fork braces - rain grooves

[Oconner]

I was reading an old moto mag and there was and advert for fork braces and one of the claims was that it eliminated the wobbles I get on the wonderful CA rain grooved freeway above 70mph. I have Avon roadriders by the way. Anyone have any thoughts? You cant escape the freeways here in So Cal!

[montmil]

You already have a fork brace on your R65, unless a PO errored and removed it. It's that heavy steel part under the front fender.

As far as rain groove induced wobbles, some tires do and some don't. I have Bridgestones Spitfire S-11 on both R65s and my R100S. The few times I've ridden on grooved pavement, there has been no noticable twitching.

Are your steering stem bearings greased and properly adjusted with just a smidge of pre-load? The swingarm has the same bearings and they also require a little preload. Either or could induce the wobbles.

[Oconner]

Yep fork brace is there. Live and learn. Will check the bearings.
Thanks

[Bob_Roller]

Have you tried different tire pressures to see if that would make a difference ?

[nhmaf]

A few PSI in the tires does indeed make a difference, along with the tire design.   We don't have rain grooves here in the Northeast - but we do have scarified pavement in the summer with road resurfacing - think mega-rain grooves- which no tires is immune to but some are much much worse than others.  We also have metal grate deck bridges that get both slippery and groovy when wet.

I used to ride on the Metzler lasers with the block type tread patterns back int he 90s - but they were awful on those surfaces.  

I am presently riding Bridgestone BT45 tires on the R65 and they work great.   However, I have found that if I forget to check tire pressures and the front tire gets down to ~24-26PSI, I will have an unpleasant wobble right between 40-45 MPH.