Club Laverda NSW brekky run 13/3.

Talk about War and Peace, weather, new bikes, cop activity up the wazoo surprise surprise on The Old Rd, for a change I followed a Hyw Patrol car through the 40kph road works at the base of the PITS hill to the telecommunications tower at Berowra maybe 10ks and then a funny thing happened, he suddenly disappeared ahead in that 60k zone, mmm a k or 2 later rounding a blind bend guess who was parked up waiting for me, I was a very good boy trundling along just under the 60k limit. felt kind of weird, and it rained on me 3 times from Hornsby to my place. I also had a little incident just past Jerries, arrived behind 2 other riders and was sitting back a bit waiting to pass when rider No1 suddenly decides to jam his brakes on for no reason I could see resulting in Rider no 2 nearly rear-ending him so I decided time to lose these let's be nice blokes and as I pulled out I hit a mega pothole flexing my back to a place it shouldn't have gone. It took some effort to get off the bike at Loogona. All in all, it was an eventful day, the weather was mostly ok and the road condition better than I expected after that crazy weather event over the previous 2 weeks. And to top it off I bought some Sausage Rolls at Brookland for Dinner. Here goes, I talk up that Kawasaki side stands a lot I love mine as it's very stable even on off-camber and uneven ground, so today while waiting for everybody to arrive there is this SICKENING CRASH and Nicks 1200 is laying well over and in contact with the petrol Bowzer. The sound was horrible and I was expecting the worse, but it had only broken the handlebar-mounted fairing screen judging by the sound that was a way better result than I expected. So a quick look showed maybe a slightly long stand resulting in a too vertical bike and a stupid contoured concrete slab around the browser with negative comber towards the fuel pump. Fuck me, what a horrible start to the day, BTW while this was happening there was a Hwy Patrol Bike cop booking some passing kid on a KTM 390 road bike right outside this petrol station, he had just done a lap right through said station eyeballing the 25 assorted waiting bikes and riders and then he was doing laps and up and back outside. He then headed back up the Old Rd, I was surprised nobody mentioned this to the late arrivals, who apparently were going hard in his general direction 20 minutes later, luck no one was pinged. And to end, I finally saw Chris's new 120 Jota, in that stunning original smoked black colour scheme, it's just an absolute cracker of a bike. and I bet Chris with tastefully make it even better. Sashas RGS is a ripper as well, and it was great to see Habib turn up as well.
 
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The side stand that caused the issue today was a Kawaski kit one. I do hear mutterings about crimes against Humanity and I would never have one and suffering for your art and my favourite, leaning the bike over pools oil on the engine side and causes topend leaks all because you're using non-standard bits but I still love mine.
 
One of the things I noticed on the previous ride was a loose fairing mount. I have a fairing mount that has a 6mm threaded rod that passes vertically down through my steering head and brackets to a couple of arms of the upper arms near the screen, it takes all the shake out of the screen. It was pretty lose the last ride to I nipped it up where it exits below the triple tree, maybe to nipped up. I was getting some of that rolling effect you have with too tight steering head bearings. I cranked down on it probably too much and got a bad result, its now working like one of those old friction steering dampers. So it needs backing off till there is no play or drag.
 
If you set it up right with the tightening force only exerting pressure on the inner race of the bearing Vince, then tightening it till to buggery should have no effect on it.
 
The threaded rod passes through the 2nd top nut and exits below the bottom of the lower tree, so it does pull up on the whole length but mainly from below. It's quite narrow at 25mm, washers and such plus the trees are fixed via the fork tubes so the forces are not huge. I backed it off but I couldn't detect any difference in steering movement, tapered bearings top and bottom so maybe I was imagining it, the road was cut up a bit from all that insane weather and I was hanging on pretty tight after flexing my back on an unseen pothole. Plus it was my first ride in ages again with the weather. I managed to release my grip as I relaxed a bit but by then we were back on way better road surfaces. And who trys when large chunks of heading home had a Police escort in close contact. So wield pushing hard up the PITS hill on the Old Rd up the clacker of a marked Hwy Patrol car, that's an 80kph limit up a steep hill with connected 35k bends at just under 80k so perfectly legal but it felt very strange.
 
If I go with a brace it will bolt to a bearing mounted on the top nut. Won't decide whether i need the brace or not until I've road tested. If i do make one I'll nut out the simplest system I can.
 
It annoys me a lot to see anything wobble, stress fractures are the next port of call. Included in that mount is a tube 75mm tall above the steering head top nut to accommodate that mount as that's how high the fairing screen mount section is above the trees. All part of raising the bits to accommodate my aging back and all done 20 years ago when the first TT Montegi full fairing was fitted. The instruments and headlight and blinkers are also fairing mounted, another good idea from John Roberson of Performance Bike mag, getting weight off the steering part of the bike. Although getting it to fit and clear the steering was a bloody nightmare
 
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