Hard turning in

[NSrider]

I have a new 08 with less than 5000kms on the odometer and I have to really work at it to get it to turn right. If I am turning left I just have to drop my shoulder lean a little and she turns fine but when turning right I have to countersteer pretty hard in order to get her to turn. Once I get her over she tracks great thru the turn but there is some difficulty in getting to that point. I am thinking it is the stock tire's but what other things would cause this problem?

 

[Sherman]

I have a new 08 with less than 5000kms on the odometer and I have to really work at it to get it to turn right. If I am turning left I just have to drop my shoulder lean a little and she turns fine but when turning right I have to countersteer pretty hard in order to get her to turn. Once I get her over she tracks great thru the turn but there is some difficulty in getting to that point. I am thinking it is the stock tire's but what other things would cause this problem?

Check your front tire. It sounds like it is cupped on the right side. That happened to me before.

You may have an alignment problem or uneven pressure in the fork tubes causing the uneven wear.

My $.02

 

[keithaba]

Check your preload, compression, and rebound dampening. If they are not set evenly on both forks, that could cause some weird handling problems as well as tire issues.

Read this thread here, make sure you see the note at the top, the GENII settings are later in the thread.

clicky

 

[McDee]

Check your preload, compression, and rebound dampening. If they are not set evenly on both forks, that could cause some weird handling problems as well as tire issues.
Read this thread here, make sure you see the note at the top, the GENII settings are later in the thread.

clicky

I'll second this suggestion. Had a similar issue with left turns and found that the settings were significantly harder on the left side.

 

[Scab]

My wife had the same problem on her bike. Her elbow was in the way.

 

[Fred W]

Check your preload, compression, and rebound dampening. If they are not set evenly on both forks, that could cause some weird handling problems as well as tire issues.
Read this thread here, make sure you see the note at the top, the GENII settings are later in the thread.

clicky

Also, check to see that the fork tubes are not twisted in the triple trees. To do that you'd need to loosen up all the pinch bolts and retorque them after checking the front wheel is perfectly straight. I have not had to do this but I recall this being someone's provblem in the past. Might turn something up with a Google search of the forum.

 

[motorcycle-ed]

Although it would make it hard turning in on BOTH left and right, front or rear tire pressure being low will cause this, particularly on low profile tires like the FJR. Since it is different left than it is right, it is likely that the front is worn more on one side than the other. Keeping 40 psi in the front will make the front wear much better. I use 42 rear and 40 front. There is a noticeable difference between 38 in the front and 40 in the front in turn-in.

Ed

 

[jocflier]

Although it would make it hard turning in on BOTH left and right, front or rear tire pressure being low will cause this, particularly on low profile tires like the FJR. Since it is different left than it is right, it is likely that the front is worn more on one side than the other. Keeping 40 psi in the front will make the front wear much better. I use 42 rear and 40 front. There is a noticeable difference between 38 in the front and 40 in the front in turn-in.Ed

+1 Mine will handle like a pig, if the tire pressure is just a couple of lbs low. Having the front tire wear on one side is quite common if you do a lot of freeway riding with the crown of the road causing the left side of the tire to wear more.

Rick

 

[wheatonFJR]

Do you ride with the sidecar attached?

Just covering all the bases...

 

[Fred W]

Although it would make it hard turning in on BOTH left and right, front or rear tire pressure being low will cause this, particularly on low profile tires like the FJR. Since it is different left than it is right, it is likely that the front is worn more on one side than the other. Keeping 40 psi in the front will make the front wear much better. I use 42 rear and 40 front. There is a noticeable difference between 38 in the front and 40 in the front in turn-in.Ed

+1 Mine will handle like a pig, if the tire pressure is just a couple of lbs low. Having the front tire wear on one side is quite common if you do a lot of freeway riding with the crown of the road causing the left side of the tire to wear more.

Rick

Actually the crown may contribute, but it is not the main reason that we wear out the left side of the front tire faster than the right (in right side drive countries). It's because turning wears the sides of the tires much faster than going straight (doh!) due to lateral loading and the scrubbing that occurs during a turn, and you spend much more time leaned to the left than you do to the right because we drive on the right side of the center of the road.

Here's some good reading...

 

[Scab]

Fred, bringing common sense to the forum is like playing the radio at AIDB.

 

[NSrider]

Check your preload, compression, and rebound dampening. If they are not set evenly on both forks, that could cause some weird handling problems as well as tire issues.
Read this thread here, make sure you see the note at the top, the GENII settings are later in the thread.

clicky

Also, check to see that the fork tubes are not twisted in the triple trees. To do that you'd need to loosen up all the pinch bolts and retorque them after checking the front wheel is perfectly straight. I have not had to do this but I recall this being someone's provblem in the past. Might turn something up with a Google search of the forum.

I have all the suspension adjustments set to the JA recommended settings. I'm not sure I know what you mean when you say the forks may be twisted.

 

[Scab]

If you were to loosen the forks in the triples, you can actually re-tighten them in a state where the forks are no longer parallel with each other, but would resemble your legs in the midst of taking a step. (bad)

 

[jocflier]

Thank you Fred for the link. You are right, good reading.

Rick

Although it would make it hard turning in on BOTH left and right, front or rear tire pressure being low will cause this, particularly on low profile tires like the FJR. Since it is different left than it is right, it is likely that the front is worn more on one side than the other. Keeping 40 psi in the front will make the front wear much better. I use 42 rear and 40 front. There is a noticeable difference between 38 in the front and 40 in the front in turn-in.Ed

+1 Mine will handle like a pig, if the tire pressure is just a couple of lbs low. Having the front tire wear on one side is quite common if you do a lot of freeway riding with the crown of the road causing the left side of the tire to wear more.

