I recently brought my 02 P650 in for the recall. I made the mistake of not looking it over before I rode it (I forgot that 90% of dealer mechanics are incompetent). I get to riding it and the first thing I notice is that my handlebars are turned to the right when I'm going in a straint line and it's really erratic at hight speeds. I get off and look at my tires when the bars are straight. The left tire was pointing way to the right while the left was fairly straight. I took it back and asked them to get the toe right and the allignment. I go to pick it up and he tells me "it's in spec." I look at it nad there is no change in the allignment. I show it to him and he says "I did it by the book, you'll have to talk to the owner." I talked to the owner and he agreed that it was still way off. He ended up doing something with the tie rod that got the wheels fairly alligned. Is there a real way to allign a quad (like you would a car) or do I have to just put up with a little mal-allignment? Did anyone else have this issue? At the end the owner tried to tell me that there was no way that they could screw up the allignment by changing out the recalled parts--is he right?

 

Mine was way off when I got it back...I wonder if the new assemblies are slightly different than the old ones.

 

How did you straighten it back up??

 

I was way out on a trail when I realized how badly it was handling. I couldn't get the inner jamnut loose on the tie rod, but I was able to get the tie rod end out of the knuckle and rotate the outer tie rod end until it was roughly lined up. Luckily there were enough tools in the little toolkit to do the job.

 

you can only align a quad's tow in and tow out, not the camber and castor. You do it by adjusting the tie rod ends and measuring the distance between the rims at the front and at the back. if you make it so they are slightly farther apart in the front than in the back, it drives the best (perhaps a 1/4 to 1/2 inch wider distance in the front). VERY IMPORTANT to have the handlebars in a fixed, straight position before you start.

 

2005bf750,

You align your quad with toe out? I just replaced my tie rods with the Diamond DG and set my toe in to about 1/8". I used a 48" caliper to do this so I know it's with in .001 of an inch (not that it needs to be).

With toe out you are able to turn quicker, but you loose high speed stability. Toe in a little slower turning, but high speed handling is better.

 

I try for a neutral to slightly toed in setting.

 

Man if they aligned it wrong and you took it back , they did it again and you had to show them that it was wrong and how it was wrong, and the Mechanic could only say " I did it by the book, talk to the owner". HA ide never go there again, i have noticed things similar to that at dealers, ive had to show and tell a mechanic how to fix something on motorcycles , atv's, and carrs, and tell them if i had the tools ide have done it myself. that just blows my mind, "I DID IT BY THE BOOK", ha i'm sitting here now getting pissed off about someone elses mechanic run ins.