Head shake on decel

[Walking Tall]

A funny thing happened to me yesterday. Throttle closed or nearly closed, in 2nd or 3rd, I took both hands off the bars as I was coming up on a red light. As I did this, the front end of my R3R, shook side to side. I've always associated this behavior with higher speeds. Does anyone on here have any idea what caused my bike to do this? Front end out of alignment, front wheel out of balance...? It seems silly to put a steering damper on a Rocket.

 

[Boog]

The easy answer is not to let go of the bars.

The VMAX has a known engineering issue with decelerating head shake from 35 to 25 MPH. I had a rod in my arm to prove it.

The R3R does not have any known flaw like this. Typical culprits are head bearings going bad, head torque wrong, tire wear or out of balance and maybe damage to forks or a misalignment of them. Do you have any more input to offer on your bike's history?

 

[Gregger]

The easy answer is not to let go of the bars.

The VMAX has a known engineering issue with decelerating head shake from 35 to 25 MPH. I had a rod in my arm to prove it.

The R3R does not have any known flaw like this. Typical culprits are head bearings going bad, head torque wrong, tire wear or out of balance and maybe damage to forks or a misalignment of them. Do you have any more input to offer on your bike's history?

Agree fully with Boog. Knock these off one at a time and the problem will go away.

 

[Plow Horse]

Preload on headstock bearing

 

[Ishrub]

'Rumble strips', cobble stones, pot holes or speed bumps do it to me when I ride with my hands off the bars leaning back in my seat like I did as a kid on my bicycle. Bit trickier on the Roadster as I have to take my boot and sock off to give me some throttle control with my thumb like big toe. On me bicycle I just pedalled faster, easy peasy.

So now I only ride 'hands free' in summer or bed.

 

[TURBO200R4]

keep your hands on the bars till u wear out the front tire then replace tire and it will probably b ok.
every time i get new tire i check holding just a little back from the bars to see if it is going to shake.
that is easier then changing bearings

 

[Walking Tall]

The easy answer is not to let go of the bars.

The VMAX has a known engineering issue with decelerating head shake from 35 to 25 MPH. I had a rod in my arm to prove it.

The R3R does not have any known flaw like this. Typical culprits are head bearings going bad, head torque wrong, tire wear or out of balance and maybe damage to forks or a misalignment of them. Do you have any more input to offer on your bike's history?

I bought the bike new in September '18. It has only 2k miles on it, so nothing should be worn out. I'm thinking it's an alignment issue withthe forks, front wheel unbalanced or an issue with the steering head bearings. I have dropped the bike once on the left side. Very embarrassing

 

[Jvheli]

I’ve owned 2 Roadsters and they both do it.
Low speed wobble isn’t concerning. Whatever you do don’t over tighten the headstock in attempt to fix it. People do this, not sure why, kinda a poor mans steering damper. But hey, if you want to replace the bearings.....that’s one way to ruin them!

 

[Plow Horse]

My Roadster did it from day one. On deceleration if you let go of the handle bars when the speed reached 42mph it would start to shake and continue to progressively get worse till 35mph.
As everyone says don’t let go of the handle bars .
At around 8 thousand miles I got it fixed.
No longer has a head shake on decel. I can let go of the handle bars till the bike slows down enough to where it would fall over if I wanted. But I don’t

 

[sonny]

I’ve owned 2 Roadsters and they both do it.
Low speed wobble isn’t concerning. Whatever you do don’t over tighten the headstock in attempt to fix it. People do this, not sure why, kinda a poor mans steering damper. But hey, if you want to replace the bearings.....that’s one way to ruin them!

Mine does not do that. It did the first two years that I owned it but after Replacing the headstock bearings and races I have had no problems at all. Triumph recommends greasing the bearings once a year. How many people do that? Triumph's piss poor excuse for greased bearings at the factory is a joke. I used Lucas Green marine grade grease. Made one minor adjustment after 30,000 miles. Yes while the bike is down I plan on pulling the front end apart and re-grease the bearings. Among other things. Agree on the overtighten the headstock. If you follow the manual on adjustment of the headstock and the wobble comes back after a short time then you just might want to take a good look at your bearings and races. There is nothing wrong with the design or the quality of the headstock. Might be a problem with the type of grease the factory is using if you can even call that slime grease.