31moppie
.020 Over
I thought that I would post what I found to be an unlikely (to me) solution to front wheel shimmy on my 2010 Roadster. The problem started as a slight shimmy when letting go of the handle bars around 60 kph and gradually worsened from there. I eventually noticed some cupping on the Metzler front tire and replaced it with an Avon Cobra thinking that the problem would go away but in actual fact seemed to get worse. Having just replaced the front tire, I knew that the wheel bearings were in good condition and turned my attention to the front tire being out of balance. It always checked out perfect when performing a static balance test. I couldn't find anyone locally that could balance them dynamically so resorted to placing weights on opposite sides of the wheel (left and right) and on the top and bottom so the wheel was still in balance statically but changed the dynamic balance. Never found any change no matter what I tried. I took the windshield off thinking that that could be the cause, nope. I had checked the headstock bearing for free play and could find none. As a last resort, I decided to adjust the preload on the headstock bearing thinking that this was a long shot at best and et voila, was able to tighten up adjusting nut half a turn. Took for test drive and perfect, felt like a new bike again. I had done lots of research into this problem and saw very few posts suggesting the headstock bearing which is why I'm clearly describing my experience here as it appears to be a fairly common problem in any bike make.
