Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Quicker steering by raising fork tubes

I read an article on webbikeworld:
http://www.webbikeworld.com/triumph-motorcycles/repair-maintenance.htm about raising the front fork tubes making the steering quicker on a Triumph Thunderbird. I raised the forks 10 mm on my 2002 bonneville America and it indeed did seem to quicken the steering. I noticed that they were raised about 3 mm from the factory. It only took about 15 minutes, mostly in measuring to be exactly even on both forks.

By raising the forks in the yokes, you're effectively reducing the rake and trail of the bike, probably not that much of a difference, but enough for you to get slighly faster turn-in. You'll probably notice a corresponding slight decrease in straight-line stability too.

The straight-line stability seems unchanged. But it now seems to be easier and faster to turn. Also, the long sweeping turns seem to be more stable over the bumps you always seem to meet on interstate entries and exists. I like the change. The only thing that I did not like about my TBA before was the excessive rake angle, and this seems to help a lot.