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Seeley Shimmy Damper
I own a 2002 Gold Wing with a Lehman Monarch trike conversion. I have owned this since July last year and its my first ever trike. Ever since I have owned it the trike has had a low speed (10-15 mph) front end shake. Initially I thought it was the front tire since the trike only had 5000 miles when I bought it and the front tire was badly scalloped.
I brought the trike into the dealer when I bought it and they put a new tire on the front end. The Shimmy was still there after the new tire so I looked at different options. Since my Trike had the Lehman rake tree installed I was pretty sure it had the updated bearings (at least the top one) as well as the steering head being torqued correctly.
So I happened to read about a Seeley Shimmy Damper. Its was expensive but I didn't like the low speed Shimmy so I went for it. I contacted Walt at Seeley and ordered a Blue (to match my Trike color) Shimmy Damper. Took about 5 weeks to receive the kit and he told me up front he was waiting on parts so it wasn't a big deal. So Monday was a good weather day here and I decided to install the kit on my trike.
The install is straight forward and you have to be pretty mechanical to pull this off. Since I have been down to the air filter on my trike before I figured it wouldn't be a big deal. Everything I have read on line the install comes in at around 4-5 hours.
First I am going to point out that the instructions that come with this kit are lacking a lot of good information. Poor picture quality and generally missing many steps of the install so some common sense is in order. The actual kit sold is very nicely made and IMO a quality product. So I remove all the top end to get down to the Steering head nut. I get to the part where you need to remove 2 Honda Security bolts that hold the Ignition Switch in place. The instructions say to use a #5 Easy out. I am a pretty resourceful guy and figured I have many many security bits in stock and would most likely be able to get them out with the easy out. "WRONG" Make sure you go buy a #5 easy out before you start this project. The security bolts are hidden from site before you begin so you dont know exactly what they look like till your way into the install. But rest assured they are made to be installed and then strip themselves out. There is nothing to grab onto since they are domed. So make sure you have that #5 easy out handy! I also ground the tip of the easy off down about 1/8" to make sure you can get it down in the hole to be able to spin it out.
So I get it all installed. Doing the cutout for clearance of the Damper on the right side plastic bottom enclosure was interesting. Again pictures in the directions along with the template cutout leave a lot to be desired. So I get the bike all put back together and do a clean up and get ready to go for a ride. I started early in the morning and we now have 5 hours into this mod with taking my time. I put the ignition key in and turn it to "on" and nothing. Dead in all positions. So I try the remote for the trunk and it works correctly. So I know my issue is in the Ignition switch.
Sooooooo I take everything back apart again. I start wiggling the wires around going to the bottom of the Ignition switch while the key is on and I see lights in the dash coming on and off indicating a broken wire somewhere. So now I remove my whole Shimmy Damper Install and remove the Ignition switch. On the bottom of the switch there's 5 wires that go under a plastic cap/plate with 3 screws. I remove all this and find the red wire going to the BAT position has broken away from the plastic soldered switch housing.
Took 2 hours to figure out, re drill out the old wires that were soldered into the back and re solder the wire back in. Put the Ignition switch back in and turned it on before I reassembled and it worked just fine. Now mind you when I intially removed the 2 Security bolts that held this Ignition switch in place I just leaned it down and thats where in laid till I installed the Aluminum bracket from the Kit. I was very gentle with this and the wire bundle is also tie wrapped to the bottom of the ignition switch. So with all this being said do yourself a favor and once you get the kit installed try and turn the switch on before you completely reassemble the whole bike. This second round took another 4 hours for 9 hours total on this mod.
Now for the good news. The kit looks great and there's 24 positions on this Shimmy Damper. From reading on line one guy said his Trike was set on position 14. That's where I put mine to start with. I have 4 trips around town on the trike since this was finished and have experienced no low speed wobble at all. So far it seems to be doing what it was designed to do. At Highway speeds the handle bars are now also rock solid to where you can remove your hands and there is no drift. I will continue to play with the setting but so far I am happy I bought this item. If anyone decides to buy one and wants to chat about it before you rip into it you can pm me and I will give you my phone number. I can give you a run down on the phone how I did the install which may help out and give you some incite.
Cheers, Jim