Rick

Actually the crown may contribute, but it is not the main reason that we wear out the left side of the front tire faster than the right (in right side drive countries). It's because turning wears the sides of the tires much faster than going straight (doh!) due to lateral loading and the scrubbing that occurs during a turn, and you spend much more time leaned to the left than you do to the right because we drive on the right side of the center of the road.

Here's some good reading...

 

[rbentnail]

I had the same right before I replaced the front OEM Metz tire. It would go left easily but I really had to work to get it to lean right but once over it held the line just fine. What I found was an elevated ridge, about 1/16" high & 3/16" wide, on the right side of center on the front tire. Imagine riding slowly on a really dusty road. Where the dust line ends on the right side is where the elevation was. There was no noticeable cupping anywhere on the tire, just this ridge. Replacing the tire, at about 7220 miles, made the problem go away. BTW I went with Pirelli Diablo Stradas. So far, so good. Excellent wet traction.

 

[DaveInMn]

It's an '08, right? Still under warranty. If you have confidence in your dealer, have him check it out.

 

[Kevin Daly]

In addition to the side car thought what people have mentioned is largely all the things you need o consider. I would suggest looking straight down on the front tire so that you can see the U-shaped curvature of the tire and note whether you can see an asymetery between the left and right. It is my opinion that yes it is typically early to have this problem for new tires but look for the asymetery anyway. if you see that the right side is more flattened and worn this is an indication that you are breaking into your right hand corners more than you are on your left handers; this is a common bad habit IMO. If this seems to be the case then you need to work on that. For learning purposes I would swap out that tire too bacause the more it wears the more you will break on the right in the corner bacause as you roll over onto the flattened spot it will feel abrupt kind of like you are loosing traction and a lot of peoples gut response (which is bad) is to hit the front break.

thats my 2 cents and now I am off for 3 days of guess what :yahoo:

 

[3dogs]

You might consider another perspective. It may not be the tires, suspension or motorcycle at all that’s causing right-hand turns to be more difficult than left turns. It could very well be you. I have taught 1000s of students in the Total Control class and with a few minor exceptions all of them have more trouble turning right than to the left. I have even taught a class in the UK and I figured that the bastards drive on the wrong side of the road so they would have the opposite problem—no, they were just like us and struggled more with right turns then lefts.

There are lots of theories as to why this is. Right handed/left handed, right brain/left brain, right/left eye sighted (some people when shooting a firearm sight with their right eye, so with their left), motorcycle throttles are on the right grip and other theories to name a few. I suspect that the truth is a combination of all of these factors.

One of the techniques we teach in Total Control is to always steer with your inside arm. The reason is riders that steer using both arms (pushing and pulling on the bars using both hands) create a sub-conscientious “tug-of-war” between right and left hands/arms causing the front tire to imperceptibly wiggle back and forth. This causes a motorcycle to run wide in a turn, especially if you’re on the edge of your personal fear threshold (going to fucking fast). In essence you’re fighting the motorcycle through right-hand turns. During left turns your body relaxes and you don’t fight so turning seems to take less effort.

Here is something you can try to see if it’s you or the bike that causing harder turning to the right. Find a moderate speed, right-hand turn (30-40 mph) and before you get to it take you left hand off the bars and use only your right hand to make the turn. If you find that turning right is now somewhat easier you have proved that you are indeed “fighting” the motorcycle when you turn right, but not to the left.

All the Total Control instructors have to work more on right turns when doing demos for the class, usually about 3 or 4 to 1 as far as practicing goes. Hope this helps. Tracy...

 

[Perus]

You might consider another perspective. It may not be the tires, suspension or motorcycle at all that’s causing right-hand turns to be more difficult than left turns. It could very well be you. I have taught 1000s of students in the Total Control class and with a few minor exceptions all of them have more trouble turning right than to the left. I have even taught a class in the UK and I figured that the bastards drive on the wrong side of the road so they would have the opposite problem—no, they were just like us and struggled more with right turns then lefts.
There are lots of theories as to why this is. Right handed/left handed, right brain/left brain, right/left eye sighted (some people when shooting a firearm sight with their right eye, so with their left), motorcycle throttles are on the right grip and other theories to name a few. I suspect that the truth is a combination of all of these factors.

One of the techniques we teach in Total Control is to always steer with your inside arm. The reason is riders that steer using both arms (pushing and pulling on the bars using both hands) create a sub-conscientious “tug-of-war” between right and left hands/arms causing the front tire to imperceptibly wiggle back and forth. This causes a motorcycle to run wide in a turn, especially if you’re on the edge of your personal fear threshold (going to fucking fast). In essence you’re fighting the motorcycle through right-hand turns. During left turns your body relaxes and you don’t fight so turning seems to take less effort.

Here is something you can try to see if it’s you or the bike that causing harder turning to the right. Find a moderate speed, right-hand turn (30-40 mph) and before you get to it take you left hand off the bars and use only your right hand to make the turn. If you find that turning right is now somewhat easier you have proved that you are indeed “fighting” the motorcycle when you turn right, but not to the left.

All the Total Control instructors have to work more on right turns when doing demos for the class, usually about 3 or 4 to 1 as far as practicing goes. Hope this helps. Tracy...

Very interesting note Tracy, I also find it harder to turn right and often finds myself counter acting with my right arm during right turns in low speed - I don't like it at all.

Have to practice more to make the right turns as safe as the left turns.

Br,

Per