When riding its hard to turn the handlebars left/right but literally only for a few mm. You can imagine how sketchy it gets sometimes due to the effort to take to get past the sticky point to it all of a sudden being loose.

My first thought is steering damper, but the thing is, when I pull over somewhere and then turn the bars lock to lock they turn freely so could it be the headstock bearings that are the problem? There doesn't seem to be any free play though.

I'd remove the damper and see if it acts the same at speed.


Check that your cables aren't getting snagged on anything, then inspect the head stock bearings.