Front end shake

John Roberts

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At an ... erm ... elevated speed my fairing on the RS shakes up-and-down badly. I've just had new tyres supplied and fitted and have noticed that the balancing mark is a bit more than 45degrees from the tyre valve. Surely that's not good enough is it, FFS?
 
Is it just the fairing that shakes or can you feel vibration through the bars and pegs.

Has the wheel been balanced?
 
Hard to tell, really, it starts at about 95 and gets worse so quickly that I haven't dared try it at a ton. There's no shake in the steering or at the pegs. At 100mph the front wheel turns just over 20 times a second, so an imbalance would result in that sort of frequency. It's hard to judge the frequency, but I don't think it's far from that.

I suppose that I'm answering my own question here, a bit silly I suppose, but I was wondering if the result of an imbalance would show up like this- not much vibration up to a particular speed and then a dramatic increase. The wheel wasn't balanced after fitting the tyre. I can't help but wonder how critical is having the balance spot close to the valve, though. When I fit the tyres myself I get them as near as possible to the valve, half an inch at most, but that's only because I don't really know how close it ought to be so I do it as well as I can.
 
If you get it balanced spot on, at least you are eliminating that as a potential problem.

Just a thought
 
An imbalance in the front wheel will definately result in what you describe.

I always get the tyre balanced. I use Steve at F&B in Sandbach who balances them manually and they are always spot on. The Balance spot on the tyre means feck all, they almost always require additional balance weight.

Get the tyre balanced and your problem will more than likely disappear. Do it sooner rather than later though as riding it like that will knacker your bearings.
 
Sorted.

The red spot was repositioned opposite the valve, bingo! problem solved. The guy did try to balance first but got nowhere, I may post another thread about that some time.

It was interesting to see Flipfly's comment regarding the balancing mark as not meaning anything, that was what the tyre fitter was saying as well when I took it back to reposition it, but lining it up next to the tyre valve did make a huge transformation. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that you're both wrong, it's just that I can't think what the explanation could be. I had a look at the Lasertech site in the hope of finding some contact information to get in touch with them to ask about balancing but I couldn't find anything, I'll try again some day perhaps.
 
Sorted.

The red spot was repositioned opposite the valve, bingo! problem solved. The guy did try to balance first but got nowhere, I may post another thread about that some time.

It was interesting to see Flipfly's comment regarding the balancing mark as not meaning anything, that was what the tyre fitter was saying as well when I took it back to reposition it, but lining it up next to the tyre valve did make a huge transformation. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that you're both wrong, it's just that I can't think what the explanation could be. I had a look at the Lasertech site in the hope of finding some contact information to get in touch with them to ask about balancing but I couldn't find anything, I'll try again some day perhaps.

John, my point was really that the spot in the right place will not mean a perfectly balanced wheel. I was at F&B on wednesday having a tyre fitted to Bertha. Every tyre he fitted needed additional weights to balance perfectly (usually 10 - 30 gramms).

Well worth getting them balanced 100% IMHO but it depends how good ya tyre guy is. Steve at F&B is brill :thumb
 


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