Bike not stable pass 220km

For the past two years anytime I'm at Canadiantie Motorsport Park, the bike(2011 honda 1000rr ABS) doesn't feel stable pass 220km. At first I though it was my windshield so I changed it to a double bubble windshield but it only helped allitle. My other bike is a 2008 Honda 1000rr and at 270km the bike is so stable it’s unreal. The 2011 1000rr is a dedicated track bike so it might be the fairing, just grasping at straws right now. I'm upgrading my rear suspension from stock this winter and I'll also be changing my steering and wheel bearing hoping it might solve the problem. As I've stated before I'm grasping at straws so any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

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I think you will get it with the head bearings, but make sure your forks are not tweaked at all.

Wheels balanced?
Any bodywork loose or broken?

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In what way? Vibrations? Tank slapper? Twitchy?

Could be Head bearings, tweaked forks, too much rear ride height/low rake and trail

Back ground info.


The bike feels twitchy pass 220km and I'm too nervous to give it more throttle. But at Shannonville the bike feels fine to me but I'm usually only hitting 200km before I start braking for turn 11. One of my friends who rides in the red group rode my bike and said that the rear is beating his ass. He said the bike is not smooth like his bike and it's beating him. I never noticed it because I though it was normal. I just moved up to intermediate at the end of last season. As of now I'm unable to adjust the rebound any more on my bike since I'm at the end of the adjustment range. Three years ago when I bough the bike Ken at Gator Performance said I needed to replace the rear suspension and the bike was too tall, front and back. I left the bike as is because at my skill level it wouldn't really matter. Once the ohlins arrive and I put them in, I'll bring the bike to Ken and have him sort it out but in the mean time I wanted to see if there was any parts I needed to buy before hand; budget is very limited. Lol The ohlins are going to take 2-3 months to arrive and I want the bike ready for May. I'm currently using Pirelli Supercorsa SC.

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fr and rr wheel alignment?
set sag fr and rr?
a bad shock? I see your getting an ohlins..nice.

Hey Xray,

There are quite a few possibilities here. From my experience:

- Start with rear wheel alignment. Sounds simple but make sure the "dash count" on each side of the swing arm where the axle bolts in are aligned. Having it up on a stand watching the center of the rear tire. Don't use the center of the tail as your alignment point, the subframes can be slightly bent. A weight and a string if you really want to get technical.

- The front forks are easy to bend. For this you'll need a run-out gauge. The quick way is to test 3 or 4 runout points on each fork as you spin them. I have one if you want to use it, but its a bit of a drive for you. The ideal way is to actually take the forks apart. Not a hard job, but time consuming. If you are dropping in an ohlins kit, make sure the shop measures the forks first. Scott miller suggested 4-6/1000's of an inch was the max he'd allow before putting in a K-tech kit. Fortunately fork tubes are fairly plentiful for that bike now.

- The stock steering damper is completely inadequate on the bike. It needs to be replaced for a manual unit (hyperpro, ohlins, etc). I snapped the connecting tab (effectively no damper) with a hyper pro on it, the bike was outright scary without it at about 200 kph, coming on the back straight @ SMP I actually could only use 4th gear and half throttle.

- The original rear shock is also not up to the task of track duty at all. I believe they went to the floating rear shock in 2012. Consider talking to John Sharrard about the install/setup for suspension.

- I never had issues with the head bearings, after 70,000km they still perform like brand new. Don't forget to clean/grease the needle bearings in the swing arm.

If someone has played with the ride height that may be your issue..people tend to raise the rear to aid in turn in.. but it drastically affects high speed stability if its done incorrectly.. go back to stock ride height front and rear and give it a go...

Also, check where your forks are set in your triple clamp. Stock position is about 2mm down from the top. I tried lowering it a bit just to play with geometry. Another 3mm and the bike became super unstable. Quick turning, but doesn't take much to be out. Rear ride height is worth checking as well against stock settings. The rebound all the way out sounds suspect. Rider sag would be the next thing to check.

Before blowing money on ohlins “working with a limited budget” I would get Sharrard to look at it before dropping a ton of coin on suspension.

Is your 2011 honda 1000rr still riding on it's original 30 bucks worth of wheel bearings and the tiny amount of lubrication that was originally applied to them? That would definitely do it.

... the highest loads imposed on your suspension are low speed bumps, not at uber high speed operation in a relatively straight line. The worst case scenario for your wheel bearings is at uber high speed operation in a relatively straight line, a tiny amount of free-play becomes a huge amount of feel-play.

It's a second hand track bike and the previous owned cut corners like crazy so I'm assuming the wheel bearing are stock. To the best of my knowledge the HESD is working correctly.

Thanks for all the info.

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The HESD may be working fine, but they aren't strong enough for track riding, at least not for your current pace. The stock wheel bearings I believe are actually NTN (or some other higher end manufacturer), IIRC. Replacing them isn't a bad idea after a number of years, it's simple enough, but unless the wheels aren't spinning freely on a stand (minus a little bit of pad drag), I would put that low on the suspect list

Wheel bearings are one of the cheapest roller bearing races available., they are a consumable item even if you make the extra effort to oil them periodically which most don't do. Pressure washers absolutely destroy them. They are one of the few items that you can purchase from almost any local bearing supply outlet and they are one of the least expensive bearings likely to be in stock.

Jayv said:

Before blowing money on ohlins “working with a limited budget” I would get Sharrard to look at it before dropping a ton of coin on suspension.

Click to expand...

+1 - you're in need of a solid starting point.