Hello everyone. Last week I purchased my first sportbike, a '95 F3. I'm not completely new to motorcycles, but I'm fairly new to riding on the street. I've been riding dirt bikes all my life, and I've got a Yamaha 750 Virago that I've been riding for about 6 months.

Anyway, I bought a '95 F3 for 800 bucks. It's got 25,000 miles and runs great. It was laid down and the right side farings are cracked in a few places, but overall the bike looks pretty good. It's got a D&D exhaust, and I think it has a 520 kit because the chain says 520 pro and the front sprocket is 14 tooth instead of 15. Back is the stock size of 43.

I've been having a lot of fun on the bike. It suprised me how quick it was. My back tire is pretty much shot though. The previous owner must have not took any corners and just acclerated hard in a straight line, because the middle of the tire is slick but the corners still have a lot of tread. I ordered a Pilot Power rear tire for it. It also had a 140 tire on the back, so I ordered the stock size of 160.

I do have a couple of questions. Yesterday when I was riding it I was coming out of a turn in third gear with the bike leaned a little bit, but not much. The steering started shaking pretty bad until I straightened up the bike and let off the throttle. It kinda acted like it does when you're accelerating hard in 1st or 2nd and the front tire is just barely off the ground. Could this have been due to the tires being shaped different. The front tire has a lot of curve, while the back one is a lot more flat across the tread.

Also, I noticed a couple of little tubes in the front of the bike. I believe they are below the headlight. What are these for? I think these bikes have ram-air, but the tubes look way too small to be that. Thanks and by the way you all have a nice site. I've already learned a lot just by searching through old posts.

 

the tubes are for air also .the shaking thing hopefully someone on the site can help u with .you came to the right spot welcome to the world of f3s . most bikes you see the tires will wear like that for instance i have a basically str8 commute to work so my edges have more meat than the center , unless you are hitting the twisties daily i dont think u can have even wear on both the center n edges

 

http://www.motorcycle.com/mo/mchonda/cbrpress.html

Above link has the explanation of what the tubes do. Works under 12 mph, and is to optimize fuel flow.

 

Yeah thanks for the link. It really helped me to understand how the ram air worked. I didn't think those tubes would provide enough air at high engine speeds, but I could see that they went into the intake box.

So does anybody have an idea about the steering shaking. I'm still think it's due to the back tire. Honestly I probably shouldn't have been driving on it. There's not really any tread until the edges of the tire, and it's pretty much just straight across. I don't think there's anything bent on the front end because I had the bike quite a bit faster in a straight line and it was really smooth.

 

My guess would be the headshake is caused by the rear tire...btw, did you order a front pilot power while you were at it? Something you might as well do instead of having mismatched tires.

 

I haven't ordered one yet, but I plan on ordering it in about a week. The front tire looks pretty decent, so I think I can get by for a little bit. It's a Dunlop D208, and is the 120/70 size that everyone runs. I ordered the tires from www.ridenowonline.com and it was just as cheap to buy them separately, so I was gonna wait until I had a little extra money.