I purchased a 2019 KLX 250 CAMO over the winter and finally got out for a quick ride the other day.

For the first several kilometers everything felt great and then all of a sudden it was like riding a snake.

The front wheel has a constant little left/right move going on. Manageable on the city streets but I'm not excited about getting up to highway speed.

There is 900 km on the bike. I'm thinking that maybe the knobby (factory) tires warmed up a little bit causing this "instability."

Any thoughts????

Thanks

 

First check your tire pressure because that's the easiest thing to check

Then raise the front wheel off the ground with some wood blocks under the frame
so you can rotate it freely and check to see if the rim is straight and there is no play in the wheel bearings..
While it's up, you can also check the front tire to see if it is running true on the rim.

I'm interested, so let me know what you find.

 

Does this bike have knobby tires? Does it have rimlocks? Sounds like you need to balance your tires.
****'s aren't the best on the highway.

 

No rim locks. Factory tires.

 

Those would be knobby tires. You might want to play with the PSI in the tire. I would go down in 3psi increments. ...but, you have knobby tires, not going to be smooth running on pavement, ever.

 

I took the bike out again yesterday, never touched a thing. Riding the same streets at that same speeds and it was totally fine.

The only change. On the last ride it was 12 degrees Celsius (54 F) and yesterday it was 30 degrees Celsius (86 F). Yesterday's ride the bike felt fine. No shimmy.

I played around with my seating position as I thought that sitting too far back might make the front end very light

 

check the head bearing lock nut under the top triple tree. When i rebuilt my bike i left it pretty loose and i got some head shake at higher speeds. Once I tightened it down bout 1/4 turn at a time, its rock solid with no head shakes at higher speeds