'' how come'' ?

[Rusty McNeil]

Well I challenge you to take my max above 125mph and try to bank it over, even very slightly. If you survive you can tell me again how it was 'in your mind'..

:clapping::clapping::clapping:

Hey, can we get a full size high res shot of your Avatar?

it looks really cool but can't quite tell

Thanks,

Rusty

 

[Buster Hymen]

how come with so many people talking about getting head-shake ( death wobble ) and what to do about it , and how scary it was & how close they came to crashing , doen't anyone think that any fellow v-maxer"s over the last 23 years traveling at high speed got the " death wobble " , crashed and died , & it was ritten off as they were speeding & lost controll ! When the truth is , its a ******* design flaw that yamaha should have fixed a long time ago ! Or am i just ******* crazy ?

The "death wobble" is caused by 1 of, or a combination of, 3 things... the adjustment on the steering bearings, bad or ungreased steering bearings or the front tire ( cupped, unbalanced, wrong air pressure etc..) . It is not a design flaw but a maintenance issue. There are a lot of users here that do not experience that problem.

So has ANYBODY here fitted a steering damper on their Max? Has it helped?
I've asked 3 times now but have yet to get a response.. :ummm:

A steering damper only masks the problem being caused by my response above. As the above conditions get worse, even a steering damper isn't going to help.

 

[naughtyG]

Hey, can we get a full size high res shot of your Avatar?

Here ya go :eusa_dance:

 

[naughtyG]

The "death wobble" is caused by 1 of, or a combination of, 3 things... the adjustment on the steering bearings, bad or ungreased steering bearings or the front tire ( cupped, unbalanced, wrong air pressure etc..) . It is not a design flaw but a maintenance issue. There are a lot of users here that do not experience that problem.
A steering damper only masks the problem being caused by my response above. As the above conditions get worse, even a steering damper isn't going to help.

Thanks Buster. I am going to take my steering head apart today to check on the bearings properly. I hope they're not damaged as I haven't got replacements - inspection will tell. I'm going for the furbur fix too - found a suitable metal washer.
I will also double-check my front tire pressure. It's a Dunlop and it's not new, but it doesn't look too bad to me. I'll take close pics of everything and post here.

 

[jfeagins]

Hey, I don't know about that. There are too many uses for lawyers to just kill them.... Anchors, fire starter (all that fat in their heads burns great), crash test dummies, fertilizer, target practice, etc. I bet everyone here can come up with a great use for them... :hmmm:

..........T-ball batting practice.........

 

[jfeagins]

The "death wobble" is caused by 1 of, or a combination of, 3 things... the adjustment on the steering bearings, bad or ungreased steering bearings or the front tire ( cupped, unbalanced, wrong air pressure etc..) . It is not a design flaw but a maintenance issue. There are a lot of users here that do not experience that problem.



A steering damper only masks the problem being caused by my response above. As the above conditions get worse, even a steering damper isn't going to help.

Not to sound like a broken record here, but here I go AGAIN. Please don't count out your BACK TIRE/WHEEL as a cause for tank slap. A badly worn or out of balance back tire/wheel combo can (and WILL) cause major problems up at the front of your bike. I know this for a fact. I've had cases, not only with my V-Max, but with my XS1100 before, that when experiencing the head shake at its worst, all I did was go buy a new back tire, have it properly balanced, and the head shake disappeared in its entirety. That is, until the new back tire got worn down to within the need to decide whether or not to order another new one or make due a thousand miles or more.

Of course, proper adjustment of the head bearing is the most important thing you can do to minimize the effects of a poorly out of round back tire. In my case, if I put the max (or XS1100) on the center stand, I could visually see the side to side wobbling of the treads of the worn tire. It only takes a minute amount of wobble back there to really be felt at speed in the front.

Think of it as if you were holding a heavy spinning wheel on a pencil as an axle. If you only slightly turn your hands, the centrifugal force of the wheel will try to force you to remain straight. IF that wheel were to have a slight wobble, it would be trying to force your hands holding the axle to wobble slightly with it. If you amplify that wobble many inches forward through a bike frame, well...........it is amplified.

Not being a mechanical engineer, I can't do a great job of explaining the specifics, but I can say that the back tire should not be overlooked as a major contributor to head shake.

 

[Jaoteay]

And I think the reason that their hasn't been a definitive answer posted is no one wants to test them all out.

I had a slight wobble and just bad feeling - did the bounce test and it would bounce off the stops real hard. So I did the furbur fix and tightened until it wouldn't bounce and the bike feels better. (but I luckily haven't had real bad head shake yet)

I've heard two opinions on what to do when it happens. Is it better to just let off the throttle and take your hands off the handlebars - or better to WOT it and ride through and then slow down?

-JO

 

[maleko89]

I have heard to grip the bars lightly and lay off throttle. No need to try and go faster because the wobble or weave might not go away! Whatever you do, don't use the brakes.

 

[Jayhawk]

My '07 had a wobble from the day I got it. If I just relaxed my grip on the bars, it would shake. Made it hard to wave, sometimes. :biglaugh:

Since it did it from day one, it couldn't have been a wear issue. It could have been a factory assembly problem or a design problem. I suspect some of both, both of which being fully in the hands of Yamaha.

