USD forks twisted in yokes?

Confession: I don't ride a Bandit any more. I traded my 1250 in for a GSR 750 which stops a lot better and handles a lot better but, of course, you can't lose 500 cc without a motor feeling a little gutless (massive understatement!)  So why am I back?  Simple: this forum has a lot of technical expertise and I want cringingly beg for some of it.

Amazingly, it's the same problem as featured in my last post here (https://nswbandits.forumotion.net/t4893-forks-twisted-in-yokes) but with a new twist (haha): the forks are USD.  When I took the bike to Suzuki HK, they told me that USD forks DO NOT twist in the yokes and refused to even try the loosen / bounce / tighten thing - why would anybody not try an easy solution before stripping the front end completely to check for yoke and / or fork deformation?

I would do this job myself but I don't have a centre stand and I don't have a front paddock stand.

So: has anybody heard this idea that USDs don't twist in the yokes before?  If so, can you explain the physics to me?

Also: any clever way to get the load off the front wheel (so that the yokes don't fall down over the forks when I loosen the clamp bolts) without a front paddock stand?

Much obliged, as always, and I hope you guys don't mind lending a hand to a traitor to the Bandit cause!

Hope this video helps you HK..............

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSunBRB6-r8

Thanks Paul ... leave the top yoke clamped eh?  I'll give it a go when I get a chance but it seems to me that it's the top yoke rather than the bottom one that's likely to be misaligned (I'm just trying to picture all the forces and torques in a steering head / fork / wheel system on a crashing bike and it is unbelievably complicated!)

We will see and I'll let you know what happens.  I'm going to have to get one of those huge Allen keys first ...

you should/can just look at the legs from a parallel point of view to see if they`re on the piss or not.
That's how I check mine, by sight, pretty simple.

Why didn't I think of THAT??  It's why I came back to this forum - for some common sense!

delboy`s has some good advice sometimes, but other times he waffles on with shit.

if someone`s got a bike with full fairing, its hard to sight up the forks, but if you`ve got minimal, or naked, its easy to see the forks from side on to sight them up.
Loosen the bottom clamps, and only slightly back off the top ones so they don`t slide, then kick the wheel in what ever direction to line them up by sight.

23nm torque if you don`t know

So what do you think of the "it doesn't happen with USDs" thing?

HKJohn wrote:So what do you think of the "it doesn't happen with USDs" thing?

as I don`t have USD`s, without studying them, and if they`re clamped on the same principle as RSU forks, I cant see how they won`t, unless there keyed in position some how, or braced differently to eliminate that from happening.

HKJohn wrote:So what do you think of the "it doesn't happen with USDs" thing?

unless there is something physically holding the forks in position (key, pin, lug, bolt etc) I cant see a reason why it couldn't happen in either.

I'm about 85% of the way there!

I don't have a front stand yet and I'm having a bit of trouble finding one of those huge Allen keys locally so I've not done the job properly: but I loosened the bottom yoke clamp bolts and the axle clamp bolts and put a bit of opposing torque on the wheel and bars; and that corrected the misalignment by a couple of degrees maybe.

Then I remembered something I'd seen in this forum a couple of years ago: check the risers.  Sure enough, the bars were not parallel to the far edge of the top yoke - only slightly off, but visible.  So I loosened the bar clamps and the riser bolts under the yoke, shoved the bars the way I wanted them to go, tightened it all back up again and what do you know?  I estimate no more than two degrees off perfect now and that will do.

I just looked back in time and the thanks for that particular piece of advice are owed to Re-Cycled.  NSW Bandits to the rescue again!