Pulled mine out for the first time tonight. Have to say I'm impressed. 26k miles and they look like new.

My question is if I need to check the clearance on these. The bearings look new, the races look new, there was both black and blue grease on them so I'm thinking someone has been in there before. The spacer doesn't have any mushrooming or other signs of wear.

How often, if ever, do you check the endplay on yours?

 

I have never checked the end play on the bearings on my `89 Softail, over 140,000 miles and they look fine.

 

Once it's been shimmed properly it should never change. .002"-.006" is the norm...

 

I checked mine, front was .005 and the rear was .006. I packed them and went on my way. Its a pretty simple check using a magnetic base dial indicator. Mike

 

Once you have the endplay set there is no reason to check it again until you change the races.

If you keep your bearings greased then there will be no reason to change the races.

 

Thanks, all.

This setup really impressed me. I've never had a bike with this type bearings before. I like it. No reason they shouldn't pretty much last forever.

 

Grease them when you change tires and they WILL pretty much last forever, unlike the "sealed" bearings the MoCo uses nowadays. On my bike, one set was replaced at 128,000 miles. The other wheel was still running the original bearings at 195,000 miles and was replaced only because I built a new set of wheels on NOS hubs.


It's things like this that keep me running my "old" bike.

 

I glance at threads here and there in the "General" section where guys are complaining about the new wheel bearings. Apparently they are made from paper mache or oatmeal or something.

I wonder how the MoCo set the bearings on our old bikes. Did they have a guy who's job it was to individually hand-clearance each wheel? Very time-consuming stuff. I can see from a manufacturing perspective how just pressing in a sealed bearing would save a lot of time and money. Even if they didn't hand-clearance each wheel (and just relied on keeping the parts' tolerance in spec) assembling the old style wheel would take quite a bit longer than the new style.

But from an engineering and long term durability perspective, I love these tapered roller bearings.

 

I think the problem is that the Chinese are packing the sealed bearings with Skippy "chunk style" instead of grease.


As far as setup, as I recall, the parts book had something like three different lengths of spacers that were designed to get the bearing clearance in the "ballpark". Then, too, back then, the tolerance for clearance was much looser. I think my old service manual calls for something like ".004 to .011" clearance. The tighter spec came along sometime after '94 IIRC. I'm at work, so I can't check for sure.

 

Not sure if the FSM was updated, but mine says 2 to 6 thou.