rick8mitch wrote:
what do you guys mean by 'nervousness'

To some degree, trail can be compared to castor wheels like the type of front wheel you find on a shopping cart at a super market. When the wheel is behind the line your neck would extend naturally to the ground through, forward momentum will tend to push the front wheel into a forward steering position. The more trail on the assembly, the more there will be applied to that natural push to steer forward.

When the wheel gets close to, or in front of that line it is very easy to oversteer and there is no force being applied to naturally align it. This leads to a very uncontrollable steering situation that is very difficult to control at anything higher than parking lot speeds and is really dangerous.

Gram

nervousness = the bit seems a bit quicker in the steering, it seems to want to steer itself.

To be clear, there is no looseness at the handlbars, that would just be an improperly put together front end, but the bike feels like it's gong to get away from you at any moment. It was more pronounced as the speed increased. I rode with a trail around 1.5-2.0 for one season but it's tiring.

Doc

Thanks a ton guys, good reads and alot to think about now. My rear is already lowered so im part of the way there. Fifty Yet

rick8mitch wrote:
what do you guys mean by 'nervousness'

the bike feeling `twitchy´ over say, 50 mph.

had a client in here a couple of years back with a yamaha viagra 1100 that another shop had played with.

he was a bit of a short arse (not taking the rise out of the vertically disadvantaged), and the shop had fitted 7º trees so he could touch the ground sitting on the nose of the seat, but had left the rear as standard. the bike had 6" risers fitted and a 90cm drag bar, so as you can imagine, it looked...interesting.

he said that the handling was bad, so i took it out for a ride.

now, in the course of my job i get to ride some pretty nifty machinery ( M.V. agusta 312, tuned v-max, R1 in race set-up, etc), and having broken my teeth on early 80´s superbikes with more engine than frame and sod all brakes to speak of, the average custom doesn´t bother me much.

but man, this one did! i did 2 miles on it, and my bottle went totally at 55mph!

welcome to the world of negative trail!

at slow speeds up to 20mph it moved easily, at 30mph i noticed the need to firm up my grip on the bars to keep it going where i wanted, at 50mph it turned into a fight, and at 55mph it was a mosqiuitos dick away from a full-blown tank slapper!

i (slowly) returned to the shop, and set to about sorting the bugger out. due to his financial limitations this was dropping 2 1/2" at the rear with lower shocks, and a set of 4" overstock fork tubes which got things working at an acceptable level (tried it with some 4" slugs i had with the right pitch thread first). he used the bike for 6 months and was quite happy with it until a car jumped a stop sign and he t-boned it. adios viagra.

the `mechanic´ who did the work initially just hadn´t got a clue, and sent a bike out the doors of his shop in a dangerous condition. suprisingly enough, he´s still trading but quite how i´ll never know having seen some of the other bodges he´s done on bikes.

be careful with raked trees guys, and get them calculations right!

erizo said: had a client in here a couple of years back with a yamaha viagra 1100

Did he ride straight up?

Rayjay wrote:
erizo said: had a client in here a couple of years back with a yamaha viagra 1100

Did he ride straight up?

it later became a hard-tail

It's all fun & games until somebody gets raked...


Rich

Has anyone here installed These?
What do you think of the quality? At that price they look great. I haven't gotten a price back from rakedcycles, so know idea there, but Baron's kit is high!

SurveyWaters wrote:
Has anyone here installed These?
What do you think of the quality? At that price they look great. I haven't gotten a price back from rakedcycles, so know idea there, but Baron's kit is high!

They look nice and that's a great price. But here's what I couldn't find.

Do those trees except the stock R* tubes?
Do those trees except the stock R* risers?
Do those trees except the stock R* headlight?
Also you have to know that those trees will NOT EXCEPT a windshield! There are No holes. These are some of the questions you need to know before you make a purchase on a raked set of trees. As far as handling I have the 6* trees with 2" longer tubes and a 21" wheel and the bike handlles very nice at all speeds. The only problem is slow tight turns!

Go here and calculate your trail:

http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/rakeandtrail.html

Then plug in any changes you wanna make and see how it pans out.

In my experience you wanna have a trail of 3"-6". Anything less can get twitchy, anything more can be a pain in the ass in slow turns and give you bad bar flop.