Saturday, May 10 2014 [9,982 miles]
No, my bike doesn’t actually need a steering damper. This was a 1% need and 99% want purchase. And the 1% is due to my lack of skill more than anything inherent with the bike. I’m hoping this will help offset some of my dirt road lack of skill.
In the mail, today
Damper and mounting kit
Mounting kit hardware
I did a dry run through the instructions to familiarize myself with the parts and make sure nothing was missing. I’ll need to disconnect and replace the nut at the telelever ball joint to install. That may require a special tool that I’ll have to buy or make. Plus I need some loctite 270 (red) in addition to the 130 Nm used to install the replacment nut. I have two kinds of blue in the garage, but no red. Installation will have to wait until I get the needed tools and supplies.
Monday, May 12 2014 [10,083 miles]
In going through the hardware and the instructions I noticed one thing that was not nice. The existing telelever ball joint nut has a shoulder and is 21mm across the flats. It is covered by a dust cover that is made to cover a 21mm nut. A bracket needs to placed under that nut. A replacement nut is supplied that is thinner… the bracket takes up the space that was used by the shoulder of the factory nut. But… the replacment nut is 22mm across the flats. I wouldn’t be able to use the factory tool (if I had one) and the dust cover won’t fit. Grumble. I emailed my grumbles to the importer, asking them to please forward to Hyperpro. They did. And Hyperpro responded. Quickly! The response was forwarded to me.
He is correct and the fact that the dust cover does not fit is a shame, I agree.
The thread and pitch is (of course) exactly the same, but it turned out near impossible to find a stock nut with the same 21mm key size. We could have had a custom one made, but that would drive up the cost and complexity of this kit even more so we chose for the 22mm nut. The original nut (with fixed washer) does not have enough thread left when fitted on top of our bracket.
It is possible to remove and install the nut with a regular ring spanner.
So it goes. I picked up the needed thread locker this morning. I think I’ll try to install the damper tomorrow afternoon. I’ve been playing with ways to make a replacement dust cap.