why do you want soggy steering? :-P
Please explain Lester, I have used them since the late 70's, never had "soggy steering".. never had a tank slapper with one either ? Most , if not all modern sports bikes since the 1980's have them....
That may be due to the rear suspensions on most modern sport bikes, too.
But, here's a true story, which haunts me still: in 1972 Suzy debuted the waterbike, a 580 lb. 3-cylinder stroker-smoker that was cheap, fast, and reliable. But, it handled like a cow, and quickly became known as the 'water buffalo'. One reason for the poor handling turned out to be in the rear suspension: the pivot mount bolt did not have enough threads cut on it, so even when the bolt was torqued to spec (which was an out-of-the-crate checklist item), it did not tighten the swingarm and frame together. In my shop's customer list was a fellow who bought this as his first-ever bike, and one fine summer day on a wide sweeper at 60 MPH, his almost-new WB broke into a speed wobble/tank slapper. He freaked and jumped off the bike, got run over by the car behind him, and died.
While the fault was Suzuki's, when we got the bike back (I think it had 1600 miles on it) I went over it nut by bolt. I found the swingarm to have side-to-side play if pushed by hand, yet the bolt was tight. I pulled the nut off and discovered the lack of threads, then added a second washer and found it tightened up the whole frame and the bike rode like it had lost 50 lbs., what a difference! But, the owner wasn't helped by this discovery. Suzuki, not 2 weeks later, issued a Service Bulletin to add a second washer to the arms until they could issue new bolts to every bike sold, as they had just discovered the error.
A steering damper would have saved this novice rider's life, at least for the 2 weeks until we would have recalled his bike. This has never left me, and is the reason I still rebuild swingarms at my cost only.
Today's superbikes are not much better than that old Suzuki. I have (secretly) walked up to these bikes in parking lots and done the quick 'grab and feel' swingarm test on these from time to time. Many of them have a one-sided pivot rear subframe-and-axle assembly, which requires absolutely-on-schedule bearing maintenance back there to ensure rigidity. The average owner doesn't do this very well, and it scares me sometimes to see how flexible some of those high-HP bike rears actually are. I have no doubt whatsoever that the steering dampers are there for that reason.
So, adding one to the SOHC4 bikes can't have any down side, IMHO: one thing I have sometimes seen on the aftermarket versions, though, is a too-damped action, which makes the steering feel heavy in slow-speed parking lots and the like. The damping should be light at low-speed movements and high at high-speed movements: it should not feel like it is there unless you snap the bars side-to-side. Most adjustable ones let you set this up, so if you get one, maybe try to get an adjustable type?
If you might be so lucky as to find a scrapped-out CL72 or CL77, grab the steering damper and mounting hardware from it: these bolt straight onto the CB750 and work just fine. While they are not adjustable, they happen to be just right.
