USA, large displacement rides.  By  dollartwentyfive (Read 6,434 times)

If you're interested this is nice comprehensive article

www.motorcycle-superstore.com/4125/mngr/rake-and-trail-explained.aspx

I did that yestersday just to be sure and there was zip, zero, nada wobble. Its mostly tire pressure and tread pattern after eliminating rear preload being set too low. If leaning back causes it to get worse on your bike you have tire pressure and or preload issues at the least and possibly a front tire with a tread pattern prone to wobble.

This tire and any remotely similar to it will wobble insanely if not inflated a few psi over the nameplate spec on the bike without going over the max limit stamped on the sidewall:


This tire won't be as prone to wobble:


The problem with most bikes and scooters that have a large seat making them appear to be good for riding double is that most do not have enough weight capacity to maintain front steering head geometry when you load up the back. 330 lbs max load capacity is not going to cut it for two unless both of you weigh under 150 lbs and yet that only leaves 30 lbs for both rider and passengers riding gear and parcels. Even a bike with a 465 lb capacity with a poor choice in front tire or really bad preload settings is going to wobble. You do have to vet them out and set them up correctly.

If you dig deeper you will find that most are self inflicted by riders trying to get a softer ride, putting a smaller tire in the back, etc. Most motorcycles will be biased toward the back once you put a rider on them with many putting the pillion further behind the rear wheel than on many scooters. Scooters put the rider in front of the motor switching the bias back to the front while most motorcycles put the rider behind the motor switching the bias toward the back.

It does not matter scooter or motorcycle they both need to be setup correctly for the way the current rider will be using it and on the motorcyle this may even involve moving the engine forward to offset the rear bias caused by the weight of the rider with a number of the high end sport bikes having multiple engine mounting positions to make it easier to adjust their bias by shifting the engine weight.

Even my 10 ton F53 truck had to be weighed at the 4 corners after I had it set up the way I was going to use it so the load be could redistributed if need be and rechecked followed by the tire pressures set to match and a full allignment done to match my usage so it would not handle like a dog.

Folks still don't realize that there is no real one size fits all setup and you have to have each vehicles suspension tuned (tires are part of the suspension) to how you load and use it car, truck, scooter or motorcycle. Most vehicles especially the lighter ones won't handle very well when you load them even just past maximum capacity especially if you don't follow the book and make the required adjustments.

It doesn't take long to discover that the majority of people over there don't do their own work. The wobble was almost universal even with their dealers supplying the tires. The problem is the result of nutty forks and weight bias. I'm sure the antiquated sheet metal frame exaggerates the problem. Fortunately Piaggio was wise enough to copy the tube frame and Tupperware the Japanese introduced on other products. It's allowed them to deal with the inherent problem of a rear engine unweighting the front wheel more constructively.

You mean to tell me that those cheesy PLASTIC scoots are more stable?....Say it ain't so! 😂

Here are the results from the event. Notice that there are many much newer scooters tailing it. In this case Function won out over Form. Pretty scooters lost big.


www.scootercannonball.com/results/2016Updates.php