Hello forum. I am a new owner of a crashed 2001 R6. The bike went down easy on the left side and the little fairign damage has been repaired. Problem now is the forks. The handlebars are straight and the wheel is not. When putting a straight edge on the forks they seem to be straight. Looking for some advice on how to rectify this beyond replacing. There is no rash or visible damage to the forks nor the handlebars. Help.
Thanks

Dean

If something is out of alignment you need to loosen everything so it goes back, plus you need to check to make sure the forks aren't tweaked a bit (It doesn't take much torsional force forks are thin walled)

What you want to do is lift the front end off the ground. I use some ratchet straps attached to a joist on my deck, and loop them through the cut-outs on the frame rails. (And people always ask what the holes in the frame by your knees are for)

Any lift the bike and take all the plastic off the front end. Upper fairing, headlights, intake tubes. Then loosen the pinch bolts at the upper and lower trees to forkk leg joints, the pinch bolts at the clip-ons, and the axle. This will take all the tension out of the parts and allow them to go back to normal if they are going to. Tighten everything back up and see if your wheel to bar relation is back to normal.

If that doesn't solve your problem you need to check to make sure your fork legs are straight.

Again lift the front end and strip everything off. Then loosen all the bolts again, take the front fender off, take off the calipers, remove each fork leg with a twisting motion. It'll take some effort if they've never been out. When the top of the leg is just about to come out of the upper clamp check it's relation, do they line-up pretty close or is it out of whack? (I'll get back to the relevance). Once the fork legs are out set the base on the ground and hold it between your feet. Then twist the silver portion around and see if it stays straight or if it has any bend. Any bend replace it. No bend, the problem lies somewhere else.

Back to the alighnment of the fork to the upper triple tree. If there was any misalighnment then you need to correct this. Now is when you loosen the big nut, loosen it just enough that the upper clamp would turn when hit with a rubber mallet. Put the fork legs back in and straighten the upper if you have to. When you hit it, it's going to flop around so I usually turn the bars to the left and lock the ignition and then hit the upper clamp.

Once the alignment is back tighten the big nut back however far you loosened it. I recommend this as a last step because if you under/over tighten the big nut it could have bad effects on your steering.