Now, I don't go around pulling wheelies in traffic, you understand, but I've spent my fair share of time on the race track and after winning a race now and then I like to celebrate with an in your face wheelie occasionally, LOL. I beat Logan Youngs distance last TMGP race, but he got me for style with a nice stand up on his ttr..
Bikes are different. Some will just wheelie on power, known oddly enough as a power wheelie. You just stay in the gas in a lower gear and it'll climb on its own. My SV will occasionally do that in first and did it a couple of times in second going up hill on a cool day. It runs better in cool air. Usually, I sit forward on it I can stay in the gas and keep the wheel down. Liter bikes are your medicine if all you wanna do is wheelie, especially a naked bike that'll let you get weight back on the seat. Then, too, for lower speed power wheelies, it's hard to beat a big DP thumper or motard 500-600cc bike. The 600cc sport stuff will power wheelie first.
Now then, there is the roll on wheelie. On the SV, I can get it up to about 5K and then slam the throttle open in first and it'll pick the wheel up. If you yank the bars a little it helps. You can clutch the thing up anytime you want, just a little slip of the clutch, not much, and boom, instant unicycle. Once you get used to having it up near the balance point, you can walk first, get it coming back up toward the balance point and do a quick clutchless shift to second and keep it up through second. If you''re good you could balance it all the way up through third or fourth I guess, but that's not on my list of to dos. You don't really wanna get near the balance point if you're not used to it. I've clutched it up in second on the SV a couple of times just to see if it'd do it, walked it all the way into third. That's at around 70 mph. I don't go around doing that. ****, I don't wheelie at all unless I'm out on a fun ride and there's no one around and I just feel like it. Got a couple of tickets in my younger years being an idiot when I didn't think there was a cop around.
So, now days, I like to wheelie the KX when I'm practiciing at Katy and get tired of going for lap tiime. It will power wheelie, like any good two stroke with an expansion chamber exhaust. At TWS, there is "wheelie hill". My RS125 would hit that just as it was coming on the pipe good and boom, you were wheelieing at 100 mph! WOOHOO, LOL, not bad for a 125! One race it did that over wheelie hill, there was a north wind blowing hard and a gust caught me mid wheelie, I over corrected before I could get the wheel down, went off track and hit a cone which kicked up into Emmett Dibbles face barely missing him and I got back on the track as Emmett and Chris Newhouse got by, only lost two positions, but it was a rather high pucker factor experience.
Heck, you can clutch about anything into a wheelie. I can even wheelie my Gold Wing, done it a couple of times just to see.