How I invented the 'Front wheel Stoppie'

A lot of us motorcycle aficionados watch the speed channel and marvel at the tricks that Jason Brittan can do on his bike. One of the neatest stunts is what I believe he calls a front wheel stoppie. Motoring along at speed and then using the front brake only to cause the bike to rise up on the front wheel and come to a stop balanced up on the wheel.

Well ,not to detract from Jason’s riding skills but I did this in 1958 on my 250cc Ducati Americana. I’m thinking Jason wasn’t even born yet. How I came to do my stunt was slightly different in cause and execution but it left an indelible impression in my recollections of my earliest days of motorcycling.

One fine afternoon I was traveling north on a stretch called Dixie highway that ran between Ft. Lauderdale and Pompano Beach Florida. Now back in them "olden" times in south Florida when I was all of 15 years old you could operate a motorcycle and you didn’t need a helmet or eye protection. So without having any hindrances between me and the wind and the open road beneath my wheels I managed to run over "something" that caused me to do for free, what Jason most likely gets paid to do.

At about 45 miles an hour my front wheel suddenly stopped turning and within a microsecond started smoking as I hung on for dear life. I decelerated into a position where I was basically looking straight down at the ground in front of my headlight, up on my front wheel and getting ready to do another stunt, an "end over". When just as quickly while still moving forward at a guestimate of 10 mph or so my front wheel started turning again and the bike slammed back down. I then proceeded forward and off to the side of the road where I dismounted my ride and then checked my pants for unwanted wetness, at the same time looking around to see if anybody else saw what I just did....

when your 15, image is very important. Turned out nobody but me and my maker were witness to my extraordinary riding skills so I was sort of relieved that I didn’t have to explain what I had just done.

Actually I didn’t really know why I did it until I looked back about 50 yards and there in the middle of the lane was something that I had subconsciously seen just a few moments earlier. I walked back and picked it up. What it was an armature, a shaft about eight inches long with copper windings on its center four or five inches. Apparently when I ran up on this thing, my front tire caught it between the sidewall and the rim. It lodged there and then instantly rotated with the wheel up to the space between the left front fork and the fender bracket. At that point it jammed the wheel to a dead stop and then after a few seconds of terror it let loose and dropped off. I deduced all this by looking at the small dent in the rim and the large scrape /gouge in the fork fender bracket.

That was an instrumental lesson for my coming decades of riding, the fact that this can happen in broad daylight if attention is not paid to what’s on the road. I’ve done a lot of riding after dark in the years since but prefer not to these days, getting cautious in my golden years...................

Steveinvabch