Rodracer, I just read your post about steering lock angle. This is something I have personal experience with. I built a set of triple clamps and they had limited steering angle between the stops. I was a lot of work to install them, so I decided to make a short test ride. Then I would take them off and increase steering lock, polish them, and fix other problems.
At slow speed, just out of the driveway, the bike leaned a bit and I steered to the inside of the turn to keep the bike upright. I could not steer into the turn enough to keep it balanced. I gave it throttle to straighten it out, shot across the street, over a sidewalk, and into a yard. Lucky me. No cars were driving down the street. This seemed to be a low speed problem, only.
Limited steering lock will work, but it is a good idea to be real careful at first.
Hiya WW, thanks for taking the time to consider my question
The design of my bike is such that the front wheel will be enclosed as part of the body fairing, therefore in the interest of minimising frontal area, I would like to run with as little steering lock as possible.
The bike will only ever be used for straightline, high speed runs on wide open airstrips & will be physically lifted & turned/positioned as required. So the low speed handling should be manageable (if a little scary) provided the bike is pointing in the right direction & the power level at low speed is adequate to the gearing.
My main concern is steering the bike at speed when opposite input into the steering may be required to keep the machine in line, i.e. if the bike is drifting left at speed & I need to adjust my weight to the right & input opposite steer to the left in order to strighten her out.
I was wondering if anyone had any idea of the range of steering angle that could potentially be required & the influence that speed will have on the requirement?
I like Slims idea re adjustable steering lock & will try & implement that, however I still need to establish the range of adjustment that may be required.
Any viewpoint will be most welcome.