08 96" XBones - 8.3K miles - pictured below are the rear wheel bearings I removed/replaced this last Saturday. I only put 10 miles on her tonight, but there was no decel wobble.

 

the previous owner had this license plate bracket mounted on the axle. I had a bitch of a time removing the C clip as they hadn't adjusted the washer thickness for the additional bracket width. They over-torqued the axle nut to get the clip in, instead of adjusting the washer thickness.<p>but now she turns like butter and is torqued to 105 ft/lbs.

 

Nice find and repair!! Doesn't it just **** you off when someone doesn't take the time to do the job right the first time!!

 

holy crap man.. I am glad you are ok..

I have the very same license plate bracket.. when confronted with the same issue I simply got rid of the washer, that license bracket is quite thick and robust.. I used it as the washer instead.. 15k miles with no issues.. man.. proper torque is so important !!.. too much torque and the pressure will eventually crush the bearings.
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Kudos sir. Because the beauty of the Softails is that they DON'T have the Dyna death wobble!!! Or shouldn't... at least.

 

Wow, those bearing are trashed. Glad you found the issue and corrected it.

 

Dynas are fine too, unless something's gone wrong. There is more to go wrong on a Dyna though, like rubber engine mounts that can go bad, or vertical wheel alignment (adjustable) that can be off, so the rear wheel is tilted relative to the front.

 

...simple things someone else buggered up. You found it, excellent.

 

Wow, something so small and stupid. I see how it could be overlooked. Glad you found it!

 

I'm not convinced that the bearing failure is related to the plate mount - I say this because my 08 NT front and rear bearings were almost the same at 9k miles.

What you're seeing is the results of HD using a bad batch of cheap Chinese bearings.

I have 23k miles now and each time I've had the wheels off I've checked and found the All ***** bearings in good condition.