Fork Brace

[tommyherman]

DId a search for Fork Brace to see if there were any reviews, but came up with nothing. I feel sure many have tried the fork brace. I installed one some time back but could not tell much if any difference. Any comments?

[cbx4evr]

I have a fork brace on my 1500 and didn't really notice a difference after installing it. Kinda bought into the hype and having had them on former bikes thought the Wing would benefit too.

When I installed it and saw the bracket under the fender I thought it would do almost the same job as a fork brace.

[Viking]

I changed the springs to progressives and put a fork brace on at the same time. Also disabled the anti dive then. All three did something but I cannot tell you which did what as I did them all together. They did make a big difference in handling though. I have an acquaintance who has now put the progressive monoshock kit into his front end and first left his fork brace on, and then took it off, and swears it is better with it off.

[feetup]

One of the mistakes people make with the installation of a fork brace is not aligning the forks properly at the time. A miss aligned brace will worsen the handling and ride by making the lower tubes into a rigid structure that is not truly parallel, or a parallel structure sliding on fork tubes that are not parallel. This will cause all kinds of "stiction". Stiction is the condition where it is difficult to get the forks moving. Often caused by friction, or misalignment, but sometimes by poor damping or even poor design. Once moving, the forks will slide adequately, but small inputs will not get the sliders moving so handling and ride will be poor.

It is important to loosen everything, axle, fender, brace, triple clamps, and steering head, and tighten them up one after the other, in order, top to bottom, and after each tightening bounce the front end up and down a few times with the front brake applied. This will prevent any misalignment being tightened into the structure. I don't see this procedure in the Honda manual, or even the "Honda Common Service Manual", but it is very common practice with competition motorcycle mechanics.
Also, if the mounting surfaces for the sliders and brace are not machined precisely this will induce binding as well. In such cases it is good practice to place a bead of low strength (blue) locktite on the brace and go through the alignment procedure but only run the fork brace bolts up lightly, giving them a final tightening 12 to 24 hours later.

Next time you change fork oil, lift the front end off the ground, and with the fork oil drained, and the fork caps and springs removed, lift the front suspension up and down by hand and see how free it is. Any binding or friction other than residual damping from any remaining oil is bad, and will adversely affect handling and ride. This will also pump out any trapped oil.

[tom84std]

I'm thinking the fork brace thing may be a leftover from the early wings. The first wing I ever rode was my '79. When I went to test drive it before buying it, I noticed a terrible wobbliness in the forks. I asked the owner if the triple trees were loose. It felt as though the fork tubes were made of PVC pipe. I bought the bike anyway and my brother suggested I buy a Superbrace. I did, and that corrected the problem completely. When I got my '84, one of the first things I noticed was that it had a factory installed brace already there, no Superbrace needed. I'm sure Honda saw that there was a problem there, and in the following decades has engineered the problem away.