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Handling: Sometimes it's the simple things..


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My newly restored '90 VFR looks great, the engine pulls beautifully and is a joy to the ears with it's high mounted Delkevic pipe. There was just one big problem.. corners.

The bike flopped into coners and would not hold a line once leant over. The bike had new tyres, (Continental Motions) so I was at a loss for the cause of the poor handling. 

The solution turned out to be two pretty simple things.

 

Firstly, tyre pressure. Yup, that old chestnut.  Comming from an offroad/adv background, I'm used to running low to mid 30s psi pressures for road riding. This I found, absolutly does not work with sport tyres. After pumping the front and back tyres up to 36 and 42 psi the flopping into corners problem dissapeared completely. Good times. I thought this was the end of the handling issue untill I road my gen 6 VFR back to back with this bike. The gen 6 held a line much better when leant over in a corner despite having badly squared off tyres. Something was still up with the 90 and it had something to do with the front end. It was just too soft which led to the bike lurching and getting out of shape far too easily. Maybe the fork oil was too light or at the wrong level?

 

I had recently changed the fork oil using 5 weight as it was supposed to be equivalent to the Honda SS7 oil recommended in the manual. Thought I'd try some 10W to see if it helped. Good thing I took the forks apart again as it turned out there wasn't nearly enough oil in them. When previously changing the oil I did not pump the forks to circulate the oil after setting the oil height. I also think that the 5w oil I was using was just too light. 

 

So after setting the fork oil height to 177mm using 10W fork oil I reassembled the bike and took it for a 20 minute test ride. Well it was meant to be 20 minutes but turned into 3 hours as the bike handled so much better I did not want to stop rinding it. The bike now corners like a champ,  predictable and smooth. I'm quite impressed with the 90s suspension. In fact I think I prefer it to my gen 6 now...

 

Long ramble I know but maybe someone will find this usefull oneday. 

 

TLDR: Bike was handling poorly, I inflated tyres to correct pressure and changed to 10w oil at correct height for a huge improvement.

 

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Most of us make mistakes when working on our bikes, thankfully yours were little ones. You realised something was amiss and were able to sort it.

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  • Member Contributer

Tyre pressures (like the Jundland Wastes) are not to be taken lightly. My new-from-the-dealer 1996 RF900 handled like a wheelbarrow full of wet cement as it only had 12psi up front...

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@BenjahNZ thanks for tips! Sometimes, it's simple things that's easy to overlook and can cause issues.

 

After my 1st AFM racing season, I parked bike for winter. When spring came around and doing trackdays before season-opener, bike handled horribly! Turned out fork oil was worn-out and needed replacement.

 

Now I completely rebuild

suspension every winter.

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