Sounds like a bent fork tube.
You have to ID which one, then loosen the triple tree bolts and try twisting that one 90 degrees so the twist is outwards rather than backwards, then tighten everything up again.
Really, they need to come out and be straightened properly.
It could be you life at stake there. Only you know the value of that!!!!!!
Think of how stupid the average person is, then realise that half of them are more stupid than that.
Alan H wrote:Sounds like a bent fork tube.
You have to ID which one, then loosen the triple tree bolts and try twisting that one 90 degrees so the twist is outwards rather than backwards, then tighten everything up again.
Really, they need to come out and be straightened properly.
It could be you life at stake there. Only you know the value of that!!!!!!
Alan , i wasnt thinking of that when he wrote " I did have the forks professionally rebuilt " so i would hope the rebuilders would have seen a bent fork tube ? but i guess you never know .
If the fork tube was bent, I would not be able to align it. It can align it, but it eventually works its way off center. I adjusted everything this afternoon and really torqued down all fasteners. So far, so good.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a problem in the stem as my dampers is jammed.
tz375 wrote:Could be the lower triple clamp is tweaked. At this stage I'd suggest removing the forks and with just the legs bolted into the lower triple clamp, how far off are they?
The fix is to clamp the steering stem in a large heavy vice and bend the fork legs in/out, left/right as required to get them parallel with each other and with the stem. When doing that, they have to be pushed passed the straight point and allowed to spring back to a neutral position. They will take a lot more bending than you might expect and they have a remarkable "memory"
I can straighten them out, they just revert to the old offset position. Same way every time.
That suggests that the lower triple is bent . You have to remove the forks and have just the legs and lower triple clamp in a vice to straighten. With a bent lower triple, you are just forcing them to a "straight" position and they twist back to where they are naturally. The forks have to come off the bike to fix them.
If the legs and triple clamps are in fact perfectly straight, which would surprise me, then it's the frame that's bent or the swingarm, but start with the forks. Remove them and put them in a vice with no top clamp and see where they lay.
I ran on to a bent lower tree when I was doing my 550. Left leg slid through the lower and upper just fine. When I slid the right leg through the lower, it missed the upper hole by 1/2"!. I knew the bike had been in a front end collision as the forks were bent when I bought the bike. I didn't think it was possible to actually bend the tree. Boy was I wrong. I ditched the entire mess and bought another tree assembly off ebay.
I was born with nothing and still have most of it left.
