Is my rear wheel straight? Can I trust the marks on the swingarm?

[The Lone Rider]

Ta for everyone who put some info here, bike has felt since yesterday like it wants to turn right at the rear tyre and two minutes on here and found a solution to get the thing lined up.

Pot hole is my guess..

[vifferman]

That is quite remarkable! Quite cheap and fairly easy to manufacture. I might give that a crack just for a laugh. Thanks

Almost makes me wish I didn't have a single-sided swingarm.
Then again, if I did test the VFR's wheel alignment and it was off, I'd be rather pissed of.

[Grub]

Here is the way a racer showed me. I've spent hours and hours trying different methods ... this one is quick, easy and 100% accurate

The trick is to get a card of elastic from the super market and stretch it around both wheels. You need to make it as tight as possible so it holds a straight line. Because the back tyre is wider than the front there is a gap between the elastic. Make sure this is equal on both sides of the front tyre. Any mis-alignment will now show up as a gap between the elastic and the front edge of the rear tyre.

It should look like this

[OutForADuck]

Ouch! Yeah I had a feeling from when I was a biker in my youth that you shouldn't trust those marks without question. Cheers

I completely agree... Don't trust the swing arm marks they are bollocks... go for the string. (Beware the "gap" method though as this allow a margin of error dependent on the back tires size).

NOTE: you only need to do it every so often because once aligned you should just count turns on the adjusters for most chain tensioning exercisers.

[The Lone Rider]

Tried string.. I get the princple but has been a bit tricky with the four pipes and the brake stay rod and all that.

The bike to me felt like it was leaning right at the rear.

Haven't done enough riding at the moment to get a feel for the new adjustments. Might get someone on the CHCH WNR to have a look.