'79 GL, Scraping Stand before Pegs

[NotSoLilCrippseys]

Redglbx. Hmm. You might be onto something there, but I'm not yet convinced.

Screenshot 2023-11-26 at 7.26.52 PM.png (1.33 MiB) Viewed 290 times

The Harley clamp definitely sits well below the little acorn road sensors under the peg. It's also well inboard of the peg, the sidestand, and the center stand when it's retracted.

BUT if I draw an imaginary angled plane from the center line under the tires up and begin to imagine lean angle and obstructions, I can see how that little clamp could be the culprit.

In the next day or so, I'll get down there and get a real good look at possible road abrasion on those bits.

Honestly, I don't scrape much at all on this bike - twice or thrice in 4000 miles, with two of them pretty recently The troubling thing for me is that I'm NOT scraping the pegs when I do scrape metal on asphalt.

If rotating that clamp gets me the audible and tactile caution alarm under my foot, I'll be quite pleased. I'm 90-95% sure the center stand stop is mounted at or very, close to its original position.

[CYBORG]

Best way to find out is to slowlylean the bike while you are off of it, and on a flat surface. let it down untill the head is resting on the surface. Easiest way to determine max lean angle without sliding down the road. it might surprise you

[dontwantapickle]

did the different front end change the geometry ?

[Shadowjack]

Since I personally seem to no longer be able to pick up a heavy bike, I would check lean angle by holding a handy piece of plywood against the wheels and lifting it up to see what hits.

[CYBORG]

thats a good idea. In both cases, take into account the shock travel with your weight on the bike.

[redglbx]

NotSo, pretty Easy to check, just loosen the clamp bolt and rotate the clamp to the inside and see if your grounding problem goes away. Those clamps should go towards the inside for that reason. I looked hard at your pictures and see no grounding marks on either the center stand or the foot peg or the muffler.

These bikes can handle quite well for what they are, it took me a while to learn a good cornering technique after I bought mine & coming from a 75 750 super sport that handled very well it didn’t seem to take long to wear a hole through the engine guards on my GL.

I will add that my 76 handled like it was hinged in the middle (not good) but once I went to the Lester wheels and Goodyear HST tubeless tires it was a complete turn around and it then handled quite well. It’s had a few sets of tires over the years that were bad handlers as well but now that I’m nearly 70 I really don’t care about all that much anymore . Enjoy your bike !

[Shadowjack]

I seem to remember period magazine articles commenting that once the spoked wheels had been replaced by aftermarket cast wheels, the handling sharpened up. Maybe Honda learned something, since these were about the last big bikes with spoked wheels.

[redglbx]

Yes, Honda replaced the oe “spoked” wheels with the fabricated Comstars, and then the reversed and blacked one’s in 1980 trying to appease the critics and as I remember (questionable) they were not well received. The press was not kind about them. The funny thing is that the spoked wheels were considerably lighter than either the Lester’s or the Comstars which should”ve given much better ride and handling due to less unsprung weight.

The funny thing is that my 76 LTD with its gold spoked wheels handles great vs my 76 standard which was just a wobbler/weaver until I did the Lester’s. Maybe adds a bit of credibility to the all handbuilt claims of the LTD’s. Who knows .