First post--apologies if I break any community norms. I usually lurk a while before ever posting to a new forum but I've got a serious WTF with my new-ish to me bike.

I bought my first motorcycle ('09 XL1200C) last July with ~18.5K miles on it. Within two weeks of making that purchase a loud, intermittent clunk/rattle developed in the front wheel when rolling. Dealer said it was wheel bearings and replaced them for me. The bike rode great for the rest of the season and for the few rides I was able to sneak in this spring.

Last week I returned it to the dealer to do the 5K maintenance. I also had new tires put on because the old ones had some shady looking sidewalls and not enough tread to make it through the summer. I don't make it 150 miles after the service before the clunk and wobble return. While it hasn't been officially diagnosed, the sound and behavior are exactly like before.

So the WTF portion of my post: What would cause presumably new bearings to go out after only 5K miles? What is the likelihood that the front wheel was improperly mounted back on the bike by the dealer last week? Are front wheel bearings an issue for the XL1200C normally?

I haven't found any evidence of a systemic issue with 09 XL1200C bearings, but there is a lot of noise in the search results. I have a suspicion that the shop did shoddy work but I'm new enough to motorcycles to not feel 100% confident in this. I'm just trying to get a measure of how skeptical I should be when it comes to the bill for this operation.

 

Sounds like dealer error to me, all things being equal.

 

Welcome to the forum BTW.

 

Very unlikely that bearings would go out in the miles you stated first, let alone after only a few miles.

Something else seems wrong. You describe "loud, intermittent clunk/rattle". Bad bearings typically won't be intermittent.

Your best bet is to start to learn to do some of these basic items and test the bearings yourself.

Is the front wheel spoked? Is the wheel true? How about the rotor? Any chance the bike's been in an accident? I'd have it inspected by a 3rd party.

With regard to the bearing - it can be misaligned but takes a special kind of screw up.

What kind of bearings were used to replace?

 

I know this might sound odd but check the front bolt on your fuel tank that attaches it to the frame. I had mine loosen up and it made some loud clunks and rattles. Ymmv.

 

check your bar clap to triple tree bolts as well

 

In reverse order:

Tank is solid and the sound is definitely in the wheel. I can feel it through the bars.

Intermittent is probably the wrong word. It's not a constant noise like a screech or whine but when the bike is in motion it definitely has a persistent clunk/rattle that can be felt. The clunks are more pronounced when turning. If this was Car Talk this is the part where I'd try to mimic the sound and then everyone laughs.

Agreed. I'm just concerned that the HD shop screwed something up when they replaced the tire. And that their generous offer of throwing in two 5K maintenance services at the time of purchase will turn out to be a sucking wallet wound.

Yes. Reported as true when they replaced the tire. I would have thought they'd have checked the rotor/brakes as part of the 5K maintenance but that's something to look at when I get home. I haven't laid it down and it was represented as accident free when they sold it to me.

I'm also a pedal cyclist and familiar with maintaining spoked wheels. While the spokes on this wheel aren't all the same frequency when struck, they're reasonably close and there aren't any broken ones.

It's the local HD dealer's shop. I'd hope they use OEM parts.

Thanks! This seems like a great forum.

 

It's easy to wreck a bearing installing it. A tire can cause a wobble, but I've never heard of one making a clunk noise. This is one of those things when it's real handy to have a motorcyle jack, be nice if you could spin the wheel and see that it does or doesn't wobble, or have any grinding or gritty noises, and spins without a lot of resistance. Just sitting there on the ground, they're difficult to diagnose. Have you called the dealer? He might want to check it out and fix it, he shouldn't want to risk a liability lawsuit.

 

For 2009 (your bike), Harley introduced new wheel bearings which turned out to be (Chinese) garbage. I don't recall what HD did to finally resolve the issue, change vendor maybe, but they issued a Service Bulletin on it and I haven't heard of many wheel bearing issues lately. I know that many people were replacing the crappy HD bearings with a name brand, like All-*****.

Maybe your dealer still had the old bearings in stock?

You can read more here from an old forum thread.

 

they just replaced them with the metal sealed bearings. 9276B

they seem to be fine on my sporty but... that thing has seen maybe 400 miles since the wheels went on.