Fork alignment on a 5th Gen

Hello,

just got the bike back from the shop after a ballhead bearing replacement. After getting it home, I noticed that the left fork was trailing a bit, so both legs were not parallel. In the process, the shop managed to damage my front wheel fairing, that's how I noticed, but only after taking it back home.
Luckily, I have downloaded the technical manual from somewhere else on this excellent site.
So here I go, taking the front apart, and reassembling, and I notice that the forks have this natural tendency NOT to stay parallel while torquing the bolts. I really had to restrain the forks in position to keep them parallel.
Anybody else had some experience with this ? I'd like a second opinion since I've lost a bit of confidence in the local Honda garage.

Take care

 

I installed a whole new front suspension on my 5th gen only to find the same thing. The solution... Loosen the clamps on the lower tree, stand in front of the bike holding the front wheel between your legs ant turn the bars in the direction needed to make the corection. Once it is straight tighten the lower tree.

 

I actually had to loosen both the upper and lower tree, plus the front axle, to get the whole thing moving. Otherwise, I used exactly the same technique. Good to read I'm not the only one having had this.

Is anybody aware of a reason for this ? I would think that, if everything is straight (and the fork legs are, I checked), they would stay in position while tightening.

 

It is also helpful to loosen the top triple clamp stem nut (the one on top, not the adjuster underneath) and then lightly snug it down before tightening any of the tube clamp bolts. Then it is typically align the whole mess, snug the top clamps, then snug the bottom clamps, tighten the stem nut completely, tighten the top clamps completely, loosen and then completely tighten the bottom clamps, all the while making sure that nothing has moved around. That's what works for me, anyway.

A lot of bikes I have owned seem to have just enough tolerance stack up to need a bit of aligning. I have tried rotating the fork tubes to see if it affected anything, and it never did. It could be that the newer forks with larger tube diameters, and the upside-down style, are less prone to alignment issues.

 

There is a tool to make alignment of your fork legs easier, I think it is by MotionPro? or race Tech?

here we go, MotionPro
Motion Pro - Fork Alignment Tool

 

flying v:

how many kms on your VFR???

did you have noticable steering problems b4 bearing replacement??

 

She has like 55000 kms.
And I didn't have any problems before the bearing replacement. The shop told me the bearing was worn, but I don't notice any difference since.

 

original bearings usually are worn badly by the mileage your bike has, so i believe you needed them replaced......

a good shop always test-rides bikes they have worked on, and the misalignment would have been noticed by a competant mechanic.