coming from the chopper world have long rakes is nothing new, most of the chop guys avoid the raked trees in favor to raking the neck, but they are generally looking at 5-10 of trail. what kind of raked trees are people running?
Hannigan is doing mine in a couple of weeks. they use 4.5 Degree of rake.
Around 5 degrees is popular. Maybe around 3 inches of trail for quick, easy steering.
Stretched choppers are mostly resistant to turning with a lot of caster, long fork legs and big trail numbers.
Low trail numbers reduce the bikes tendency to self center. One must stay with it like an old British sports car whereas you can just about ride all day hands off on a stretched chopper if you have enough straight road.
Lonnie
I had 5 installed. Was considering 7. Steering is light and easy. That doesn't mean I don't have to lean into turns sometimes, well more shift my ass on the seat. But I am pleased with the performance. I would absolutely recommend a raked tree.
Mine are a Liberty 5 degree rake. It was kinda like installing power steering on the rig.
Something to keep in mind is that when you have it raked it will drop the bike a good 12 inch or more and might put the car and bike in a nose down position, it did on my Honda, had to reset everything.
You must have a tall bike Ted! lol
Metal or Sch.80 PVC fork spring spacers about 1" or so thick will bring you back up to stock height. Or installing Progressive springs if not on a tight budget.
Lonnie
Hack'n - 5/11/2010 9:51 AM
You must have a tall bike Ted! lol
Metal or Sch.80 PVC fork spring spacers about 1" or so thick will bring you back up to stock height. Or installing Progressive springs if not on a tight budget.Lonnie
There are also fork extensions available to make the front end back up to a decent height.
Note that it isn't the degree that the trees are raked that makes a difference but rather the final trail figure which is contingent upon the bike's steering head angle. In other word a 5 degree set of raked trees on one bike may be no different than a 6 degree on another. Trail is also affected by the differnce in the steering head angle that takes place as the front end is dropped when a set of raked trees is added. Lots of variables that actually make a apples to apples comparison between bikes hard to come by.
