-
All good advice, thanks. It's less than 2" but not by much. Bars are pretty wide but stem is long as was the only one I had to hand. Will source a stubby stem asap. The steering is pretty responsive, it's not sluggish to turn.
It's the loss of control at that exponential point of no return when the rod swings and changes the steering dynamics. As it swings it is applying extra sharp turning hence the wobble, flop, and slam, and I can't correct it since the effective steering angles change. I'll see how things go tomorrow with the damper + bungee. Even static, on the stand, the rod was noticeably more stable so I hope that if it is free to move fore/aft but not lateral that could be the ticket.
That bike shop went bad, after a new mechanic started the atmosphere changed so I stopped helping out in there. In fact, it's so bad now that I stopped spending my coin in there whenever possible.
What size front wheel/tyre have you got - looks about 2"? You could try a smaller tyre to drop the front end and thus reduce the trail and increase head angle a little bit. And yeah, fit the widest bars and shortest stem you can find (that bike place you work at?)