Regular steering head bearing adjustment

I was wondering how often others need to do this. Mine seems to chatter after only a few months. I remember when I replaced the bearing the lower triple tree was pressed on and I am concerned that it just slips down further, but maybe it is just normal bearing wear?

I was surprised the last time I had the bike in for service at a local mechanic's (not BMW dealership). I had put on less than 10,000 km since the last steering head bearing adjustment. I had asked the mechanic to look at the steering because I felt the bike was twitchy in corners. I also thought that there was a clicking in the head with the front brake applied and rocking the bike back and forth. Sure enough, the mechanic had to readjust the ring by 3/4 of a turn (too loose). Maybe this is a normal adjustment but not attributed to wear or settling of the bearing races.

Yes, this is how it will act. I will notice the clicking first, after a while the bike will begin to weave, i.e. on a straight stretch it will begin to fall or steer itself to one side then back again slowly. This is combined with a poor steering feel in corners. As it gets worse, I have to remind myself I'm not losing my touch even though it feels like I only learned to take a corner yesterday.

So you say you had only 10,000km since the last adjustment? This would take me less than 6 months. The problem does start earlier but I try to ignore it for a while. I can only get a few good weeks of perfect operation after an adjustment.

We all sneer at Harley Davidson and often for good reason, lol, but I will tell you they have a very reliable way to set the pre-load on steering head bearings. Naturally Harley does not call it this, they call it setting the "fall away" and I will tell you why.

To set the steering head preload the mechanical work is no different than it is on our bike, suspending the front tire, loosening the upper triple clamp fork pinch bolts, clearning away any guages and bars blocking access to the stem nut then loosening that too. Here is where it gets interesting.
Harley measures how loose or tight the steering head bearings are by measuring how far from center you have to displace the front wheel to each side before the wheel falls to full lock by the force of gravity. Harley has an elaborate way of marking the front fender with tape and using a chair with a ruler placed at the front tire to measure the amount of "fall away directly" In time you will get a feel for what is tight and what is not.
The idea is to have a the front tire centered up perfectly. Place a chair with a ruler perpendicular to the tire. Now start to nudge the front tire off center. You should move it at least 2 inches (ok, HD isn't metric yet, except for the V-Rod and that isn't a "real" Harley don't you know, but I digress) so make that 50 mm, before the tire fall the rest of the way to full lock on it's own. It should not require you to push it more than four inches, 100 mm before it falls away of it's own weight.
To make this measurement accurate, HD requires the weight of the handlebars and guages to be in place, so after you remove these to access the top nut, you have to set them in place, no need to fasten them, so you get the full weight of them on the triple clamp.
Tighten or loosen the adjuster nut as necessary to put the fall away between 2 and 4 inches. This is the only guess free way I have seen yet for setting steering head bearing preload.
Btw, make sure you have adequate grease on the bearings or you are spinning your wheels.