bike knocked over - steering 'bent'

[donkster]

parked outside my place of work, a car has swiped the front wheel, knocking the bike over (onto a friends car). No damage I thought, apart from a broken indicator on the friends car, as the side panniers saved it from falling.

Riding the bike and you have to steer left to go straight. The handlebars are fine, not bent or twisted, and didn't hit the ground anyway, when you position the handlebars straight - the front wheel is pointing about 5 degrees to the right. The headstock appears intact, there are no creases in the tubes, but with the naked eye they appear twisted with respect to one another.

I'm hoping if i loosen all the tube mounts, and then retorque it'll straighten itself out. Anyone know a torque value or had to do this before? I'm guessing the off road types might have to do this a lot.

And no, nobody left a message or stopped, or saw anything.

Arse biscuits

[YEN_POWELL]

Just loosen one side's fork clamps, bounce the front suspension a few times, retighten, then do the same to the opposite side. Should be okay after that. Happens all the time to bikes when they go down quite hard offroad.

[donkster]

thats a good idea - one side at a time

[YEN_POWELL]

thats a good idea - one side at a time

If you undo both sides the whole bike just slides down the fork legs and your fairing clonks against the mudguard....errr so I heard!

[AlanH]

This is the way I've always reset forks that are twisted in the yokes...

You need to loosen off the top clamp bolts both sides, the front axle and the fork brace bolts (if it has one). Basically loosen everything apart from BOTH lower yoke clamp bolts, then bounce it up and down a few times.

[MandoBear]

Torque values for the pinch bolts are as follows for the XL700... bottom yoke 34 Nm (2 bolts each side), top yoke 26 Nm (one bolt each side). I know the XL650 has a different top and bottom yoke (2 bolts each side at the top yoke - if I remember right) so the torque values may be different for that. And on the 700 the top of the steel fork tubes should be level with the top surface of the top fork yoke - with the alloy fork cap sticking up above.

[donkster]

all sorted, although I did have to give the bars a twist to get it to line up. Now it just feels weird to have straight bars after driving around with the bars set left all day.

thanks all!

[YEN_POWELL]

Now it just feels weird to have straight bars after driving around with the bars set left all day.

thanks all!

Cor, some people are never happy!