RPS Hawk Unstable?

[EA]

It is a cheap bike. With cheap parts. With no real quality control or engineering. They are a great learning bike but I got rid of mine asap and got a real jap bike. The difference between the 2 is insane.

That said, on the 50/50 tirea my jap bike would do 80 on the road no prob.
With the 80/20 tires it is a little wonky at speed on the road. So I would suggest a tire upgrade.

Changing the fork oil can help as well.

[jcalis]

I would also check for proper chain slack. The one issue I have with the hawk is the flexy swingarm and rubber swingarm bushings. You can feel it move especially when riding it back to back with another similar sized bike in the same riding conditions. The back end does move around a little. I will be doing the swingarm and shock upgrade if I end up keeping the bike long term. The rest of the bike is not too bad for the money

[Baby Huey]

If nothing else works try lowering the front forks a little in the trees. Mine was really squirrely, and I had tried everything suggested and nothing else worked, but as soon as I lowered the forks an inch the bike tracked like my old Honda did.

[stewbrash]

Just going back to tire pressure, 32 and 40 seem really high for knobby or knobbyesh (new word) tires. I have always ran 20 lbs. in both f/r from my Honda Thumper days and I recall Motocheez, saying on that "Raven" video he always runs 18 lbs. ...so what's the story? At 20 lbs. my bike feels just dandy!

[TxTaoRider]

I've been doing allot more off roading lately and run my DOT knobbys about 16lbs, and forget and ride it on the road like that and they seem just fine. However if I'm not an idiot, and I remember, I usually run about 25-30lbs.

When I first got mine I think the manual said like 32/35 lbs, and it rode pretty harsh.

[J4Fun]

My new Hawk dlx manual says 32 front and 40 back. The problem is on the side of both tires is a 32 max inflation pressure. Just thinking we may not want to go over what the tire says on the sidewall. Just a thought

[bogieboy]

When i ran knobbies on my roketa or even on my kawi KE100 i never went past 28psi in either tire... if it was up padt that it would feel sketchy as heck and the front and back would get real squirrelly and lock onto any small cracks in the road, dragging me all over the place...

Even now with street tire on my roketa with the supermoto conversion i am running 28 front and rear with no issues...

[Boatguy]

What about the rear axle?

Are you sure it’s perfectly lined up from any chain tightening adjustments or from original assembly?

That can make things pretty drifty

[Wisemanimal]

I'm old enough to recall the same crap being said about the Jap bikes when they first started being imported to America. Guess what? The bikes were fine, it was the perceptions of the buying public being stoked by domestic and European manufacturers to protect the market share. How'd that work out? Guess which is now the most popular brand in America? Honda.

[Baby Huey]

I know that this is an old post but I have found that lowering the front forks about an inch made my Hawk much more stable.
Maybe made the forks stiffer?

[Ol,fart]

My hawk did the same thing,all over the road. It would follow the drizzle lines almost change lanes for no reason. The tires are like the old 8ply truck tires completely uncontrollable for about 700miles . At 2k its a completely different bike. I started to buy tires at 200 miles but I'm glad I didn't . You just have to ride it out.