Dale wrote: We hung it up in disgrace for about 4 years. Then, as a what-the-heck, we took it off the hook, built it with hang-around-the-shop components, and viola!, the shake was gone! Figure that one out!!
This sounds similar to a problem I had with my Rauler. In fact I talked to Dale about binging the frame and fork down to do an alignment. Having a frame builder about 2 hours away I took the fork to Chip as my eye saw that it might be out of alignment by just a touch. As it turns out the fork was out about 1/8 of an inch. While this did settle the shimmy down somewhat it did not completely cure the problem all together. The geometry of the bike told me it should be a solid as a rock and I should be able to take my hands off the bars at any speed with confidence, something I like to do like Look ma no hands. It wasn't until one day when I hung the bike up by the rear wheel I noticed that the front wheel while swinging back a forth to center itself was slightly ratcheting. I took the bike down off the hook and turned the bars back and forth and really didn't feel much other than a smooth headset. Then I hung the bike back up and saw the same thing. At that point I took the headset apart and could see there were slight dimples around both cups and fork crown race. I removed all three and reset them so the dimples were offset from the dimples in the other parts and replaced the retainer bearings with loose balls, which two extra balls, reassembled the headset and fork and no more shimmy. The bike tracks true and straight at any speed and I can sit up and eat my Snickers bar at 30+ mph with no hands on the bars.
Mark, who needs handlebars anyway, Poore
Slatyfork, WV