are forks bent or an alignment issue? help!

So in short i lowsided rather hard, or semi lowside? Got caught in a corner havibg to brake hard and grabbed my front a little harder than needed. Front tire slidout and she tore up the left side pretty bad. Since ive repaired the cosmetics and put her shifter back in place. I still ride her fine and she doesnt seem to be off center or pulling anywhere.

But... this is her second lowside on that side, once from me, one from a previous owner. Ive noticed the handles will turn further to the left than the right, almost to where it will touch the tank.

Im curious if i somewhow twisted the forks a little or if the bar got slightly bent in. Theres no discomfort in riding, and if anything is bent its got to be minor enough to be blind to a naked eye.

Any suggestions? Or should i bring her into a shop and see if they can figure anything out?

 

Sorry to hear about the lowside. I can't help answer your questions, but sure someone with chimp in with the proper steps to determine.

 

My guess based on your description, is that you over loaded your tire in a corner. Basically your tire wasnt fully loaded and you were in a corner and grabbing brakes suddenly loading more on the tire will overload the tire.... (look up tail braking) Which broke traction. It takes a lot to damage the components. You are probably fine but
If you are concerned you can have a tech look at it.

There was a recent trail braking thread with a decent video or you can Google some videos

 

Possible you may have broken the steering stopper (cant remember technical name)

 

Sounds about right, i went down frond end first so it wasnt quite a lowside. Front tire just went out and we went down. Probably doesnt help i still have a sport touring tire on the front and a hypersport on the back.

Thing im curious is its twice now the weight of the bike has fallen and the handles taken the hit. Is there someway i could have damaged the steering stops? I can work around an engine fine but steering components is outside what im used to working on.

Bike is an 02 vfr, snorkel and pair mod done, and a custom debaffle. Drilled into last chamber a bit to give her a growl at idle.

 

You may have slightly bent the handle bars. The trillple tree and forks shouldn't be bent unless you hit something head on.
The bike took most of the damage on the side. You may want to adjust your suspension a bit. Don't use mis matched tires. (People so it) and know that your bike will behave differently on the same road at different times based in external factors. Rain, dry, cold, hot etc.
some times keep up to 90% of their traction thoughout the life of the tire and some can lose much much more as the tire wears. My guess is its everything but damage to your front end.

If you broke or damaged your brake or clutch lever, it's a good bet you have a bent handle bar. That's easy to see when you turn all the way left and all the way right. The stops are built to the triple tree and I'm pretty sure it's not broken

 

Yea i dont normally mix tires, i bought it that way and never changed it cahse i never had an issue with it.(of course that was before this accident.) Cluch lever is aftermarket shorties and it didnt break.

Suspention is already adjusted for my weight and riding style. If its just the handlebar could that adversely effect my handling at all? Im in southern california and i mainly commute and canyon carve on weekends. If the bar is bent its not by much, the VFRs already have a tight gap with the tank. At least when you drop the front forks in adjustment.

Im just curious, i know little on steering components. So any inpot is building my knowledge. Thanks!

 

I had my bike two weeks and had mis-matched tyres on it, low sided, split the front fender. Dusted myself off and rode home. I must have ridden my bike over 50,000 miles with my hands mis-aligned, (bent clip ons.) If you crank your bars to either side, and the clearance between the end of the bar end and the petrol tank is not the same, then one or both of the bars are bent. You could bend a clip on back but I just say NO to that, I ended up finding a used clip on for my right side off Ebay, it was a UK find, go figure. If you decided to bop the bar end into submission, get a nice shot filled mallet and go to town, usually reserved for other-peoples-bikes :smile:

I am assuming that your steering stop is still intact as to break one of those off is pretty tough, but you never know. Its something I look for on a used bike. I split two front fenders in the life of my bike, so its on its third one! :thumbsup:

 

I rode a year with a bent right bar and I'd like to say it didn't affect my riding. But what happened is I got used to it. Not good. I got a new clip on for eBay for like $65 ish. I bought the Chinese levers with the indexed adjustment for $35 a pair off eBay. Very nice.

