Steering Wobble?

[Dave M]

Evening,

I just noticed today I had some steering wobble. I could feel it on the bars so took my hands off steering and it was fairly bad. I checked my front tyre pressure and it was low about 5 psi down. Tyres are s*** by the way! Could this be the problem or could it be something else. Pumping tyre up to correct psi has helped! Bike is a 2009 Honda cbf125. Cheers.

Dave.

[moonzoomer]

First thing to do is to replace the knackered tyres and make sure they are balanced, the rear tyre can have a negative effect on the steering as well as the front tyre. Try to get reasonable quality tyres that suits the bike and use the recommended tyre pressures, also check the rear wheel alignment and for wear in the swinging arm bearings.

[Dave M]

[gavcarter]

Be well worth checking all your wheel bearings too while your looking, and also the head bearings and forks are tight etc. More than likely just low tire pressure but no harm in checking.

[supZ]

could be..

# rear wheel out of alignment (not an obvious one but a common cause from inproper chain adjustments)
# headrace bearings shot - feel for clicking when under heavy braking)
# wheel weight fell off - get wheels balanced
# strangely worn tyres - get them checked/replaced
# wheel bearings - could be, but im not sure they'd present wheel wobble.. could be wrong though.
# warped brake discs - could be grabbing the pad pulling the wheel from side to side

lots of things to check
____________________
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[P.]

Got a top box?

[GeorgeB.]

[gavcarter]

[tahrey]

Or, if you had iffy steering with low tyre pressure, and it's gone away with the proper pressure, just not worry about it, and commit to checking more often in future.

Especially if you did it very rarely / not at all until now.

Tyres naturally lose air very slightly over time, valves aren't perfect and the composition of atmospheric air lends itself to the stuff escaping. That's why flash johnnies use pure nitrogen fill, apparently it escapes less.

If it's gone down by 5psi over many weeks, that's not so good, but not terrible, may be a very slow puncture. If it's over several months or more, I wouldn't pay it any mind.

If it's sudden or over a matter of days / 1 - 2 weeks, that's more worthy of attention as it's a more substantial leak which could progress to something worse. My old car has a wheel that loses air that fast, and it's because the rim's been badly kerbed and the bead doesn't entirely seal any more. Like, it's probably a tiny fraction of a millimetre out at some point... but it does keep running flat if you don't pay attention.

The handling on my CG goes entirely to shit if one or other of the tyres is low, it's like riding over a bouncy castle, it could well manifest as steering wobble.

However - if it's still there having pumped up the tyre, then ignore all that and concentrate on the rest of the thread

(might you have gone over a big pothole that's slightly warped the wheel, much like on that old car, and caused both a slow leak and made it just out-of-true enough that you can feel it whilst riding, even if it's very difficult to detect otherwise?)

[Dave M]

Thanks for all the replies! At the moment I'm going to put it down to tire pressure being low as it has gone away for now! New upgraded tyres will be going on soon before the winter. As for pot holes, roads are that bad nowadays it's near impossible to avoid one! As soon as we get a decent day I will be checking all bearings, tyres etc. Thanks again!