Long story short, my basket case of a K9 continues to never the less impress me!
- I have had a high speed walking, not a wobble the front end literally walks. It only happens north of of 78-80 MPH and also there has to be some wind, I noticed its more prevelant with a strong head wind or if I am passing a tractor trailer on the freeway and catch that wind coming off the trailer. Literally the front end would walk the handle bars are dead still but there was evidently slop in the bottom tree or Forks.
The Issue came to light on my trip out with Blacktopper and Skog. On this trip we were doing 80MPH+ most of the time because well if your trying to cover ground the interstate is 80MPH down here in the SouthWest otherwise you wont get to where you need to be anytime soon. I actually thought it was my wheel bearings but those are easy to check and I did so on the trip and knew it was not a bearing issue. Coming out of El Paso I about shit my britches as it was pretty bad and on the next stop Blacktopper even made a comment that he has never seen a front end move like that, he was behind me so probably had a better view point. I learned that I just had to let off the gas to allow the weight back on the front end to straighten it out. I know what a wobble is and this is not it as you can gas out of a wobble from a cupped tire, etc. We tried to just tighten my neck at the hotel that evening but couldnt get the nut to budge so I just said I'll keep riding it as I kinda got the hang of it and obviously it was so damn tight it wasn't going anywhere.
I finally got around to looking at it, it only did it once or twice on my ride up to KS and back but we rarely did 80mph there and back anyways.
With almost 20k on the bike figured it was time to tear down and replace the neck bearings and races anyways. Bought the race removal tool and the race press (worth every penny) makes this job a breeze.
Well here is what I found. I needed a breaker bar to loosen the stem nut on the bottom and I assume the previous owner had issues but the shop he used just tightened the hell out of the neck to try and correct it.
I assumed the first race was installed incorrectly but unfortunately not.
Now these are the non removable neck cups, so I cant just press out the cup and press in a new one. My 2004 has removable cups and appears late 2007 K9 - 08 they went back to removable. I was the lucky winner of the non removable neck cups...go figure.
Gave Shannon a call as this is in his wheel house, his first assumption like mine was it can't be seated all the way. Well I thought it was and that tolerance is quite wide with these types of bearings but went ahead and made all the measurements .061"-.062" depth all around, so well within normal acceptable tolerances. So I knew for sure it was seating correctly.
Next up was measuring the diameter of the neck cup in the frame itself, Shannon assumption here is when they welded the neck they shrunk the neck cup. He said "I bet the back side of the frame you need to take a material off". Well I went and measured it...looks to be 1.956" from about 1-8 and 1.972" at 3 - 9. See below diagram, Now I need to take a little material off the back side roughly .010"-.012" of material of the back side. The Race is 1.980" and considering I don't have any play in the bearing with the 1.972" measurement from 3-9 I will suspect that I need somewhere around that on the backside for the race to fit correctly.
- I have had a high speed walking, not a wobble the front end literally walks. It only happens north of of 78-80 MPH and also there has to be some wind, I noticed its more prevelant with a strong head wind or if I am passing a tractor trailer on the freeway and catch that wind coming off the trailer. Literally the front end would walk the handle bars are dead still but there was evidently slop in the bottom tree or Forks.
The Issue came to light on my trip out with Blacktopper and Skog. On this trip we were doing 80MPH+ most of the time because well if your trying to cover ground the interstate is 80MPH down here in the SouthWest otherwise you wont get to where you need to be anytime soon. I actually thought it was my wheel bearings but those are easy to check and I did so on the trip and knew it was not a bearing issue. Coming out of El Paso I about shit my britches as it was pretty bad and on the next stop Blacktopper even made a comment that he has never seen a front end move like that, he was behind me so probably had a better view point. I learned that I just had to let off the gas to allow the weight back on the front end to straighten it out. I know what a wobble is and this is not it as you can gas out of a wobble from a cupped tire, etc. We tried to just tighten my neck at the hotel that evening but couldnt get the nut to budge so I just said I'll keep riding it as I kinda got the hang of it and obviously it was so damn tight it wasn't going anywhere.
I finally got around to looking at it, it only did it once or twice on my ride up to KS and back but we rarely did 80mph there and back anyways.
With almost 20k on the bike figured it was time to tear down and replace the neck bearings and races anyways. Bought the race removal tool and the race press (worth every penny) makes this job a breeze.
Well here is what I found. I needed a breaker bar to loosen the stem nut on the bottom and I assume the previous owner had issues but the shop he used just tightened the hell out of the neck to try and correct it.
I assumed the first race was installed incorrectly but unfortunately not.
Now these are the non removable neck cups, so I cant just press out the cup and press in a new one. My 2004 has removable cups and appears late 2007 K9 - 08 they went back to removable. I was the lucky winner of the non removable neck cups...go figure.
Gave Shannon a call as this is in his wheel house, his first assumption like mine was it can't be seated all the way. Well I thought it was and that tolerance is quite wide with these types of bearings but went ahead and made all the measurements .061"-.062" depth all around, so well within normal acceptable tolerances. So I knew for sure it was seating correctly.
Next up was measuring the diameter of the neck cup in the frame itself, Shannon assumption here is when they welded the neck they shrunk the neck cup. He said "I bet the back side of the frame you need to take a material off". Well I went and measured it...looks to be 1.956" from about 1-8 and 1.972" at 3 - 9. See below diagram, Now I need to take a little material off the back side roughly .010"-.012" of material of the back side. The Race is 1.980" and considering I don't have any play in the bearing with the 1.972" measurement from 3-9 I will suspect that I need somewhere around that on the backside for the race to fit correctly.
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