Fork & steering troubleshooting help

[Darth Lefty]

My steering or maybe fork is a little tweaked, has been for a while. The top of the steering sits a few degrees left of center. There's no tendency to pull. I imagine I can hear the brakes dragging while I'm riding, but if I give the wheel a shove by itslef, there's no drag beyond the grease viscosity.

(This is likely damage from a low-speed but sudden drop about two weeks after I started riding. It also might have been pre-existing, but I doubt it given the care the PO took of the rest of it.)

I was trying to adjust down the height of the previous owner's handlebar risers, and thought what the hell, let's try to fix the tweak too. But I can find nothing externally to account for the problem.

I loosened everything up and tried just shving everything back straight. I could get it to straight, but not to the other side of straigt, and it reverted to its original tweak when I tightened everything up.

I got the fork out of the bike. I can find no problem with the upper tubes, which was the obvious place to look.. Can the lower tubes get bent? Seems like it would take a lot more wham than I gave it to make such a difference. Same goes for the upper and lower triples. Seems like the inner tube would have bent first.

There's nothing about the axle or the wheel that would cause such a thing, at least not that I can see. Is there?

Any advice would be appreciated. I can't really bring it to anyone down there to show you, as I'm about 150 mi from LA, but this is bugging me and I want it fixed.

[J.Moto]

Hey man, I'm having the same issue with my forks. Since the bars were bent in my crash, I bet my triples were slightly bent as well. Could be the case for you?

I'm going to replace the whole front end with hopes of getting rid of the mis-alignment...

[racinteach]

use a stright edge to check the fork legs surface...and look for any kind of gap...as for triples...if you take the legs out and they are striaght you put the legs back in and they go bad again..then the fork legs is bent...there is a guy up there, hi s name is JC Rey...he does alot of quad racing and stuff..he may be able to look things over...not sure what his shop is called as it's been a while since I spoke to him, but he may be able to figure it out

[Darth Lefty]

Tried the straightedge on the upper fork tubes, found nothing. I suppose the bend could be below the seal, but I've tried rotating the uppwer tube and watching for problems, and no dice.

Both of the triples and the lower forks are enormous heavy castings. How could they possibly get bent without the fork tube going first?

When I had just the top triple off at the start of all this, if I hooked it over one tube, the other tube would be about 1/4" away from its hole. But there was no telling which tube was the problem.

There are two shops here in town. But I'm not impressed with either of them. I'm really not interested in taking it to a shop and having them charge me $500 to fix it anyhow. I'm well capable of doing my own work. I just need to ID the problem.

I have another idea, stand by...

[twf]

your lower triple is bent or triples are out of wack.
losen the big nut on top of upper triple,losen all pinch bolts but bottom 2 on lower triple.
take 2 straight edges and put them across fork tubes,one at top and other right by seals.sit on bike and eyeball leading edges of this 2 straight edges,if not prfectly paralel pull on bars and twist untill paralel.good to have help.you put wheel between legs and pull on bars in either direction you need.
when edges are paralel tighten all pinch bolts.

[Darth Lefty]

OK, I just did a highly unscientific test in which I put the fork back in the triples. I did it from the top, so the axle holes are up in the air - no good reason except that I don't have to stand on my head to see the misalignment. Any 41mm tube would have been ok, but the ones I have happened to be in the forks... Then I put a flat thing sighted across them. Then I swapped the tubes from side to side and did it again. If the misalignment was in the triples, the result would be the same each time; if in the forks it would be opposite.

So, it appears that the triples are bent. The right side leans back a degree or two from the left.

Can anyone think of a way to tell if it's the top or the bottom? I figure it's probably the lower, just because it's more of a pain to replace.

Can they be straightened? Or anyone have a set of triples just lying around? I suppose that's too much to hope for. Oneida doesn't seem to have them online.

TWF: looks like you posted while I was figuring it out but that's essentially what I just did.

I'm really kind of leery of using the forks as crowbars to straighten things out.

[twf]

they can be straighten.it is lower one,99%.
take fork tubes off,find something flat(glass)and square and put under triple.it has to be bigger than triple,like you would put lower triple on table top.see if glass rocks,or you can just see if both ends of triple dont seat flat on glass.

[james4396]

To check front-end ...

test alignment without dissembling bike ... if you ride hands off does the bike drift to one side if it drifts to one side there is a bend somewhere. Another test is to lift front-end and spin wheel. A straight front end will allow a wheel to spin 3 rotations or more. This is not full proof cause you can wear down the pads at an angle till they no longer drag. So pads need to have even wear to do this test.

Lower triple clamp
place on a glass surface and see if all the edges hug the glass tightly. Not full proof as I got a clamp that did this but was bent. So add this test. With the front end off the ground and wheel and calipers off the fork. The forks must slide up into the upper clamps without you touching the upper clamp. If you have to pull or push on the forks to line up the holes then one of the clamps is bent.

Upper clamp
turn it upside down on a glass surface and then see if it hugs the glass in a even fashion. If you have a small piece of glass you can do this test without removing the ignition lock. Bent clamps need to be repaired or replaced. Shops will charge about $25-50 to straighten a clamp.

forks
remove the forks from the bike. Hold or clamp lower leg against a solid surface so it does not move. Turn upper tube and watch the cap-end for deflection. Mark the tube so you can point the bend later when you mount it. If the bend is small and both forks are about the same you can mount the forks with the bend pointed forward (so your wheel base is longer). If one is bent more than the other it will pull to on side even if you point forks forward. If they are bent too much then you should replace or repair forks. It's about $40 per leg for a shop to bend back a small bend.

Even a simple drop can bend the forks. These forks are small(43mm) and do not hold up well to even small mishaps.