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steering head-help!
Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 8:11 pm
by Walter Bell
Hay all! I've run into something I havn't seen here yet. I have an
A-16 w/12K smiles on her. A few months back I noticed a sort of
banging coming from the front end as I went over say railroad tracks
or jumped up onto curb-like things or rocks, ect...Well, I'm pretty
good at making sure everything has either blue or red locktight so it
doesn't fling off or vibrate out. A lesson learned when my right
radiator shroud came off in the first 40mi! Anyway, coming to the
point. I look this thing over all the time to see if anythings fallen
off. And so far, after the shroud, nothing has. Cool, rite? Well, I
took her for a ride today -10f. I was thinking if that guy can ride
across Canada, well, you get the idea. I noticed the banging or
subdued thuds again. I decided to put her up on the rack and pulled
the wheel to the front. thud thud thud thud, crap! Steering head
bearings are out! How could that happen? I got on the fone with a
riding buddy and began telling him the story and as I was looking at
the bike, there under the handlebar between the 2 places that mount
the handlebar to the tripleclamp, the (I'm guessing here) bolt that
goes down through the center of the steering head bearings has backed
out(up)and stopped when it turned out enuf to touch the bottom of the
handle bar! Holy crap! So, what do I do now? Just tighten it back down
and watch it or pull the whole front end off and replace everything
needed? Anyone have this happen before? I need guidance as to what to
do from you pros! Thanks, Walt
steering head-help!
Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 9:38 pm
by teamster1997
It for some reason seems to be a common thing with the KLR. It's
happened to me twice so far in 27,000 miles and I periodically check
it. Personnely, I would tighten it back up and check the steering for
a smooth feel from right to left and keep a close eye on it from now on.
Just my two cents, Tim.........
--- In
DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com, "Walter Bell" wrote:
>
> Hay all! I've run into something I havn't seen here yet. I have an
> A-16 w/12K smiles on her. A few months back I noticed a sort of
> banging coming from the front end as I went over say railroad tracks
> or jumped up onto curb-like things or rocks, ect...Well, I'm pretty
> good at making sure everything has either blue or red locktight so it
> doesn't fling off or vibrate out. A lesson learned when my right
> radiator shroud came off in the first 40mi! Anyway, coming to the
> point. I look this thing over all the time to see if anythings fallen
> off. And so far, after the shroud, nothing has. Cool, rite? Well, I
> took her for a ride today -10f. I was thinking if that guy can ride
> across Canada, well, you get the idea. I noticed the banging or
> subdued thuds again. I decided to put her up on the rack and pulled
> the wheel to the front. thud thud thud thud, crap! Steering head
> bearings are out! How could that happen? I got on the fone with a
> riding buddy and began telling him the story and as I was looking at
> the bike, there under the handlebar between the 2 places that mount
> the handlebar to the tripleclamp, the (I'm guessing here) bolt that
> goes down through the center of the steering head bearings has backed
> out(up)and stopped when it turned out enuf to touch the bottom of the
> handle bar! Holy crap! So, what do I do now? Just tighten it back down
> and watch it or pull the whole front end off and replace everything
> needed? Anyone have this happen before? I need guidance as to what to
> do from you pros! Thanks, Walt
>
steering head-help!
Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 10:20 pm
by Robert Chay
There's a nut under the triple clamp that will need to be tighten first
before the top nut. Use a spanner wrench or a flat-head screwdriver and a
small hammer.
Or you can take the top triple clamp off, lower the fork/wheel assembly to
check the bearing and repack or just grease the bearings (top and bottom). I
usually put a drop of blue loctite on the top nut.
-Bobby
> -----Original Message-----
> From: teamster1997
>
> It for some reason seems to be a common thing with the KLR.
> It's happened to me twice so far in 27,000 miles and I
> periodically check it. Personnely, I would tighten it back up
> and check the steering for a smooth feel from right to left
> and keep a close eye on it from now on.
>
> Just my two cents, Tim.........
steering head-help!
Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:16 am
by dooden
Take handlebars off (4 bolts) loosen top triple bolts (on fork), back
off large jam nut on stem head, use a punch/screwdriver to snug the
slotted nut to tighten the steering head bearings, put jam nut back on
and snug down, torque top triple bolts, reinstall handlebars, make
sure you play with handlebar position so its the most comfy position
(I find pushed slightly forward really was way better)
Go for a ride.
Shortly after getting my bike I also noticed the clunking/thuds,
brought bike back and thats all it was.
Odds of being bad bearings are very little IMHO, just loose I am
guessing, now if you were taking it all apart I would have said grease
them at the same time, but to just snug them is a pretty short order job.
Thats my story and I am sticking to it.
Dooden
A15 Green Ape
--- In
DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com, "Walter Bell" wrote:
>
> Hay all! I've run into something I havn't seen here yet. I have an
> A-16 w/12K smiles on her. A few months back I noticed a sort of
> banging coming from the front end as I went over say railroad tracks
> or jumped up onto curb-like things or rocks, ect...Well, I'm pretty
> good at making sure everything has either blue or red locktight so it
> doesn't fling off or vibrate out. A lesson learned when my right
> radiator shroud came off in the first 40mi! Anyway, coming to the
> point. I look this thing over all the time to see if anythings fallen
> off. And so far, after the shroud, nothing has. Cool, rite? Well, I
> took her for a ride today -10f. I was thinking if that guy can ride
> across Canada, well, you get the idea. I noticed the banging or
> subdued thuds again. I decided to put her up on the rack and pulled
> the wheel to the front. thud thud thud thud, crap! Steering head
> bearings are out! How could that happen? I got on the fone with a
> riding buddy and began telling him the story and as I was looking at
> the bike, there under the handlebar between the 2 places that mount
> the handlebar to the tripleclamp, the (I'm guessing here) bolt that
> goes down through the center of the steering head bearings has backed
> out(up)and stopped when it turned out enuf to touch the bottom of the
> handle bar! Holy crap! So, what do I do now? Just tighten it back down
> and watch it or pull the whole front end off and replace everything
> needed? Anyone have this happen before? I need guidance as to what to
> do from you pros! Thanks, Walt
>
steering head-help!
Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 11:32 am
by Jeff Saline
On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 02:10:51 -0000 "Walter Bell"
writes:
> Hay all! I've run into something I havn't seen here yet. I have an
> A-16 w/12K smiles on her. A few months back I noticed a sort of
> banging coming from the front end as I went over say railroad
> tracks
> or jumped up onto curb-like things or rocks, ect...Well, I'm pretty
> good at making sure everything has either blue or red locktight so
> it
> doesn't fling off or vibrate out. A lesson learned when my right
> radiator shroud came off in the first 40mi! Anyway, coming to the
> point. I look this thing over all the time to see if anythings
> fallen
> off. And so far, after the shroud, nothing has. Cool, rite? Well, I
> took her for a ride today -10f. I was thinking if that guy can ride
> across Canada, well, you get the idea. I noticed the banging or
> subdued thuds again. I decided to put her up on the rack and pulled
> the wheel to the front. thud thud thud thud, crap! Steering head
> bearings are out! How could that happen? I got on the fone with a
> riding buddy and began telling him the story and as I was looking
> at
> the bike, there under the handlebar between the 2 places that mount
> the handlebar to the tripleclamp, the (I'm guessing here) bolt that
> goes down through the center of the steering head bearings has
> backed
> out(up)and stopped when it turned out enuf to touch the bottom of
> the
> handle bar! Holy crap! So, what do I do now? Just tighten it back
> down
> and watch it or pull the whole front end off and replace everything
> needed? Anyone have this happen before? I need guidance as to what
> to
> do from you pros! Thanks, Walt
<><><><><><> ><><><><><><>
Walt,
It sounds like you could have ridden long enough with the bearings loose
enough that you might have damaged the bearings. They take a heck of a
hammering if they aren't adjusted properly. You heard them getting
hammered so you know it happened. But... just maybe you'll never know
they got hammered if all you do is lube and adjust them. My suggestion
is to do one of three things.
1. Adjust them and ride it and forget about it.
2. Take the front end apart enough to get to the bearings and take a
look at them and lube them with some wheel bearing grease and then do #1.
3. Clean and inspect the bearings and when you find some minor marks on
a roller or race replace the bearing unit, do #2 and then #1.
Glad you didn't get hurt with loose steering head bearings.
Best,
Jeff Saline
ABC # 4412 South Dakota Airmarshal
Airheads Beemer Club
www.airheads.org
The Beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota
75 R90/6, 03 KLR650, 79 R100RT
steering head-help!
Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:50 am
by Walter Bell
Hay all! THanks for the emails and replies to my dilema. Unfortunatly
I tightened down the nut at the top of the steering head and when
tryng to pull the front tire out away from the bike, it still moved.
I'm grabbing at straws here before tearing down the frontend. Any
other things I can do? Thanks, Walt
de tour 2006 with jeff and steve intro part 1 of 2
Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 4:44 am
by Jeff Saline
KLR Listers,
I've been unsuccessful at posting this to the list in 6 tries in the last
5 days. Here's another try. Sorry if this is a duplicate.
I've now broken this message into two posts. Here's the first part.
Jeff
<><><><><><><>
Below is the first trip report about De Tour, taken by myself and Steve
Rankin from 30 May though 15 June 2006. You may have seen the trip
reports when they were first posted last summer. But I'm thinking with
winter finally upon many of us, a few riders may find the reports a fun
way to escape from winter for a few minutes at a time. If you don't care
to follow Steve and me on this journey please feel free to press your
delete key.
For Airheads... this trip was taken by two airheads and we met a couple
of airheads along the way, but we were riding Kawasaki KLR650s. I've
checked with the airlist admin and got the go ahead to post these trip
reports to the airlist. I hope you enjoy.
Trip reports like this always seem to be a bit better if photos are
available too. KLR Lister Greg McKinney in Tennessee has graciously
offered to host the photos on his server for a while. What originally
began as an idea to just have images available has snowballed into a
small De Tour site. Greg has spent quite a few hours setting up pages
for each day, showing images, and also making the narrative available.
So if you'd like to see some photos from the trip, or just can't wait for
the next days trip report, go to Greg's site at:
http://70.60.188.86/de_tour.htm and cruise along with us.
I'll never be able to thank Greg enough for is generous offer to host the
De Tour reports and photos for a while, and also for his hard work in
making this available in a nice format. THANK YOU Greg!
Finally, all the grammatical and punctuation errors and misspellings are
mine, and mine alone. All the trip reports, like seen BELOW, are the
same as were posted last summer. I'm just forwarding them for your
reading pleasure and plan to forward one each day or so to the list and
those friends that have requested being added to the list.
Hope you enjoy our ride. We sure had a fun time on it.
Best,
Jeff
Jeff Saline
ABC # 4412 South Dakota Airmarshal
Airheads Beemer Club
www.airheads.org
The Beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota
75 R90/6, 03 KLR650, 79 R100RT