success! found cause of wobble

for those of you who gave suggestions, I found the problem. I live in
southern California, and found out the one thing you never do: Never buy
new tire for you bike that have a water groove straight down the center of
the tire. Because here in California we have rain grooves cut into the
concrete roadway, and the grooves in the roadway fit in the groove in the
tires and creates wobbling, cause the roadway is not cut straight. And this
on a 82' cm450 is dangerous!

thanks for your suggestions

Dave

 

God, that takes me back!

In France, the autoroutes used to be grooved like that. "Rainurages",
they called them, in a bizarre mix of French and English.

And they used to make bikes do all sorts of horrible things, which I
think is one reason why they gave them up. I had no idea they still
existed anywhere, let alone in the US.

 

The US even has specialized machinery called 'rotomills' to hack grooves
into perfectly good pavement. It's only a temporary situation before
repaving, but that is of little comfort after riding 10 or 20 miles. If you
stay loose, you usually go more or less where you wanted to go.

 

This is true. I remember the advice on rainurages was to relax your hold
on the bars. Grip them like fury, and the wobbles got worse.

 

It can also help a lot to raise your tire pressures by a couple of pounds.

 

It can also help a lot to raise your tire pressures by a couple of pounds.

 

It can also help a lot to raise your tire pressures by a couple of pounds.

 

So, somewhere around six pounds should be about right, eh?