Bike wobble due to grooves in freeway

[FL54]

Have some sections of roadway with grooved concrete where I ride some old Harleys with vintage tread patterns. Very squirrelly. I have found that riding where the wear patterns from car traffic helps considerably. Traffic wears down the grooves and exposes the aggregate. Not a solution but maybe a helpful tip.

[field6596]

I've had multiple sets of Avon RoadRiders with little to no tramlining on grooved pavement. The old Metzeler ME33 fronts were the opposite, but otherwise good tires. I'd follow Kurts advice. Steering head bearings and swingarm pivot bearing preload would be my first check as long as the wheel bearings felt good.

[Bikesmith01]

One more thing I haven't seen mentioned yet: How many miles do you have on those tires? My experience has been that when tires wear flat they tend to follow the topography of the road more, getting squirrely on grooves and such. On my K100 it's so pronounced that I actually use that as my time-to-get-a-new-pair-of-tires indicator. Might you be due for new rubber?

[limg]

When I switched to Avon AM 26 tires (90/90 x 18) on my R69S and R50 the wobble due to grooves disappeared. I ride my /2's on the freeways here in Southern California.

[jimstravlin]

Sounds like steering head bearings need tightening. This has little to do with the damper. I would start by installing a pair of tapered roller bearings and get a good adjustment on the new bearings. If you have the tapered bearings already I would check the adjustment...

[c8h18]

Some great advice here! Per the link below, I don't think it's the tires either..

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5326&p=43279&hilit= ... res#p43279

GB