Scary high speed handling

[RDawson]

If you dive in to replacement the job isn’t too bad, the lower race is the biggest pain. Some use a sharp punch and go at it, I reached in from the bottom and welded a piece of steel to the race and had a good surface to set a punch on. Instead of completely removing the inner fairing I just tied it up with a strap from the ceiling. 

[Marcarl]

Looks like you may have it. Time to  test ride it. If you find it has a mind of it's own, back it off a bit.

[circa1968]

50 minutes ago, RDawson said:

If you dive in to replacement the job isn’t too bad, the lower race is the biggest pain. Some use a sharp punch and go at it, I reached in from the bottom and welded a piece of steel to the race and had a good surface to set a punch on. Instead of completely removing the inner fairing I just tied it up with a strap from the ceiling. 

Hope I don't have to do that any time soon, but I did the strap from the garage ceiling thing when I lowered the front end, so sounds like its manageable.

[circa1968]

52 minutes ago, Marcarl said:

Looks like you may have it. Time to  test ride it. If you find it has a mind of it's own, back it off a bit.

I take off this coming Friday for a 5k mile test ride!  Might have to squeeze a shorter one in before that.

[circa1968]

Yesterday was the end of my month-long, 5.5k mile test ride.....

With some obvious subjectivity, the bike did not have the wind-induced death wobble issues as I previously experienced, or at least not nearly as bad.  However, in certain wind conditions, the bike was still tossed around quite a bit.  The worst case scenarios were with a strong cross-wind and trucks.

The turbulence coming off a truck with little or no ambient wind was minimal and the bike was stable.  But, oh boy, hit a strong cross-wind and the truck turbulence threw me around like a rag doll, just like my previous experience, but without any significant front end wobble added to it after tightening up the head bearing a bit.

I do have the wide F4 windshield, which is 4" wider, on each side, than stock, so 8" overall.  At this point, I'm thinking that is definitely a factor.   I will be looking for a stock windshield to see if that makes a difference. 

I rode a pure stock '99 RSV from '99-'02, including one such trip as I just completed, and do not remember having these wind issues.  Of course, age-related memory issues could be part of that too.

[Pasta Burner]

Glad to see you back and report in on a successful trip.

[circa1968]

2 hours ago, Pasta Burner said:

Glad to see you back and report in on a successful trip.

Thanks.  It was a great trip!  For my return route, I stayed off of interstates & rode 2-lane hiways for all but the last part to my house.  What a big beautiful country we live in!  So many awesome small towns and wonderful people you meet there.

One of the highlights was the motorcycle museum in St. Francis, KS, a small town in the northwest corner of KS.  The quality and quantity of bikes in this collection blew my mind!  If you've never been and are within a reasonable ride to get there, its worth the effort!

https://stfrancismotorcyclemuseum.org/

[Squidley]

2 hours ago, circa1968 said:

Thanks.  It was a great trip!  For my return route, I stayed off of interstates & rode 2-lane hiways for all but the last part to my house.  What a big beautiful country we live in!  So many awesome small towns and wonderful people you meet there.

One of the highlights was the motorcycle museum in St. Francis, KS, a small town in the northwest corner of KS.  The quality and quantity of bikes in this collection blew my mind!  If you've never been and are within a reasonable ride to get there, its worth the effort!

https://stfrancismotorcyclemuseum.org/

That looks like a very cool museum 👍