I had pulled my 1985 Honda CH250 out from storage and began to use it as a regular scoot. Over the course of a few weeks I noticed that my hands would fall asleep while riding. You know, that tingling sensation that comes with sustained handlebar gripping. Ever so often I noticed that when I applied the front brake, the handlebars would move forward. One day, as I sat on the scoot on it’s center stand, I discovered that the steering stem wobbled front to back and sideways. In reviewing the front wheel section in the Honda service manual, I learned that many of Honda’s special tools needed to adjust the steering stem were obsolete. I was able, however, to accomplish the task without special tools. Here’s how:

Note: For crooked handlebars, there is a 1/16” play in the handlebars side-to-side at each right side and left side dead end. You can adjust crooked handlebars by hard turning them to it dead end stop in the direction of the correction wanted to straighten the frontal direction of the fairing. If your bike is tracking to the left, hard turn it to the dead side on the left to straighten it out toward the right.

Randy Pozzi (07/2008)