Bikes in the Bax Cave

[Bax]

Hi All,
Starting this thread for my SG.





Got a great bike that is almost all original and been well kept for the age. Two previous owners and only ~18K for mileage. It does have a small shake on the front forks when braking and a harmonic shimmy at speed, three shakes for about a sec and smooth for about a sec. When it warms up a bit here in NH and my teenager gets "his" Jeep out of my garage..... I'll be putting the bike on the lift and pulling the front forks to resolve the handling issue(s). Hopefully in a week or so I'll have a second SG for parts and speedy type rebuild project. I'm sure I'll be reaching out to this crew for advice.

06 Shadow VTC1100C. --- My daily cruiser
05 Vulcan 500. --- Wife and teen's ride

Bax

PS any ideas on the front end issues are welcome.

[soccer4m]

NIce bike

Beautiful looking bike,,,,,just a suggestion on the shimmy,,,,it could be a couple of things
1. tires are out of balance, put your hand around the tire and rub the middle and edges and see if its even, the front can be uneven in these bikes

2. put the tire on the centerstand and spin the rear tire in nuetral and see if it spins freely,,,the brake could be dragging, same with the front.

an easy fix to keep the tires in balance and flat proof is to add RIDE ON balance and sealant. the best thing out for balance and peace of mind, ,,,,thanks to MOTOMAN for informing a lot of us how good this product is.

If the brakes are dragging a bit,,,time to pull off the calipers and do a piston clean or rebuild......good luck and keep us informed
Glad you have a great looking bike.....Mike in SUn DIego

[Bax]

Thanks Mike,
I'm not seeing signs of any brake drag. I changed the pads this fall and all of the caliper pistons pushed back fine and no other discrepancies noted on the brakes; however, I would love to send a sour bottle of headache sake to the engineer who designed the crosscut pad/pivot caliper assembly on the SG.... Wheel balance out- I would expect the shake to be constant but this repair will include a new tire so a new balance is going to happen.

[motoman]

Beautiful looking bike,,,,,just a suggestion on the shimmy,,,,it could be a couple of things
1. tires are out of balance, put your hand around the tire and rub the middle and edges and see if its even, the front can be uneven in these bikes

2. put the tire on the centerstand and spin the rear tire in nuetral and see if it spins freely,,,the brake could be dragging, same with the front.

an easy fix to keep the tires in balance and flat proof is to add RIDE ON balance and sealant. the best thing out for balance and peace of mind, ,,,,thanks to MOTOMAN for informing a lot of us how good this product is.

If the brakes are dragging a bit,,,time to pull off the calipers and do a piston clean or rebuild......good luck and keep us informed
Glad you have a great looking bike.....Mike in SUn DIego

Ride On= 8oz. bottle and 4oz. per tire.

[2manybikes]

New scoots

In my honest opinion, the best thing anyone can do to a new old bike is to rebuild the the brakes. It's relatively easy to do, and the cost is minimal. If the brakes and tires are good, and it quits running for what ever reason, you can always stop at YOUR convenience. It's always one of my first consideration's. I have a !list of initial costs to figure in before I buy one. The tires have a date code you can look up on the internet as well as visual indicaticators you can use to evaluate their condition. Nice ride, keep us posted.

[mack]

Forks

If your pulling the forks anyway, do a full service on them as per the manual. Spring length check, new fluids etc. The other thing to check would be the steering head(triple tree) for play and condition of the roller bearings.
It doesn't have a lot of miles on it so this problem may have been present before making the PO's reluctant to ride it much. When I got my LH it had less than 10K miles on it but had handling issues, after tearing it down I found the swing arm had a spacer missing and was grossly out of alignment. You never know what the PO's did with it so go over it with a fine tooth comb.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Bax,

Great find! Okay, yeah the special brakes are wonky. Pulsing can occur for several reasons....slightly warped rotors....you can check that with a run out gauge. Some folks have reported that their brakes pulsed, and the mounting bolts for the calipers had gotten slightly bent, and once they replaced them, the pulsing went away.

You don't need to look on internet regarding the date codes of the tires. They are a 4 place number in an oval, the first 2 are the week, and the last 2 are the year, ie. 2410 would be the 24th week of 2010. Dunlop discontinued many sizes of the Elite II 491 tire several years ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't 5+ years old...and would probably be a good idea to replace them anyways due to the hardening of the rubber with age/ozone exposure which also makes them slippery!

T.C.

[Bax]

Thanks T.C.

T.C.
I'll definitely check the caliper pivot bolts for straightness. Already measured for warp on the rotors and was fine.

Bax

[Bax]

New site, post update: So the bikes in the Bax Cave have changed a bit, gave the 06 Shadow to the kid, after USCG bootcamp grad, Karen gave up riding and sold the 05 Vulcan, 18 FXLR added on the same day the kid had HS grad.... Now the XS, 80SG was kept on the road and still my favorite bike. Had a SF for a bit as parts bike but then passed it along to friend who was looking for a project bike. The SG needed a bit of upkeep, past the handling/brake issue noted at the start of this thread...... So took 10 days off of work and got to work, new battery, AGM type, restored the battery brackets, installed the Heinz Wyes stainless exhaust I got a few years ago, rebuilt the BS34iii carbs, rebuilt all calipers and master cylinders, new rubber anything in fuel delivery system. I did do the VR update from Tony and have the fuse box from Len in shipping. New tires and SS brake lines along with a new set of bars.

Okay, Big takeaway with the Specials front brakes..... it all adds up. Small issues make incremental improvements when corrected. My hope was with caliper rebuilds the front brake shake/pulse would be resolved but no, just slight improvement......... I've been thinking the shims for some time may be contributing to the front braking mess as the backing tape was partial and folded in areas along with my several attempts to restore the shape so I dug up some NOS shims and installed. Now this helped with the minor drag but still not right. Back to checking the bolts for bends, nope still straight. Pressure align the calipers when tightening, put a clamp on the brake lever with a damn good squeeze and then tighten the calipers to the forks, BINGO!!!!! Major improvement in all functional aspects with this procedure. My pads and calipers now float slightly when no brake applied with a nice braking response through the range.

Thinking a few miles will be added this wknd...


Bax

[Bax]

My SG passed NH inspection this morning, back on the road...... Enjoy the holiday wknd. I'll be adding a few more cruising miles on the XS during this long wknd.

Live Free or Die
---Bax

[Bax]

The unobtanium fork cover in hand.

[2manybikes]

Very nice!

[DiverRay]

Glad to hear it's running well!! As someone who just got a 1979 with 22K back on the road, DO replace the steering stem bearing!!! Mine had flat spots from sitting to long, and the new bearings gives me great feel, and no sign of tank slap or other problems that will come from bad bearings.

[Bax]

Thanks DiverRay, I'll be going through the front fork assembly again so I'll just do the steering neck bearings as well.

---Bax

[Bax]

Will be making the the trip to work tomorrow on it. Fingers crossed......

Bax