Hi,I bought a chrome pair of wheels on ebay for my 07 fatboy,yesterday we pulled out the front wheel bearings from the old original wheels and fitted them to the new chrome wheels,the first thing i noticed was that when i drove the first bearing home the sleeve was about a half inch above the seat of the oposite bearing,could this be normal?is there a differance in the 07 and 08 wheels?could the new wheel be for an 08?the thing I'm afraid of is if i move the bearings to suit the brake etc and fit it could the wheel move on the bearings on hard cornering as they're not a really tight fit,what do you guys think as I am worried why this is as the original wheel looks the same as the new one,I havent pulled the bearings out again yet?

 

I would think it needs to be a tight fit.

 

they are different. there is many threads about the offset front tire on the 07 and harley changed the size of the front axial and the bearings and fixed the offset on the 08. i was told if you use the bearing set fron the 07 the rims from 08 should be the same. the bearings that come on the 08 rims will not work with 07 forks.

 

You could switch out your lowers to 08 chrome lowers and get rid of the offset and have chrome unless you have already switched them. There is a member here that switched his 07 fatboy front end with an 08 and put on 08 wheels and has had no issues with it and actually has better tire wear from it. 1coastie is his member name. He emailed me the details on what he did, I am just waiting on the money for some fat spoke wheels so I can change mine out.

 

Hey TK353,would you do me a favour,would you put a calipers on the bearing on the brake side from the circle the rotor sits into and from the rotor and let me no both measurements in millimitres,could you do the other side aswell,it looks like the bearing is sitting against the wheel housing on the brake side which is ok but it sits against nothing on the other side,my fear is that if anything ever happaned that either bearing came loose the wheel could actually slide on the bearings,I wouldnt like that to happen,i want to machine a spscer to put in to the non brake side to prevent this,I hope I'm making sense to you?
John

 

thats one tool i dont have. did you use all your bearings and spacers from the 07? if not you will need to change the lowers and the axial. maybe you have the spacer on the wrong side. the bearing spacer should be tight against the bearing

 

Never, ever reuse bearings. Always replace

 

+1, I would use new bearings

 

+2. They're cheap, and your life is riding on them.

 

i think the point was if he was using the 07 or the 08 bearings as to the fit