Personally I'd take it to a good indy and have them check it out.

 

What will you do after spending all this money and time without a definite diagnosis, and the wheel still bounces?
At least you will own more tools........

 

When building bicycles and working on wheels, I would check for minute inner tube leaks in a pail of water. Often found at seams or base of schrader.
Upon reassembly I coat the dry inner tube with some dry corn starch.
The corn starch would allow the tube to shift and seat correctly against the tire while inflating.
Saved me a lot of aggravation.

 

Thanks. That's a good idea.

 

I balanced the front wheel and came up with basically the same amount of weights in the same locations as the dealership had - 4 oz. 1/4 oz was added to basically get it as perfect as possible but Im still getting wheel bounce. Slightly less though. It mostly happens around 40 mph.

I put the original spacer back in the wheel and the measurements on each side are much closer to the wheel being centered.

The fork oil was changed using 10.2 oz which is the spec for wet in the sm. Went about 10 wt heavier than spec as its what I had available.

When I spun the wheel on the truing machine it was basically true. Except there was one spot where it looked like someone mauled it with a spoon back in the day. Id say it was about 1/8 to 1/16 out of alignment. The sm gives 3/32 as the requirement. If it was 4/32 do you think it would cause any bounce? I don't have a runout gauge, but the tire looks good and true as it is basically new. When spinning the tire's edge next to the truing stand's pointer it runs evenly around the tire.

One other thing I noticed was the bottom of the forks and whole wheel assembly vibrates in tune with the motor when sitting at an idle. I mean, it literally throbs and shakes up and down about one quarter of an inch when at a stop sign or red light. Is this normal?

I guess the next step is to balance the rear tire? I probably should open them up and check the tubes, but I was hoping to trust they were ok. Any suggestions you have i would appreciate hearing.

One last thing. When I'm riding the bike and look down at the hub assembly, it's turning in an uneven manner like a rim that is not true would do. It bobs in and out another 1/4 inch and I was wondering if some of these things are just "harley" things. My frame of reference are Japanese or German bikes that I would never expect something like that on. But this is the first harley I ever owned and it's an older one at that so I was wondering if it was normal. Thanks

 

I'd like to see a video of that front wheel in your truing stand with the indicator on the rim and a profile view of the whole thing while spinning..

 

Installed a new rear tire being out of round, it started bouncing, JP Cycles sent another tire. Easy to check redneck style by spinning and something sitting upright like a paint can.

One of my jobs at a Navistar dealership is to locate vibrations on new vehicles with documentation sending reports to Navistar. .004 is common on lateral runouts without effecting steering axle or rear axles, usually comes down to roundness of the tires and found .007-.008 is all it takes on the same side of a tandem axle to rock your world going down the interstate.

Like Hotrod said a broken belt is a invisible killer on tires, vehicle can show perfect on the laser alignment system, lateral and roundness ok and even balance ok but when knowing all of these items are right and a driveability issue is present with a consistent steering pull to left or right, it's a broken belt but not limited to a bounce from tire expansion due to a broken belt.

 

Unless I missed it, How old is the tire?

 

I'm fairly sure he is talking about the rim not the tire.

 

The tire is from 12/17, but only has about 50 miles on it. Yes, I was talking about there being a spot on the rim that was bent outward. Maybe they hit a rock or something like that?

I appreciate all of the suggestions to anyone who has chimed in. I ordered a dial indicator with a magnetic base on Amazon. Should be here in about 10 days as I don't have Prime. Was reading another thread from someone who had a similar problem and he said he dialed both planes of the rim to zero runout and still had the problem. He then, "dismounted the tire and readjusted the wheel runout from the inside (Like I should have done in the first place). BIG difference! Using the bead surface, it started out with about .040 of runout. Because of the rough surface I was only able to get it within about .010 again. I knew better than to expect the wheels to be of uniform thickness, but I never expected them to be THAT far off! I remounted and rebalanced the tire and now I have no perceptible out-of-balance feeling at all, but when I look at the wheel while going down the road it looks like it has all kinds of wobble to it! Unbelievable. I don't know who makes HD's wheels, but they're pretty bad.

So just a word to the wise to you others out there with stock laced wheels; don't think for a minute that you can adjust the runout using any surface other than the tire bead surface. I KNEW better than that, but I did it anyway and suffered for a year with that stupid decision."

So here is the plan. I'm going to check the runout where the bead of the tire sits next to the rim, the runout of the rim itself and the top of the tire. Also going to check the runout of the brake rotor as that can cause wobble. If it's not any of those then the inner tube is coming out to check it's not twisted or something and maybe get the rim straightened and a new tire. Now I'm just curious about that throbbing.. Thanks for all of the suggestions. They've helped a lot..