- Joined
- Oct 19, 2005
- Messages
- 1,623
I wasn't happy with the way my Roadster rear wheel looked from the back. It seemed to tilt over to the left, so I put the bike on a flat surface and made sure that the top rear frame loop was level using a spirit level, I then removed the wheel and put the spirit level across the swing arm in a couple of different places as well as on a long dummy axle through the wheel slots and found that the left arm was quite a bit lower than the right. I removed the arm and substituted one that I took off another bike and this arm was perfectly level. I then took the bent arm, which I assumed had suffered some accident damage, to a friend with an engineering shop and asked if he thought it could be straightened, he put it on his flat plate where it indeed rocked diagonally between it's four contact points. He pointed out that there had been a weld repair at the front chain guard mount and he surmised that this additional weld applied to the front had caused the fork to bend under heat-stress. I mention this as a warning because many of the Commandos I see need some repair at this bracket and in future if I need to do this I will be extra careful to check the alignment before putting the swing arm on the bike.