I have a knocking in a 98 wideglide 80" evo. Does anyone know what all need to do to replace the crank pin and any idea of cost. Indy says over a thousand just off the top of his head. Can I save money and do this myself. I know I have to completely tear down. Is there anything special I need to know? Thanks for any help.

 

How many miles on your ride??? It seems strange that a crank pin would be bad on a '98, but not impossible. Doing a crank pin requires some specialized tools and some practice. Definetly not a job for the usual "home Wrench".

 

I'm a firm believer in doing everything myself. But theres not a snowballs chance I would do a crankpin job. Thats tearing the motor down as absolutely far apart as it can come. Requires machine work and of course specialized tools. If I was on the cheap, I'd yank the motor myself to at least save that labor cost and give the complete motor to a guy you believed wouldn't screw you over. Then expect a $1,500 - $1,800 bill when its all said and done. Remember now, Ive never seen or heard your bike. I'm just guessing.

 

I lost my crank pin @ 38,000, the sound goes away under a piston load gets louder when the piston load lets up. While at a cruise, you can hear every rotation of that rod like a small ballpeen hammer rapping on the bottom of the fuel tank.
Difficult job for a novice mechanic, special tooling as mentioned. I looked at it as if I was going to split the cases, a new S&S 4 5/8 stroker was going in and that is still a challenge for a novice. The only thing to look at is if it is a crankpin failure, metal has already started making its way thru the oil system so you might have more hidden expenses.
I ended up parts around $1500 with basically a new 89" motor because metal debris did alot of damage, fortunatly I was able to do the labor myself.

You will know if it a crankpin problem by my first paragraph, could be piston getting loose if high miles or a piston scuffed, they get louder when heating up

 

Here's what know of it. It's a friends bike and he's low on the cash so I am trying to help.
The bike has has around 66,000 miles on it. Mild motor work(cams). It sounded like it was something hitting in the front cyl more but sometimes I would think it was the rear also. Sounds like someone hitting hollow aluminum. You can hear it at idle and is louder and faster when you are riding.

 

Yep, it definetly sounds like that engine needs some work. You could remove it take off the cylinders, nose cone, cams lifters, and oil pump. Then just give the crank case, pistons and crank to the shop. That way he could also send it out and have it re-balanced which should remove some vibration.

 

Do you know if the stock cam bearing was changed to a torrington when the cam was changed out ?

 

The cam work was done a long time ago. Before he got the bike.

 

When the crank pin flaked off in my 84 Iron Head Sportster, the mechanic at the local HD said he could not tell for sure what was wrong until he pulled the cylinders off. That is one thing you could do. If you pull the cylinders, and have play in the rod bearings, you will know you have a bearing/crank pin problem for sure. Then you could decide what to do from there. Kind of hard to tell some times. It could be a loose wrist pin, or a crankcase bearing. Wristpin would be more of a rap noise, and a crank bearing would be more of a thump.

 

I don't know the extent of the indys work, but maybe a second opinion might be in order. If you're going that far into the motor, maybe other mods might want to be done at the same time. If left unrepaired whats the risk of damage to the rest of the motor? Maybe others can speak to this, I'm not qualified.