I've never had a speed wobble, or God forbid a tank slapper on this bike. But while I had side plastics off, I removed the front under cowling, that little plastic thing bolted to the bottom of the bottom triple clamp, and removed my stock steering dampner. When I would move the piston, it had up to a 1 cm little play area, and made a little noise like maybe air bubbles going thru it. After reading a few more threads on it, and watching a few short YOutubes, I decided I would use what I had laying around and try to 'bleed' my dampner. I read alot of threads about using 20wt for oil, etc. My dampner still worked well pushing the piston- lots of resistance, and a little gap/air in it as I mentioned. Because I'm not fixing any head shake issues, instead of removing the fluid in there, and re filling with what ever weight fork oil- I used a little bit of 5wt I had left over from my fork rebuild a few years ago. As you can see from the picture- I did NOT use the immersion of the whole thing technique- NTTATWWT. That little funnel- is a Pediatric 2.6mm disposable plastic Otoscope speculum- the thing I use to look in peoples ear canals at work.- I had some laying around form my school days many a year ago. It fits perfectly in the little hole, you can see 2mm allen and the screw too. Because I wasn't replacing all the fluid/oil, I only needed a sealed thing with a small amount of oil in it to watch the bubbles come out, etc.- Oh, they did come out! That is a 3cc syringe I also had laying around to fill the little funnel with.- not needed really. After working the piston back and forth many times, tilting both ways, adding .5-1cc of oil in the little funnel, I got it where no more little bubbles, and no play in the movement. If you are looking for a different feel, most concensus was to use 20 wt fork oil. No, there are no other adjustments on these units- except changing the wt of fluid, and bleeding the air out. For me, this unit works well. I was suprised to feel how much reistance there is when manually pushing the piston, even before I bled the air out! This was a Free Mod for me too. YMMV
You just found out about this now? Been doing this for since like 15 years now BTW, using an actual proper sized funnel makes the job much easier, I ultimately landed at 10wt fork oil
Thanks you Brutes. And it MR. Left Field to you! LOL And OK, Damper! Dammit! Like I said, I was only bleeding the air out of mine, now no little gaps when I push the piston like there was.
