If the tires spin without significant runout on a lift, I'd probably try the Ride-On sealant/balancing compound next. Don't see any downside to trying it, and it might take care of dynamic or side-to-side imbalance, which wouldn't necessarily show up on a conventional motorcycle tire balancer.

 

If the front end is all good I guess it's possible it could be the rear tire. Check the rear alignment if you haven't already. Are you getting a bounce or just a wobble? Slow swaying wobble or a fast shuttering wobble?

I know the frustration you're going through. I was at my wits end trying to figure out mine when it was happening, and what made it much worse was that I was on a 2600 mile road trip. Finally got it figured out 400 miles before I got back home.

 

One last ditch try to try to use them, is to buy some Ride On.
It is purported that this will balance your tires. FWIW.
What else you got to lose?

 

Since it started with the tires. Replace the rear and front with Dunlops and have them dynamic balanced with fixed weights. Beads only dampen and truly do not balance. The real reason people think they work is your Harley rims are already balanced and quality tire are very close these days. They are much stiffer. The Softail only aligns the rear to the engine so the belt tracks straight and also to the swingarm bearings but the later is +/- 1/32, so that is secondary.

I am going to assume if someone replaced wheel bearings, they bottomed correct side (brake rotor side) and of course, the inner spacer positions other side.


Roll bike fwd in neutral. What side of the rear pulley is belt on? Do the rear adjuster look close on the rear on both sides. Truly, you measure with a caliper to the milled flat on the swing arm on the lock nut since that is what those cuts are for. They are exactly correct to swing arm bearings. I put a elastic lock nut equally from the end of the adjuster since it makes it easy to use a caliper.

Is the drive belt correct at 10lb with you laying across seat. Softail is checked loaded unlike cruiser.

Get you a new tire air pressure gage and set air pressure to what is in owners manual. My son had a gage that somehow was off almost 10 lbs and what amazed me is it was not a cheap one.

Raise the front and check the fall away to see how close it is. From my experience, too tight is worst then to loose on Softails at highway speeds. I do not drive faster then that.

 

Dude, you should've kept going to Daytona, burned the damn tire off at the first biker bar you seen, THEN traded it in. Keep it simple.

 

No, the Softail basically alignes the rear wheel to the swingarm and frame.
Dynas are a little different, in that the swingarm is mounted to the engine/transmission assembly, rather than directly to the frame. So that's where engine alignment comes into major play.

 

The engine is solid mounted to the frame. We are saying the same thing. If you look at the tolerance of +/- 1/32, it refers to the frame in connection to the centerline of the swing arm bearing which is to the frame.

However, that belt tracking needs to be closer then 1/32 in my opinion. That is why I use a dial caliper and get it withing .001 of an inch to those milled flats.

When I push my bike fwd, the belt tracks just barely to the side. I can kick the adjuster just a few thousands of an inch the other way and it will ride the belt over to the other side.

You are right, the Dyna and big cruisers have the swing arm hanging off transmission since engine, transmission and swingarm are all mounted to the frame in rubber. They also basically have a track bar to control wag.

 

the bike has been aligned from front to back, that was done on one of my trips back to the shop. the wobble i am getting is a fast, shaking feeling that seems to come up from the front tire, but, even if i dont have a wobble in the front the bike is still difficult to keep in the middle of a lane. it's like i have to try to keep it riding straight. and on turns even at 50 mph my bike almost feels like it's about to slip out from under me. it just feels like i have no grip on the road. i read another article that talked about the composition of the tire being bad and it getting soft when heated up (aka riding at high speed), which caused a wobble. that's where my gut is right now that i have the same problem, it's just hard to believe that i got 2 bad michelin tires...the front tire was replaced for free because my mechanic and even his tire supplier found flat spots in it and deemed it no good

 

That's weird. Hard to imagine you got two bad sets of tires but I suppose it's possible, especially since you've gone through everything else. Are you going to go back with the Dunlops or are you you going to try something else?

 

i would hate to pay for 2 brand new tires when possibly a new michelin back tire would fix my issue. not too mention the reviews on those commanders are great. since money is an issue, i'm gonna go with the michelin and a whole lot of praying