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I've seen these as after market parts; either side of $400 installed on the handle bars, centered between the grips.

Please forgive my ignorance , but are these mainly for sport bikes, as opposed to cuisers...?

...and is dropping that much coin worth the return on performance? (I'm very willing to spend when it comes to safety/performance)

What exactly do they do?...calm down a good tank slapper?

I'm pretty sure that steering dampers make it less likely that your bike will go into a wobble.

The short answer is that the steeper rake on a sportbike allows the sportbike to drop into a corner with a twicth of the wrist ... but on a high powered straight, this (Inherently unstable) setup causes the bike's front end to wobble. A steering damper calms down this tendancy. A steering damper will NOT prevent a severe tankslapper caused by serious rider error.

Cruisers have a longer rake - they are inherently more stable than sportbikes. You could leave your hands off the handlebars of a cruiser with a raked out front end, and it would remain travelling in a straight line. (Indian Larry used to even stand on the seat of his choppers and "surf.") Of course, the downside to a raked out front end is that the bike doesn't drop into the corners... many choppers even require you to muscle the thing into a corner.

Standard bikes (and many cruisers for that matter) have a nice middle ground rake on the front end, so a steering damper on them is really an unnecessary piece of equipment.

Like Tech said, it's most for the straights while on a sportsbike. And even then, it's for when you're going REALLY fast, and accelerating REALLY hard. For normal riding, it's mostly a "look at how cool the toys I put on my bike are," kind of thing. For taking your bike to the race track, it might not be a bad idea.

Supposedly the stock 2004 zx-10r had this problem too, which is why they added a factory damper for the second year of its existance.

the ZX-6R had the same problem. Was known for getting the shakes coming out of turns. They have fitted a damper and new swingarm (taken off the ZX-6RR) for '06.

If you plan on doing any canyon carving or track riding a steering damper is a good idea. You dont notice it until it works, but when it works it can help prevent a minor shake from turning into a tank slapper.

I had to install one on my RD-400 and it's a great add-on. High speed wobble vanished and the bike was alot more stable on bridge spans with steel grates.

P.S. When you have it installed have your wheels trued/balanced. You don't want to add a device that may also mask other problems.

WOOT! i just found out that a steering damper came stock w/ my bike as it was pointed out to me by a person i rode w/ yesterday.

this is good news.