Front wheel wobble

[theclaud]

My pal Dr Evil has had this twice, on one particular ski-run of a hill. He reckons it is down to fork assymmetry. After the first episode, which was very severe and scary (it's a hill that invites you to go for 50mph) I advised him to ditch the forks (2nd hand ITM carbon ones bought on Ebay), but being both a cheapskate and a nerd he went for the eccentric remedy of dishing the front wheel slightly to compensate. The same thing happened next time we went down that hill, and having had a chance to try it he says that the thigh-against-the-crossbar thing doesn't work. As he still can't be persuaded to bin the forks, the current remedy is of the "Doctor doctor - it hurts when I do this" variety, and so he doesn't go down that hill except at slow speeds. If you don't have the means to measure the symmetry of your fork dropouts, symptoms of it are supposedly noticeably better cornering in one direction than the other, and a tendency to drift to one side when riding no-hands...

 

[Kingwill]

Hmmm

After reading through your replies I think it might be down to two things.

The first is likely to be nerves! I must admit that I'm a bit nervous going downhill at speed and I think that as a result I do grip too hard. I'll try to relax my grip.

Second is that this only started to happen when I moved my seat back about 1/2" and I was down on the drops - so I might be putting a bit too much weight on the front.

I'll try on the hoods and keep pedaling to see if that stabilises things!

Those who mentioned scary are on the mark - the two times it has happened have been two of the most frightening experiences of my life - which probably didn't help my relaxed grip!!!!

 

[Spin Jim]

I've just solved my problem with front wheel wobble at speed by removing the plastic reflector from the spokes; it only weighs 14g but that was enough to cause an alarming wobble at anything over 35mph.