Front end does not feel right

Gmaan · Posted: February 2, 2009, 3:38 am Post subject: Front end does not feel right

My 650 is rebuilt from head to toe. I put tapered roller bearing in the head, new wheel bearings, and rebuilt the front forks. I put 20w oil in the forks.
When I am going around turns the front end just doesn't feel rock solid? I need to add a stearing stabilizer, and think this will help but any other input would be help full. What stearing stabilizers do you all recommend?

yamaman

By steering stabiliser, I take it you mean a steering damper? What this does is dampens the steering from flicking side to side ie handle bar shakes, as you not saying it shakes, I doubt a dampner will fix your issue.

I do highly recommend a fork brace, which will make the front much more solid. Also, as you have just changed steering head bearings, you should get the front wheel in the air and check for ANY play, if you didn't get the cups right in first time, they may have now knocked themselves into place, leaving the bearings loose!

Gmaan

Damper, sorry. You know the bearings are good, I checked them. Fork brace, will this really help? How tight should the head bearings be?

xsjohn

Kept my ball bearings with the notch for straight line expressway....perfect for the express.....little notchy around town at very low speeds.....right trade off for me........

""What I would do""...,,,,,Mark it.......Snug the bearings till it looses its centering ability at lower speed and feels weird...then back of an 1/4 inch or so (experiment) then the high speed should not be such a frenzy.....and low speed controlable......think these are a compromise........hate to feel uncomfortable on the express......takes a bit of experimentation.......doesn't cost anything and it might stabilize the twisties for you........geometry plays a lot there too........when I lowered the front on my Special a bit too much it didn't like it....65MHP in the twisties in the mountains made for a washy mini tank slap feel on the down hill sweepers where there was more weight on the front......hope this helps...........what ever you add to the front for stability the bearings have to be right.........

xsjohn

yamaman

Gmaan, as John said, I tighten them till I feel them bind and back off till they are free.
A fork brace is a good investment on these, much more so than a damper. A damper only becomes necessary if you run the forks up through the trees, or/and use narrow bars/clip ons, or alter the geometry to make it sharper in any way. Cheers

xsjohn

Free but not too free....the game is in that description.....xsjohn

xsleo

when i did mine i adjusted them the book for my harley say's to do it. the book say to support the bike so it is upright so the front end is completely suspended and the bike is level. remove all accesory wieght, such as windshield, that may affect the way the front end swings. if clutch cable pulls the front end , disconnect it. place a suitable marking surface on the rear tip of fender, such as masking tape. with the front end straight ahead , place a pointer so the base is on the floor with the pointer centered on fender. lossen lower triple clamp pinch bolts. to check the adjustment, tap the fender one way untill the front end falls away on its own. place a mark on the tape at this point. repeat in the other direction. measure the distance between the marks. is should be 1 to 2 inches. adjust as needed to get in spec. if more than 2 inches loosen the adjuster, if less than an inch tighten the adjuster. if the don't seem to have any effect the fork tubes may be stuck in the clamps. that isn't word for word but is the way they do it. you want the lower tree to be able to slide on the tubes. that way the adjuster nuts can adjust the preload. once it is set tighten the clamp bolts and recheck to make sure the setting didn't change. i did this and it feels good. when i first put the bearings and the lower tre in and put the top bearing in and the nuts on , i snugged the lower nut down a pair of pliers, while turning the tree back and forth to seat the bearings. then loosened them back up. then snugged the nut down by hand till there was just no play in the bearings. then used the harley "fall- away" to fine tune the settings. got mine set about 1 1/2 inch fall-away. this is done with the whole front end on the bike, as you would ride it.

yamaman

xsleo quote:
"When i did mine i adjusted them the book for my Harley say's to do it. The book says to support the bike so it is upright so the front end is completely suspended and the bike is level.
Remove all accesory weight, such as the windshield, that may affect the way the front end swings. If the clutch cable pulls the front end, disconnect it.
Place a suitable marking surface on the rear tip of fender, such as masking tape. With the front end straight ahead, place a pointer so the base is on the floor with the pointer centered on fender. Loosen lower triple clamp pinch bolts.
To check the adjustment, tap the fender one way untill the front end falls away on its own. Place a mark on the tape at this point, repeat in the other direction. Measure the distance between the marks. It should be 1 to 2 inches, adjust as needed to get in spec. If more than 2 inches loosen the adjuster, if less than an inch tighten the adjuster.
If the don't seem to have any effect the fork tubes may be stuck in the clamps.

That isn't word for word but is the way they do it. You want the lower tree to be able to slide on the tubes. That way the adjuster nuts can adjust the preload. Once it is set tighten the clamp bolts and recheck to make sure the setting didn't change. I did this and it feels good.

When I first put the bearings and the lower tree in and put the top bearing in and the nuts on , i snugged the lower nut down a pair of pliers, while turning the tree back and forth to seat the bearings. then loosened them back up. then snugged the nut down by hand till there was just no play in the bearings. Then used the harley "fall- away" to fine tune the settings. Got mine set about 1 1/2 inch fall-away. This is done with the whole front end on the bike, as you would ride it."

Sorry to edit your post Leo, was very difficult to read with no capitals or paragraphs.
You say if it's more than 2", loosen the adjuster- sounds like you might have got it the wrong way around maybe?
Cheers

Gmaan

Well I will do the first thing mentioned, tighten it up a bit and loosen just a pinch! You know it is probably that my bearing have seated and are wrung in now. I will look into a fork brace, any suggestions?

weekendrider

www.tkat.com/forkbrace.html
He did have some for the 650 also.

xsleo

Thanks, Yamaman, I'll try better.
If the tension on the bearings is too tight, the weight of the front end can't fall-away as easily. With the front end straight ahead, it balances. When you push the end of the handle bar, it moves the front end off balance. When the weight of the front end overcomes the bearing tension, it falls-away. If it is too tight, you have to push the front end farther off balance to get it to fall-away. If too loose, then it won't take much to push it off center and fall-away. So more than 2 inches you need to loosen the adjuster. Less than 1 inch you need to tighten.
I think this procedure will work with loose ball bearings also.

yamaman

Yes, I see what your saying now. Never heard that, but it makes sense to me!

metalredneck · Full Member Joined: Aug 04, 2008 Posts: 308

I find tires (tyres?) make a huge difference. The trials unit on the front had a kind of "rhythm" to it in a hard corner. I can't wait to put the Dunlop on this spring.

xsleo

gmaan, are you still running the 75 forks? i have the later, off a 79, 35 mm forks. the front end feels better with it. the 1 mm difference doesn't seem like much, but it is noticable. the main reason i did the swap was to have the later style dual disc on the front. a fork brace is on my to do list. it will stiffen the forks up some. less flex keeps the tire where you want it to be.

Gmaan

no I am running a 78 front end with (i think) 36 mm fork tubes. Dual disk from a XS1100. You know from the previous answers, my front tire is a big one, that might be part of the problem.

Gmaan

Also when I rebuilt the forks, I measured the clearance of the fork tubes and the bearings in the lower legs, it was in spec from the manual listing. Now I was using the 75 specs, not the xs1100 specs, but assumed they were the same.

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