Some people have no idea

[JIMMYJAMES]

As you know i am new to this storm malarky and am very much finding my feet. I purchased the bike with a rattle which was a result of the guy being a poor mechanic and not preloading the vibration damper on the primary drive. After much confusion and head scratching its now fixed! The bike has always had a clunk under hard braking and felt a bit unsteady on corners, so i thought i would do some investigation into the cause before shelling out on new tapered head bearings. I removed the top yolk and discoverd that it was all loose the locking tabs were in place so it didn't just happen like that, he has obviously been messing with it. Anyhoo, long story short, i adjusted it one and a half turns checking periodicly for notchiness and its all good and tight now. Good news is they didn't need replacing

Some people really should leave work like this to the experts or at least someone with some common sense, its just outright dangerous

[Stratman]

I found the original head bearings needed fairly regular adjustment (and I find it a real pain) but the tapered ones are far less needy of attention.

[Pete.L]

Some people really should leave work like this to the experts or at least someone with some common sense, its just outright dangerous

Totally agree there Jimmy.
When I'm out looking at a private sale and I hear those immortal words "and I do all my own servicing" it always makes me look twice as hard at the vehicle and at the seller too. And if he comes across as a juggler I'll walk rather than buy regardless of the vehicles condition

Pete.l

[AMCQ46]

+1 on the standard parts needing regular tightening, especially if there is the odd hamfisted wheelie landing going on 1st sign is the clunk under heavy breaking.

What I also found was that it is important to set the std cup & cone bearings to a tigher preload torque [see Haynes manual], just taking up all the slack like a taper roller setting is not enough.

I have just taken out my standard brgs and replaced with the taper kit that Wemoto sell. The standard brgs were very slightly knotchy when fully preloaded, and after cleaning them up I see the cones were slightly brinelled, have to wait for the weather to get better before I try and see if there is an improvement.