Subject: Wheel Alignment
Author: joe jump
Date: Mar 14, 2005, 7:11 AM
Post ID: 1718541114
While doing the Spring maintenance on Junkyard, I had the swingarm out
for trans removal. When I re-installed the swingarm I started to center
the swingarm in the frame using feeler gages inserted between the frame
& swingarm. I remembered during last year's riding season that Junkyard
had an unstable feeling above an indicated 80 MPH; seemed a bit twitchy
and wanted to start up with a low frequency oscillation that was pretty
unnerving, especially after reading Greg Feild's comments in his book
about stability problems encountered with the early police models. I
decided to check out wheel alignment using the string line trick;
pulling a string line around the rear tire forward & measuring for equal
gaps on either side of the front tire. Using this method I ended up with
the swingarm biased slightly to the road side. During my ride Saturday
(up to indicated 90) I noticed some of the same twitchyness, which I
blame on the width of the bars, but the oscillations seem to be gone.
Time will tell; the improvement may also be due to the new tires.
Joe in St Louis
850T-Powered Ambo