DL650 Handling Characteristics

Thanks for all the replies guys, glad to know it's not "normal" behavior, and, I was able to get everything resolved tonight!

I did set rear sag when I de-lowered the rear. Tires are Michelin something-or-another street tires, and the rear is a little bit squared off, front looks good, both have adequate tread. I checked the tires and they were 20psi front, 22psi rear, so pretty low definitely a contributing factor, so I just aired them up to 28 & 30 respecitvely, however I recall this same handling characteristic from a few months ago when they were freshly aired up.

I just raised the fork tubes about 13mm and took it for a test run, and problem is basically solved, in fact I now the opposite occured where I had to very slightly push the inside grip/pull the outside during turns, but just the slightest amount though. I then lowered the tubes down to 10mm and now everything is great, very neutral feel throughout the turn, and corners feel much more confident now that I'm not having to constantly apply corrective pressure throughout the turn.

Thanks for the input everyone, problem solved, now just have to deal with the helmet buffeting/wind noise issue with the stock screen and I'll be golden. Tried all the settings for the stock and nothing worked (up, down, lowered bracket, etc.) I know it's a well-covered topic and I've already read a lot of posts on it here, and I have an adjustable clip-on extender coming in the mail tomorrow. If that fails, I think I'll try a Madstad or Moose +4.

Hey Guys, just wanted to add an update to my initial post. Lowering the front definitely helped, and looking at my tires it seems I may be able to get even better feel by changing my rear tire back to the stock tire size. When I bought the bike it came with Michelin Pilot Road 4 tires, 110/80R19 front and 160/60r17 rear, and based on other people's experiences on stromtrooper with wider, lower aspect ratio tires it seems to negatively affect handling in corners. To quote Dslag:

DSlag said:

Basically, there is lots of ancedotal evidence from folks, on lots of different sites, who put wider than stock tires on the back. Most of them experienced negative handling characteristics. The general concensus was the bike was slightly harder to turn in which would quickly develop into a 'falling over' feeling. They claimed the harder to turn in felt like a tire that was worn flat in the middle from too much straight slab. The falling part... well, lets just say you have to experience it.:yikes: Most claimed that the general handling characteristics were worse than stock.
The other comment was that production engineers go to great lengths to match tire sizes with other bike geometry like rake, trail, swing arm angle, etc. to come up with good (and safe) handling characteristics. When you put a wider tire on, the entire geometry is messed up and handling in the corners suffers. And isn't that why we ride bikes? For the twisties?

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I've put about 1500mi on the bike in the last month, mostly on TN, NC, GA twisties, and have just about worn out the rear, so a stock size tire is going on soon, and just noticed that the date on the front tire is 2012 (rear is 2015 date), so that'll be changed as well. The bike does feel a bit vague when cornering still, so I'm looking forward to how the bike handles after the new tires go on. Probably going with a 90/10 or 80/20, I don't want to compromise road grip because I do love some twisties, but my other bike is a WR250R that I ride trails with often, and it'd be nice to start taking the Wee on some gravel and fire roads as well. Looking at the Shinko 705's, Metzeler Tourance, or Scorpion Trail II's.

One last thing to note, I have put on Pro Taper ATV high bars on it, very comfy riding position, but I read somewhere that may change the body weight distribution when cornering, hopefully not much though, because I won't be changing back to anything else, the bars are superb.


Photo from the Blue Ridge Parkway a couple weeks ago