I think some of you have or had a steering damper in place, and I'm having trouble obtaining an OEM damper.
There is no such thing as an OEM damper for an R65. Very briefly Luftmeister did market a low cylindrical damper that you fitted in place of the dust seal underneath the bottom steering head bearing (with all the obvious fun of the fair in doing so. The device was essentially a modified fluid "clutch" from some automotive supplier and in order to work as advertised it needed to be completely air free.
When we received the one that I foolishly and briefly fitted to my wife's bike, it was not air free and therefore had a "dead zone" where it supplied no damping.
After some thought I disassembled it, verified that the oil within was simply a generic silicone oil (available at all good fishing tackle purveyors, or alternatively in larger quantities from aviation oil suppliers). I purchased enough so that with some careful manipulation I was able to immerse the entire device in a plastic cup half full of oil and assemble it "under water" as it were so that it was air free.
It worked for about a month until some air got in and it had a "dead zone" again.
At this point I had a re-think and decided that it might be better to try and identify what was causing the incipient instability rather than simply try and mask it with a damper. A careful examination of the front tyre revealed that it was developing an odd wear pattern and was "scalloping" some of the tread. I contacted the supplier who asked me to take the tyre to a local rep who in turn took a number of photographs (this was in pre-digital camera age) and sent them to the supplier.
A week later I received a phone call asking that I bring the front wheel in, which I did. A new tyre was fitted, but the representative would not answer my questions regarding what was wrong with the old one, simply saying that the importer had sent his photos to the manufacturer who had responded telling them to replace the tyre F.O.C. and that was all he was able to tell me.
New tyre fitted, incipient wobble never returned, tyre had a long and uneventful life.
The damper sat on the shelving in the workshop until we moved to Cairns in 1990 and didn't make the cut of things to be moved and was dumped.
I do apologize, this got a bit longer than I intended. The point I was going to make is that the R65 is one of the more stable motorcycles ever made, my view is that if an R65 develops a wobble it is incumbent on the owner to find out why and eliminate the fault, not mask the fault with a damper.
I've gained a bit more experience in dealing with wobbles over the years, as anyone who owns an R100 built prior to 1985 does and I am firmly of the opinion that aside from some nasty little "gotchas" like the R100's tendency to wear the steering head hole in its triple clamp top plate oval and then develop a charming habit of launching into tank slappers at certain speed ranges that most wobbles are the result of a mismatch between the front and rear tyre, most usual a sectional mismatch.
To explain, in R65 land the front is a 3.50 and the rear a 4.00. both rims are right on the cusp of being big enough to take the next size up and many, many people (including me) have been tempted to run a 4.00 on the front and a 4.10 on the rear (as an example).
Now the above combination might just work perfectly, in certain tyre brands, or it might cause wobbles - as soon as you depart from the specified tyre sizes (and types) you are no longer a consumer, you are a test pilot, as some here have found.
Finally (I promise), if I were going racing on an R65, I would undoubtedly fit a 4.00 rear section (reverse mounted) on the front simply to gain the larger contact patch, I would also do whatever it took by way of shuffling top hats etc to get a 4.50 on the rear. I would do that because in racing contact area is king and you go for that first and worry about ancillary problems later, I would also fit a damper of whatever stiffness was required to eliminate any tendency to wobble. You do this on the track because generally you will not be manhandling the bike bending it to your will for much more than an hour at a time.
I prefer a more relaxed approach to my road motorcycling however and in that world I'd eliminate the cause of any instability, not try and mask it.
Absolute last comment. I wonder if an R60/75/90/100 prior to Brembo brakes, lower triple tree would fit an R65. If so that would provide an very easy path to fitting a standard BMW damper, which actually does work pretty well.
