Steering geometry and adjustments

[Guest]

Finishing a winter project, a 1980 GS550L, and am looking for some advice. The bike , at some point, took a whack on the front right side (driver's right, kill/starter switch side). New handlebars, headlight, signal, etc. As a result of the impact, the bars point a little, mmm... more than a little, to the right when the front wheel is straight. I'm looking to straighten this so the bars are parallel to the wheel axis. I'm looking for instructions on what can be done to accomplish this.

I've seen in forums and internet searches for other models, instructions to loosen the triple tree connections and manually dive the front end to straighten the wheel/bar relationship, but I haven't found anything on whether it can be done with the GS bikes and how to do it.

Any advice or help is appreciated.

[koolaid_kid]

Triple trees are the same across the board, for the most part. However, nothing will fix a bent fork tube. Have you checked them for straightness yet?

[N2un]

@kk... Thanks for the response. Haven't done anything with it yet, but there is no visible damage to the fork tubes. It just appears to be out of alignment as if the force of the impact twisted the bars slightly.

[Old guy]

Loosen everything up and see if things will settle back into place. You can mark and rotate the upper part of each fork 180 and see if the wheel cants the other direction, if it does, you should look for forks.

[N2un]

@OG... By "everything" do you mean the triple tree clamps or is it necessary to loosen the yoke as well? My yoke is hollow (the choke cable feeds through it) with a nut at the top rather than a bolt head. Really worried about taking the torque off the yoke bearings if it isn't necessary. Wanting to limit my headaches...