seanmhc
New Member
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2016
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- 9
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- Location
- Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
I'm in a love hate relationship with my fz6 right now, everything about the bike is great - it's looks, it's practicality the amount of power and fun you can have on it. But most of the time I get on the bike i'm just not enjoying myself because I the darn thing feels like it doesn't want to ride straight. Not only does this make slow speed maneuvers more difficult, but it feels like it affects braking as the bike is 'skew' and general riding.
I started noticing this problem when I had my tyres changed, co-incidentally I swapped the stock exhaust out for a set of Dominator cans the night before. I'd only had the bike for a few weeks then so the problem may have still been here but I was unaware until I was riding on new rubber with an entirely different profile.
So when I'm riding it feels like the bike wants to go left. I find myself having to sit on the right side of my seat and apply pressure to the right handlebar to keep the bike going straight. Turning left is a breeze but turning right feels entirely un natural. When I'm sat normally I feel like I'm skew on the bike, my left hand feels further away than my right - If i look down at the forks it appears that the right fork is closer to the radiator than the left fork.. though by eye it doesn't look like the forks are twisted or bent. When braking I end up pushing more of my weight into my right handlebar and I have to really relax my arms and the handlebar turns to the right to 'straighten up' throwing my braking off all together.
From searching the net I thought it might have been the rear wheel alignment. Having made sure that's right.. giving up and riding with the wheel obviously pointing left or right - neither of which helped my problem it just made the bike want to slide round corners, then re-adjusting I've gathered it's not that. I've made sure my pressures are correct too knowing that can throw off a bike. The next thing I looked into was the steering head bearing, I'd noticed it had notched a little to the right and they were in obvious need of changing, I got a garage to do this as I wasn't confident in dropping the forks out - I hoped that by re-fitting them it'd hope to solve any issues with the forks being twisted too.. though stupidly I didn't ask as I was convinced at the time that it was the bearing causing the handlebars to move slightly to the right when riding straight throwing me off. Low and behold, this solved nothing.. (the handlebars turn much nicer now though).
When I was replacing my cans, I ended up fitting a new set of Givi arms as one of them on the right hand side was snapped. It took a lot of effort to line up the fixings and fit the box, almost as if the rear sub frame was out. There's also a nice set of scratches on the right of the topbox also the front right fairing screw mount has snapped between the two pieces which I noticed when trying to figure out what was vibrating at the front of my bike when I got it. This leads me to assume the bike has been down at some point whether dropped from stationary or moving I don't know.
The only other idea I have is that changing the exhaust might have adjusted the weight balance and taken some weight off the right side of the bike.. I'm not sure how this would make the bike not want to ride straight at higher speeds though as gyroscopic forces should counter this out, and it doesn't explain why the right fork appears to be closer to the radiator than the left and that I'm sat skew (even when I make sure i'm in the centre of my seat and upright) just to ride straight. I'm assuming something is bent, or something is out of alignment.
I'm starting to go crazy, I'm not enjoying the ride at all. I would love to take the bike to a garage and throw money at them so I can enjoy my ride again, but I'm not in the best of financial situations right now, unless I know exactly what needs doing and I buy the parts that's out the window for now. I'd love it if someone could help me out, or even come ride my bike and tell me I'm not going mad and imagining all of this because a bike not wanting to ride straight seems quite ridiculous in my head.
The bike is a 06 plate faired variant coming up to 20k miles.
I posted on the facebook page a while ago and it appeared a few other people had a similar issue but nobody has got to the bottom of it. I was hoping someone out there has, or could provide an explaination. I even tried drawing out the bike in an attempt to get my head around the physics of why this is happening, but I'm still clueless.
Hope someone can help!
I started noticing this problem when I had my tyres changed, co-incidentally I swapped the stock exhaust out for a set of Dominator cans the night before. I'd only had the bike for a few weeks then so the problem may have still been here but I was unaware until I was riding on new rubber with an entirely different profile.
So when I'm riding it feels like the bike wants to go left. I find myself having to sit on the right side of my seat and apply pressure to the right handlebar to keep the bike going straight. Turning left is a breeze but turning right feels entirely un natural. When I'm sat normally I feel like I'm skew on the bike, my left hand feels further away than my right - If i look down at the forks it appears that the right fork is closer to the radiator than the left fork.. though by eye it doesn't look like the forks are twisted or bent. When braking I end up pushing more of my weight into my right handlebar and I have to really relax my arms and the handlebar turns to the right to 'straighten up' throwing my braking off all together.
From searching the net I thought it might have been the rear wheel alignment. Having made sure that's right.. giving up and riding with the wheel obviously pointing left or right - neither of which helped my problem it just made the bike want to slide round corners, then re-adjusting I've gathered it's not that. I've made sure my pressures are correct too knowing that can throw off a bike. The next thing I looked into was the steering head bearing, I'd noticed it had notched a little to the right and they were in obvious need of changing, I got a garage to do this as I wasn't confident in dropping the forks out - I hoped that by re-fitting them it'd hope to solve any issues with the forks being twisted too.. though stupidly I didn't ask as I was convinced at the time that it was the bearing causing the handlebars to move slightly to the right when riding straight throwing me off. Low and behold, this solved nothing.. (the handlebars turn much nicer now though).
When I was replacing my cans, I ended up fitting a new set of Givi arms as one of them on the right hand side was snapped. It took a lot of effort to line up the fixings and fit the box, almost as if the rear sub frame was out. There's also a nice set of scratches on the right of the topbox also the front right fairing screw mount has snapped between the two pieces which I noticed when trying to figure out what was vibrating at the front of my bike when I got it. This leads me to assume the bike has been down at some point whether dropped from stationary or moving I don't know.
The only other idea I have is that changing the exhaust might have adjusted the weight balance and taken some weight off the right side of the bike.. I'm not sure how this would make the bike not want to ride straight at higher speeds though as gyroscopic forces should counter this out, and it doesn't explain why the right fork appears to be closer to the radiator than the left and that I'm sat skew (even when I make sure i'm in the centre of my seat and upright) just to ride straight. I'm assuming something is bent, or something is out of alignment.
I'm starting to go crazy, I'm not enjoying the ride at all. I would love to take the bike to a garage and throw money at them so I can enjoy my ride again, but I'm not in the best of financial situations right now, unless I know exactly what needs doing and I buy the parts that's out the window for now. I'd love it if someone could help me out, or even come ride my bike and tell me I'm not going mad and imagining all of this because a bike not wanting to ride straight seems quite ridiculous in my head.
The bike is a 06 plate faired variant coming up to 20k miles.
I posted on the facebook page a while ago and it appeared a few other people had a similar issue but nobody has got to the bottom of it. I was hoping someone out there has, or could provide an explaination. I even tried drawing out the bike in an attempt to get my head around the physics of why this is happening, but I'm still clueless.
Hope someone can help!