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Hop-Ups
for Dummies - Steering Head Adjustment by
Chad Baird
Biker
wisdom # 13. Remember, you will be judged by the horse you
ride on. (so don't go riding around on a half assed/fixed
up machine... M'kay?)
Are you shaking and wobbling your way from start to finish
and out of tight spots? Does you bike feel like it was made
with a hinge in it's frame? Does "Rubber Cow" describe
the way your bike handles?? When you get on the front brake
hard or you go over a bump, do you hear a large clunk or click
coming from the front end of your bike? Do your handlebars
flop from side to side like a wet noodle?
If so, your steering head is probably loose. If it isn't,
you have other problems that might be related to your swing
arm bearings. The
steering head is one of the most over looked parts of bike
maint. Each bike requires a slightly different procedure to
doing this but there are some things that remain the same
and this is what I'm going to cover. First thing you have
to do is get the front of the bike off the ground. The way
I do it is by placing a 2x4 under the kickstand and on the
other side of the bike I set up my bottle jack. Now that the
front end is elevated take another board and place it under
the front tire, this is so your forks don't slide out of the
triple clamps. Make sure the bike isn't resting on the board,
its just enough to keep the front end from sliding downward.
Okay, your bike is in the air and the board is under the tire,
now break out your repair manual. It'll tell you to loosen
the bolts on the triple clamps, remove the gas tank and maybe
the handlebars too. This part is important because if you
don't do this correctly you'll crank down on the bearing cage
on only one spot, which creates a notch. Notched bearings
suck.
Now that your forks are loose take a second to make sure the
bike is secure because this where you have to get out the
BIG socket and BIG cheater bar to undo the BIG bolt that holds
your front end together. These are usually torques down from
60-90ft lbs.
This is also the part where different bikes call for different
procedures. On this machine I'm working on, the center bolt
isn't torqued down like the majority of machines I've wrenched
on. It has a pinch bolt on top of the T-clamps to cinch the
center bolt down tight. I like this pinch bolt setup the best
because I don't have to disassemble half the bike to get at
the center steering head bolt, I didn't even have to remove
the handle bars, only the gas tank. The last part of this
procedure is to tighten down the center bolt little by little
until the 'fall-away' is around 2-3 inches. In lay terms,
what you do is put a chair in front of the bike with a piece
of masking tape in the center of the seat, then put some tape
on the center of your fender. Draw a line down the center
of both pieces of tape. Tighten down the center bolt just
a smidge and then watch how far the bars flop to the left
and the right. Keep tightening this bolt down until the fall
away is in the acceptable range.
After awhile you'll get a feeling for how tight or loose you
like the steering head and you'll also be able to tell when
it's loosened up enough to affect handling. Besides the occasional
lubrication of the bearings if you do this correctly you should
be good to go for a few thousand miles.
About
the Author: Chad Baird - My riding/wrenching
obsession started in the summer of 88-89. My Dad got me a
used $50 Sears minibike with a seized 4hp Tecumseh. I spent
hours upon hours in the garage hooking up throttle cables/linkages,
kill switches, changing tires, swapping engines and of course
riding and crashing. Dad would hand me a repair manual, show
me how to do something once (mostly how to use a tool) and
then was pretty much hands off except to yell at me about
loosing his tools. He would also cuss me out for taking off
without making the bike 100% ride-able or fixing something
half-assed. So that's basically how I learned, lot's a trial/error
and getting yelled at. heheh.. Now my whole life revolves
around working on, riding, talking about and teaching others
who are interested and even some who aren't, how to do the
same.
Motorcycle Missionary? or just an annoying biker with a tendency
to pontificate? You decide...
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