 

[dannymax]

My '07 had a wobble from the day I got it. If I just relaxed my grip on the bars, it would shake. Made it hard to wave, sometimes. :biglaugh:

Since it did it from day one, it couldn't have been a wear issue. It could have been a factory assembly problem or a design problem. I suspect some of both, both of which being fully in the hands of Yamaha.

Well, that's pretty interesting, Jayhawk!! Was the wobble at any speed, or in the 35 - 45 mph range?

That explains the B-King, don't blame you a bit. :clapping:

danny

 

[hardmax]

I have the same problem as Jayhawk on my 07' .It wobbles at 30-40mph when I de-cel,as soon as I give power it goes away.I had the dealer check it but of course they couldn't duplicate it.

 

[Jayhawk]

Well, that's pretty interesting, Jayhawk!! Was the wobble at any speed, or in the 35 - 45 mph range?

That explains the B-King, don't blame you a bit. :clapping:

danny

It was 40-45 mph, and I was too afraid to take my hands off at 2x speed to test and find a harmonic wobble. No thanks.

Oh, btw, butthead, the B never wobbles, even when I sit up with no hands to rest my aching back.

 

[naughtyG]

well here something interesting: on my max, since doing the furbur fix a couple of days ago, I noticed a small improvement, but the wobble hasn't completely gone away.

BUT, as I was riding it last night, I realized something while doing 95+mph: if I sit right up, shifting my weight back rather than on the bars, holding them with just my finger tips, the bike becomes WAY more stable. I did a lot of lane changes like that at high speed and got almost no wobble. When I put my feet on the highway pegs (kuryakins mounted on the crash bars), it seemed to get even better. :ummm:
I now can't wait for my replacement handlebars - I got them 'cos I wanted a more sit-up cruising sitting position, but now I feel like it's gonna help even more as the wobble seems to have a lot to do with adding body weight on the front via the handlebars.

Check out some pix of the current state of my steering bearing races - you can see marks on them but they were perfectly smooth to the touch. The bearings looked good - no visible wear and smooth running. I just took them apart, greased them up and refitted them. I had to torque the lower nut to about 25 ft/lbs to eliminate the bars bounce, and then struggled to torque the top nut properly while holding the bottom one (really needed 2 people for that) because of both a dodgy shock wrench and an even dodgier grinding job on the home-made castle nut tool :whistlin:

After torquing the steering head top bolt to the prescribed 80 ft/lbs, it all seemed to get a bit tighter, but still turns smoothly and no low speed waive, so I'm confident I didn't over tighten.

As I first went on the highway I tried a high speed entry on the ramp, and found that banking over still got me bad scary wobbles, but in view of the above I'm putting it down to worn tires (pix below) and weight distribution, rather than steering adjustment.

 

[dannymax]

Seems like Kawasaki had serious problems with front end wobble on a couple of their models a number of years ago. Maybe a 500 and a 750? They might have been triples, but I'm not sure about that. Those things were scary, Kaw put steering dampers on but I think they just scrapped the models after a few years of production.

Anybody remember those bikes? Was anything ever discovered about why they had the problem?

 

[maleko89]

I remember the ZX-12R and 10R had problems. Later 10R came with stabilizer and it still had some issues.

 

[dannymax]

I remember the ZX-12R and 10R had problems. Later 10R came with stabilizer and it still had some issues.

The one I'm thinking about are way before the ZX's, Mark. I believe the 500 was a 2 stroke oil injected triple. They'd go like hell, right up till they flung the rider off in the weeds. :bang head:

dan-o

Got it, it was the H-1 Mach III

 

[bernieghmac]

hope this helps, a few nuggets. those dampeners aren't cheap, but what is for a motorcycle?

http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/speedway/2476/wobble.htm#Summary

http://www.cyclepages.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=4014308

http://www.hyperformanceparts.com/c...ng-Damper-Stabilizer/c300_299_1002/index.html

 

[bernieghmac]

i agree mark. just found some nuggets here. seems like everything has to be just right. some damper links too for kicks and giggles. i would think there are better deals out there. Hope this helps a little.


http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/speedway/2476/wobble.htm


Dampers:

http://www.cyclepages.com/ProductDetails.aspx?


http://stores.ebay.com/1888fastlap_Steering-dampers_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ13913166QQftidZ2QQtZkm

 

[bernieghmac]

Sorry Guys, didn't mean to double post. still learning.

 

[MAXXMAN93-4301]

a wobble is actually a osilation or wavearty:, the max has a couple of frequencies that it is vulnerable to. mine has the decel at 45 mph wobble not much of a high speed wobble though:confused2:. any change to the bikes sympahtetic frequency[ the frequnecies that make it flex and shke] will move the speed of the shakes around, like steering head bearing,frame brace, fork brace:hmmm: .... they change the frequency of your tuning fork[vmax:scooter 1:]. by the way the human bodies dangerous frequency is around 8 hertz, if you are shaken around 8 times a second you will fall apart:surprise:- arms legs coming off nice stuff like that. they redesigned the space shuttle/boosters for that problem in the 70s!!!:ummm: