I really dont know how to explain this but as the title states my steering seems really weird to me. I have a 2001 f4i and it seems like when I lean my bike is fighting me, I didnt think anything of it untill I rode a few other bikes the past week and noticed that they do not "fight"...Any idea on whats causing this?

 

Bike lowered? New tires? anything done to it?

 

get your front end up off the ground and shake your forks side to side, back to front...see if there is any play in the steering stem bearings....check your front wheel for any dents, maybe your wheel weights have fallen off......more than likely I would think it's excessive play in the steering stem..how many miles does your bike have on it?

 

Don't forget to check the air pressure also, very important to keep up on this, check the back while your at it.

 

Bike is stock, has 5000 miles on it...I was looking at it today when I realized my front tire is "wavy" Im going to try to post a pic to show what I mean.

 

I was just about to tell you to check your front tire for flat spots/waves...this may be a result of your steering stem having play, or may be the cause of your steering problems...did you just buy the bike? have you been trying to do stoppies? or lock the brakes up lately?

 

I bought the bike in october last year. No stoppies or hard braking on it so far either.

 

It's called cupping. Cupping is just having high and low spots over the tread of a tire. It happens to the tires over time. You'll notice it more so on the front because it's the free-wheeling tire. There's no torque acting on it as you go down the road. The same things happens to car and truck tires. The free wheeling tires(front tires on a rear wheel drive or rear tires on a front wheel drive)will start to cup over time. If not taken care of(cross rotate the tires), they start to get really noisy and eventually will cause a ride disturbance.

Unfortunally all that info is pretty much useless on a motorcyle because there's no way to change the direction of the rotation of the tire(they're normally directional)to cause it to wear the high spots back down. If the cupping is pretty bad, you need to replace it. Cupping can cause all sorts of different symptoms. Bad handling is one of them.

Hope that helps.