Forking crazy

I have some articles on rake and trail from the chopper world, and there is a book on motorcycle perfromance sispensions and frame design out there.

IMHO, don't fuck with jap bike neck angles unless you are willing to redesign the entire frame. From my expirence with honda choppers, bad things happen when you second guess the little japanese engineers that designed these frames. Jap bikes of the 1970s are for the most part the best handleing street bikes of the 70's. you want to get them to handle better, make them lighter and move the rider down in the frame a little, but adjusting the rake and trail will cause the frames to flex in ways they weren't intended - these frames were designed at a time when the general concensus in motorcycling is that a bike frame needed a little flex to be truely good handeling and so all the bikes have a natural flex, distrubing that can cause cracks, breakages, and overtime frame failure.

ever see a hacked stock honda frame from the 70's chopper craze? you could spend all day counting the frame cracks and those bikes are not ridden as hard as a cafe racer.



edit: realized I contradicted myself through unclear wording: sliding the forks up through the trees is ok because even though it changes rake the changes are not radical and the trail changes appropriatley to compensate. When you start to think about cuttin the neck off and rewelding on to the frame at a completely different angle (like say from 30 degrees to 25 degrees) that is where you run into trouble.

Edited by - Geeto67 on Dec 07 2005 5:28:45 PM