I am looking for advice please about the amount the steering yokes are dropped in the forks on my 998S. Not sure if 916/996/748 owners can help. Having owned the bike for some 6 months I recently fitted new tyres and realised the bike has a tendancy to drop even in a straight line, anotherwords it feels very skittish and if I take my hands off the bars it dosent feel stable. On very fast sweepers it is superb, but on tight slow turns it tends to oversteer. I am wondering if its got anyting to do with the amount the yokes are dropped in the forks. Mine measure 20mm from the top of the leg to the yoke measured at the centre of the back of the stanchion. What is standard and what do you guys find works ? I realise there are all sorts of other parameters affecting the bike,but just approaching it one thing at a time I'd like to be sure if a previous owner hasen't messed things up.
The setting dimension is from the top edge of the lower yoke, where the fork is clamped, to the top of the fork cap. It's 244 mm
Just checked my 998 as per info above, and mine is 244mm (didn't doubt you Nelly, just did it out of curiosity)
The 998 also has eccentric stearing head bearing cups which may cause your issue. Mine is the opposite to yours in that it understeers on slow corners so I will adjust mine to speed up the steering and hopefully improve it's low speed cornering. If you look side onto the headstock, my steering stem is nearer the back of the headstock at the top, if you check yours it may be nearer the front. Take a look Fugly
Wouldn't muck around with the head angle for several reasons. The adjustment is for racing not the road, it may quicken steering, but will make it more unstable,plus your steering lock won't work. The under steer is better cured using suspension set up and tyre pressure. Rear static sag can make a huge difference as can a few psi.
Hi Steve, Thanks for that all good advice. Do you have any baseline movement from Standard settings for reducing the Understeer? I have just aquired the bike and this is my only niggle so far and thought that as the head bearing adjustment looks to be as lazy as possible I was going to try a mid setting. but if you can give me some suspension pointers that is obviously an easier option to adjust. Many thanks Fugly
I had my suspension on my SPS set up by a mate who's a race mechanic, he did write down the settings for me, but God knows where I put them. We made changes bit by bit, and the biggest change was when we reduced the rear sag with regards to under steer and ease of direction change. He did the same with the the 998 with the same result. It seems Ducati as standard have A fair bit of rider sag (how much you compress everything by sitting on it) you want around 30mm at rear and 40mm front. I am NO expert and am sure someone on here can give you more advice. As for tyre pressure I'm running 2.1 front and 2.2 rear ( bar) which I think is pretty standard.
