Thursday, July 9, 2015

Handlebar alignment


Pulling my handlebars back gave me that cool Easy Rider effect, however, I was more concerned if the handling of a bobber could be further improved. I knew by now the fulcrum (what we learnt in primary school) of a motorcycle is the neck of the frame so I had this hypothesis that the handlebars aligned with the front shock absorbers ought to have better handling than raked backwards. This was because when I was fooling around with my car, I found it easier to unscrew a nut with a vertical spanner than a tiltable spanner. So today, I went back to my motorcycle shop and readjusted a few degrees up as shown in this photo. The effect was immediately felt... there was better control of the front end like a properly aligned steering wheel especially felt when going very, very slow, corners and u-turns. A bonus is that air flows straight into my jacket to the armpits and was obviously cooler than a scooped up angle. Conclusion: One really has to personally try it out to really understand what I'm saying. To me, this exercise was a great success.

No comments:

Post a Comment