 10 mph in a split second. That causes tire spin. I feel like the bump combined with the sudden reduction in wheel speed would cause some serious stability issues with a bike. Along with both of those factors, the rider would only have about 30 feet of linear space to safely stop before crashing into the front of the trailer. Craziness.

I'm a dork, I know.

Thoughts?

 

post it on the mythbusters forum...maybe they'll redo it with a bike

 

Imagine the bike one wheel on the ramp one wheel off still on the road. This is plausable, going the same 55mph. Bike steps it up to 56mph and the rear wheel contacts the ramp, which would essentially have a speed of 0mph. Im thinking this is where problems would arise. Wheelie ? Lowside ? I dunno. I think you would scrub a ton of speed if it stayed upright and you would be able to stop in time.

Mythbusters where are you when we need you..

 

I dont know...but if they work out the physics, I gotta get me one

 

Actually the force on the back wheel hitting the ramp would be minimal. Put your bike on a stand and go 65 mph, then pull in the clutch and drop to the ground, the tire will stop almost immediatly, and the bike will barely move at all. Now the step up could be worse. I would also not want to back off the trailer, that would be a bit scarier.

 

Mythbusters already tested this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYlstdCWzCY

 

Thats a car he was talking about a bike.

 

Bah!!!!

Ah right because bikes follow a completely different law of physics.

I think the only issue you would have is maintaining your balance and not falling backwards off the ramp.

 

the front wheel drops into a cradle...it clamps it...dropp the bike to neutral and the clamped cradleis then retracted up the ramp pulling the free wheeling back wheel and bike onto the ramp....

 

EZ Woo no need to get all flusterd. I need to take a class from Classic on how to properly use these things[:@]so you know Im just messin with ya.

I have seen a vid before with a dirtbike and it easily does it