Twisted front end?

[Bladesmith]

I bought an 09 DL650 project now up and running nicely The riding however...It` been down hard on the left hand side. Front wheel and top yoke are misaligned. I`m assured ther`s no structural damage and on riding it today it goes quite well, apart from the wheel pointing straight and the bars and top yoke  being about 15 degrees out, to the right. Any advice would be welome. . Would I be right in thinking I`ll just need to drop the forks and realign everything?
Thanks.

[kwackboy]

Yes , if the forks are straight it should all line up just by loosening the yoke clamps and front wheel, no need to drop the forks out.

Do this on the centre stand with something supporting the weight at the front .

[porter]

I once has a similar thing on a 1000 exup, no matter how many times I lined things up the top yoke always pulled to the right once tight. Frame and forks checked out OK, turned out the steel steering stem in the bottom yoke was slightly bent.

[nigel s]

 porter,
I had an EXUP, and the left bar was closer to the tank at full lock than the right, that bike was straight and true, and steared / felt fine  Every one I have looked at  since has had the same  thing, very odd.

Bladesmith,
As kwackboy said

[Gert]

An extract from another V-Strom site that was useful to me: "Here's a quick procedure I found for untwisting forks:
- Place bike on stand to get the weight off the front wheel.
- Loosen (slack off) fork bolts that go into both upper and lower yokes
- Loosen fork / axle pinch bolts
- Ensure both forks are exactly the same height (above or below top triple clamp).
- Align everything.
- Torque triple clamp bolts
- Torque non-threaded side axle pinch nuts
- Torque threaded side axle fastener
- Take bike off stand
- Grab front brake hard and rock bike vigorously back and forth
- While bike is upright (not on side stand), torque threaded side axle nuts."

To me, the final step from the list above is for the axle pinch bolt that clamps the built in spacer side on the front axle. The axle spacer side can be easily be clamped in the wrong position and could cause the front wheel to pull to the one side. The bouncing step allows the fork to settle in the correct alignment position on the built in axle spacer.

Have a look at the youtube video, posted by Delboy's Garage, titled: 'How-To' Re-align motorcycle forks the easy way

[nigel s]

This,