SV Head Shake

This happened to me today, I saw across a corner and leant the bike over as I started to overtake, hit a cats eye and the front wheel jumped about, scared the hell outta me! Very rarely happens though, wouldn't bother with a steering damper.

I've had a couple of shakes, mainly as a result of me messing with suspension & riding too hard for the road conditions My bad.

This is my main gripe about the SV. It's not a tank slapper per se, just the bars being wrenched out of your hands, possibly because a) you weren't expecting it, and b) because the forks suffer from hydraulic locking when compressed very rapidly. I'm still hoping to try some emulators to improve this, as I prefer hooning around on smaller, usually rougher, roads.

[Kylie]

Yep, had the same thing before accelerating hard over chevron-type lines. It happens so quick there's not much time to think but I throttled off (you can hardly hold throttle anyway when bars are flapping) and it stopped. I don't accelerate hard over bumps like that now, and its not happened since.

[northwind]

Don't ignore the rear shock in all of this, personally I reckon that most SV shakes not caused by bad maintenance come from the rear... Sounds daft, initially, but the two aren't isolated. The same's true of the 636 as well, IMO, there's nothing out of the ordinary about the geometry and the forks are OK, but the rear shock was a bit rubbish.

Any time I've had a major flap it's happened when the rear's been compressing while already compressed, ie bumps at the bottom of a slope when the bike's already squatting, or bumps when the bike's hard on the power thus overweighting the rear end. In other words, both times when the rear end's not just working hard, but when it's doing one thing then has to do something else at the same time. And when the back's not working right, that knocks the front about- if it's already light due to being on the power then that could be enough to send it over the edge. It's fairly easy to get an SV to flap once by hitting a bump, but not so easy to get it to slap repeatedly.

Geez, you guys must be going some to get the bars wobbling; I've had one tiny weave coming over the brow of a hill leant over a bit...the SV feels rock solid to me

Still, tank slappers and other shakes are genrally set off by a bump, and being lent over just agrevates it more.

Matt

I think the SV is a bit more prone to slapping than a lot of other bikes due to the crappy forks which are useless at absorbing sudden biggish bumps - the bars turning is an attempt to compensate for the lack of suspension movement I reckon.

Originally Posted by northwind

Don't ignore the rear shock in all of this, personally I reckon that most SV shakes not caused by bad maintenance come from the rear... Sounds daft, initially, but the two aren't isolated. The same's true of the 636 as well, IMO, there's nothing out of the ordinary about the geometry and the forks are OK, but the rear shock was a bit rubbish.

Any time I've had a major flap it's happened when the rear's been compressing while already compressed, ie bumps at the bottom of a slope when the bike's already squatting, or bumps when the bike's hard on the power thus overweighting the rear end. In other words, both times when the rear end's not just working hard, but when it's doing one thing then has to do something else at the same time. And when the back's not working right, that knocks the front about- if it's already light due to being on the power then that could be enough to send it over the edge. It's fairly easy to get an SV to flap once by hitting a bump, but not so easy to get it to slap repeatedly.

The big man is right - I've got a 636. I cured the headshakes by softening the rear up - haven't had any since, even when trying to do it on purpose

In my (limited) experience, I've found the SV to be really stable.

The couple of shakes I have had, I put down to "pushing it" a bit too much.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Scooby Drew

The big man is right - I've got a 636. I cured the headshakes by softening the rear up - haven't had any since, even when trying to do it on purpose

Only ever got a headshake from the SV after hitting a cats-eye hard on the gas. This was AFTER fitting upgraded shock / fork springs / emulators.

I dunno why they happen, seems like the work of the devil to me!