Sacrilege,...According to Some....

[sfcpiet]

Its been a while since I rode a Bevel but my Pantah does have the edge on for want of a better discription than HANDING.My Laverda feels fantasic layed over,very very planted and thats with it setup to steer as fast as I can make it with standad frame. Forks through and longer shocks.Its a bit vague bolt upright, I am not completely sold on the new T30 Radial Bridgestone front tyre. The Pantah is a step above,I don't know how to describe why though.
My memory of Bevels is so utterly stable you could run over a brick in a sweeper and other than rock stiff suspension they wouldn't react at all. Bloody hard to push in tight stuff and bastards to do U turns on,hit the steering stops mid turn gets your attention.Describing poor handling is easy,describing good but different handling is a bit harder.Maybe you just don't like the way it handles

Isn't very fair on the Laverda triple to compare it with a Pantah.  The Ducati is far lighter and smaller, should keep up with pass a triple in the twisties easily.  Much the same comparison between the triple and a 500 Laverda.  A well-sorted one, engine-wise, will be snapping at the heels of any triple once the road gets a bit bendy.

A length of welding rod, bent over at 90? for an inch at one end and passed through a short piece of rubber tubing at the other, ie, the gas blanking plug from a new battery, make a good axle adjustment checker.  If axle and swingarm pivot are well accessable, I just use my monster calipers.

piet

 

[markQLD]

ay Cam,

String is not reliable as a straight-edge. It can deviate where it touches the edge of a tyre. 

I'm not using it as a straight-fuckin'-edge!  Did you miss my sketch note "maintain straight string-line" from the front edge of front tyre?
I don't let the string touch the front edge of the rear tyre, but reckon there would only be enough gap to slip a rollie paper between it and the string-line. If the string does touch the rear tyre, than the string-line is not straight, therefore it's not a string-fuckin'-line, and the trigonometry turns to crap.

& I also suggest, one should not 'generalize' about the passage of light. As a few have come unstuck with that kind of thinking. 

 

[Vince]

Laverdas are heavy,bending light heavy,maybe.

 

[piranha-bro2]

Done it by eye on all bikes for decades, professionally in the workshop, at the racetrack, at home, on the road - super easy to get it super straight. Just have to sus the sys of moving the eye across and back until equal amounts of the front tyre are visible relative to equal sides of the rear (seems tricky because the rear is wider, but with practice it all makes sense); it's just using the eyeline as the stringline - do bicycles the same way. If the front wheel isn't pointing straight there will be a wider 'air gap' on one side even tho things look 'parallel'. 

 

[AndyW]

I think the OP's legged it...

 

[veravista]

I'll just leave this here then.  Fluorescent tubes are straight as they come, two long ones packed up on the rear wheel, get front wheel equidistant to tubes, adjust rear wheel to suit.  String is shit (although I have started to use my laser level and some aluminium sheet...).

 

[Cosi]

I'll just leave this here then.  Fluorescent tubes are straight as they come, two long ones packed up on the rear wheel, get front wheel equidistant to tubes, adjust rear wheel to suit.  String is shit (although I have started to use my laser level and some aluminium sheet...).

That ocd guy will be along shortly to tell you that tyres are not perfectly equidistant accord their width and therefor your method is flawed 

 

[Dellortoman]

That ocd guy will be along shortly to tell you that tyres are not perfectly equidistant accord their width and therefor your method is flawed 

OCD guy? Surely there's nobody on this forum like that.

Hit the nail on the head there Cosi. There's always a bit of run-out on tyres, so there's nothing to be gained by being super fussy with any alignment system that uses the tyres as a reference. When I align a bike by eye, I put it on the centre stand and turn the back wheel to check it in a few different spots around the tyre, and kind of average it out. Tyres these days are pretty good, but I have seen some real wobbly ones I the past.

Those little laser doohickeys that attach to a sprocket are OK for chain alignment, but don't tell you much about wheel alignment. In theory, if the sprockets are aligned, then so should be the wheel. But with old bikes that have been messed about with by various owners for 30+ years, anything could have been done to chuck the alignment out, like wrong axle spacers for example.

Mark (Einstein) Muir, I knew some pedantic git would come back with the comment that light can bend. Why am I not surprised it was you
But unless you happen to be parked next to a black hole, or if your bike has a wheelbase of several miles (in which case atmospheric refraction might play a part), the theory of rectilinear propagation of light should hold true enough for our purposes.

 

[Terry Dymond]

I use string alignment because I can 8)

 

[AndyW]

Those little laser doohickeys that attach to a sprocket are OK for chain alignment, but don't tell you much about wheel alignment.

My little laser doohickey is actually a well thought out pair of matched devices (made of machined billet alloy) which clamp to both sides of both wheels: lasers on the rear 'doohickeys'; marked cards on the front doohickeys.. result? perfectly aligned wheels in minutes. oh, and you can also assess how badly bent your swing-arms and frames are whilst you're at it

Mark (Einstein) Muir, I knew some pedantic git would come back with the comment that light can bend. Why am I not surprised it was you
But unless you happen to be parked next to a black hole, or if your bike has a wheelbase of several miles (in which case atmospheric refraction might play a part), the theory of rectilinear propagation of light should hold true enough for our purposes.

Bending light's easy when doing your wheel alignment using a couple of fluro tubes: you simply strap the fluro across the wheel at one end and apply a little pressure at the other. You should find it possible to bend light over a relatively short distance by as much as 3mm without, er, breaking it completely... In this respect I concur with Mr Muir..