 

It is possible to twist the front end as a result of a fall. Basically the lower triple and upper brace become misaligned ever so slightly. In your case since the left clip-on gets closer to the tank than the right, it would indicate that the upper brace is or could be slightly tweaked to the left. I would suggest that you support the bike and remove the front wheel and axle. Now loosen the pinch bolts on the upper brace and lower triple clamp. This will remove the tension on the front end then you should be able to slide the fork tubes up and down without binding. Set the fork height and tighten the pinch bolts on the lower triple. Then install the front axle to square up the front end. It really should slide in and align easily. If it doesn't, something is bent. Secure the axle and then tighten the pinch bolts on the upper brace. Now install the clip-ons and see how close they get to the tank when you hit the stop in either direction. It should be equal on each side.

That is how I would begin but there may be other ways to accomplish the same task.

 

^ Yep, well sed, They should slide in like butter to lower and upper tripple tree. You can only cover so much and when you re-think things, past pertinent points come to mind. You know you could have a bent fairing stay that makes the bike look off too. I have seen race bikes with the sub-frame off where your arse was off compared to the placement of your arms. Thats a weird ride for sure...

 

You could just take the load of the front end, then loosen the clamp bolts and re tighten. If it is tweeked it just may spring back into place when loosened and re tightened.

 

+1 on the handle bars. In a low side I would expect the handle bar, clip on actually, to hit the ground. The handle bar could be bent or "twisted" on the fork. I think twisted on the fork is unlikely. This would account for normal ride but one handle bar being closer to the tank. Since it rides well, you could leave it alone or loosen the pinch bolts and recenter it.

 

Any time a bike goes down, no matter how hard or gently, the alignment of the forks needs to be checked. Forks twist in the triples relatively easily but, ironically, don't straighten back on their own. Here is what I do:

- Loosen the following:
* top triple pinch bolts
* all of the axle pinch bolts
* the clip on bolts
* The upper triple center nut
- Grab the front brake very tightly
- Vigorously push down on the forks, the idea is you want to try and compress them as much as you can
- After working it several times, tighten everything back down to spec torque

This should do it. Good luck!

 

Sounds like you slightly bent the handlebars for sure.. have you tried lining it up and trying to find a good place to compare it. Park against a white wall and look at different angles... Shouldn't be too hard to notice a little bend.

 

All this talk of bent bars, and nobody has spoken of the very simple possibility that the clip-on may have slipped inward without bending... In my experience, this is more common than getting bent bars (I've lost count of the times my clip-on has slipped when one of my bikes has gone onto its side, but I've only had a bent bar once).

 

There's a key for the clipons on the 5th gen, but it still allows several degrees of movement (at least 10mm at the end of the bar). The correct position is "all the way forward" if that makes sense.

Anyway, here's a video showing the bounce alignment method. However, this guy leaves the top triple clamp tight, and loosens the bottom triple clamp, so I'd be a bit concerned that he's gradually pushing his top triple clamp up each time he does it, and the centre clamp nut probably won't toghten properly unless he tightens the bottom triple clamp, then loosens the top clamp (which he doesn't mention). But that would result in the forks moving up in the clamps.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vSunBRB6-r8&desktop_uri=/watch?v=vSunBRB6-r8

All of that being said, surely strapping two long rigid straight objects to the fork tubes at the top/bottom clamps would be more accurate (something that I intend to test), but for the straight edge method, the top fairing has to be removed (at least for the 5th gen).

 

I tested three alignment methods this evening:

Two straight edges
Bounce
Plate glass

Bounce wasn't as spot-on straight as the other two methods (maybe one fork leg is a 1-2mm longer than the other), but it was certainly accurate enough as a quick fix.

Two straight edges took the most time because of fairing removal, and was no different in accuracy to the plate glass method.

Putting plate glass across the stancheons, immediately above the dust seals (diagonal rock = misaligned; no rocking = aligned) took longer than the bounce method, but was more accurate on my bike, but only by a whisker.

Irrespective of the alignment method, after torquing all the bolts, it was still possible to "muscle" the alignment a little bit to finesse it.

 

Bent or Loose stem?

If you still have travel, motion or wiggle room to muscle the alignment after the bolts are torqued down then i would suspect that you may have loose or damaged steering bearings and/or a bent or loose steering stem in the bottom bracket of the triple tree.