Manky Monkey Motors

does anyone have a steering damper fitted to their trike? i have not ridden my trike yet but was just thinking ahead. i am not talking about fitting one to stop minor tremmours or wobbles, i thinking more of fear of the bars jumping out of my hand when changing gear and slapping the tank. has anyone had this happen or is it so uncommon its not worth thinking about?

If your bars jump outta your hand then your trail is wrong and would need correcting.

Steering dampers have their uses but for now don't worry.

Minor wobbles at low sppeds are fairly common and usually cured by adjusting tyre pressure or air pressure in the forks.

Hope that helps

Absolutely!! :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[quote author=ByzMax link=topic=13405.msg185851#msg185851 date=1383157264
Minor wobbles at low sppeds are fairly common and usually cured by adjusting tyre pressure or air pressure in the forks.
[/quote]

Or even simply by getting used to the feel of the trike!  Rode mine for years with a wobbly front end, got so used to it I didn't even notice what I did to stop it wobbling!  It was only when ByzMax fitted my lovely extended yokes that I realised what hard work it had been all those years!

But the wobble could be stopped by simply putting both hands back on the bars...

My trikes all had around 45 degrees of rake on the forks, which probably isn't ideal from an engineer's point of view, but it was the look I was after. Yours are a similar angle I think. It made the steering a little heavy at carpark speeds because the front end tries to drop over onto full lock as you turn the bars, but made it very stable at road speeds. I think the low centre of gravity plus wide bars for more leverage helped too. More by accident than design, mine never suffered from wobbles & shakes. That's more common in bike/ trike conversions that still have the original bike's rake, fairly narrow handlebars & large rear wheels. They tend to shudder at around 30mph as you slow down.

Yep, that was mine!  First time I rode it I thought I'd never be able to handle it, but after a few days I didn't even notice!  Also at slow speeds (below 30) it was happy to go in a straight line or on full lock, but not so keen to do anything in between, but as I said - soon got used to it!  Rode it for years like that, very happily!

Every trike's different & they all have their own ...characteristics. It's totally different from riding a bike, so as a non-biker, you might find it easier to get used to riding 3, Twisted.

cheers for all that. not worried about minor wobbles and shakes, i think my arms and bars are big enough to cope with any of those. it was just a fear of hitting a pot hole or something and the bars slapping round was all but like you say no need to woory i guess till i have tried riding it, which hopfully is not to far off  ;D

my xj wobbled bad, cured itself when the front tyre scrubbed in to "trike mode"

Yeah, sidecar tyres are the favourite trick for curing front end wobbles. Never tried them myself, but the squarer profile helps I'm told. No idea how well they corner though.

Fitted a 19" car tyre to mine. Not to cure any wobble but to get a larger contact patch. It did however reduce low speed flop slightly.
Corners well too!

I've always had a bike tyre on the front but only have about 25psi in it.