Gday, I have an interesting problem. 2019 RMZ 450 I got the other day that is having its forks twist when landing off harder landings. The same way it would if you dropped it in a corner etc.
I have tried / checked
- equal fork heights
- tightening the triple clamp bolts past their recommended NM
- checking head stem tension
- all axle clamp bolts are tight
It is super weird and I have other people take a look and we are all scratching our heads, hoping someone here has had this happen before. The bike was purchased second hand so I can’t really comment on what has/hasnt been done to it.
cheers
Might be at the point of taking the forks apart and checking both inner/outer tubes for straightness and also the axle and triple clamps.
If your fork tubes are straight and nothing is bent or damaged, this problem can happen when the oil heights in each fork are vastly different. If one leg has been ran long enough with a leaky seal or if only one fork leg was rebuilt and had a largely different oil volume put in it, it can change end of travel loads in each leg, causing them to twist. The twist can occur from one leg hitting secondary dampening and the other not (think one spring seat is in the oil bath and the other is not), twisting or flexing the axle and essentially "walking" the leg with less dampening around due to the load plane of the axle being off center and wanting to move away to the area of least resistance. Since you are not the original owner and don't know the history, doing an oil change or rebuild and properly setting your oil height in both legs would be the best place to start for you, not only to try and solve this problem but also to simply maintain and care for the bikes that we spend so much of our hard earned money on.
I know my RMZ used to need fork bushings every 20 hours. I wonder if that could have something to do with your issues.
Are your steering stem bearings in good condition? If they are blown out, the top and bottom clamps can move enough to make the forks twist.
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