I am having problems adjusting the fall away on my fatboy. In one direction it only takes about an inch or so till the steering falls away, but in the other direction it is at least 4 or 5 inches. I removed the clutch cable, but all of the other cables are still there...throttle and front brake line. I think these other cables are causing the way off fall off point. It appears to me that it would be easier to remove the handle bars and rest them on the tank than it would be to undo the throttle cables and brake line. Has anyone tried doing it this way or am I missing something completely when trying to do this adjustment?

 

Lots of threads on fall away in here, but IMO its a pretty useless method of measuring steering tension. Too many variables involved. Brake line, throttle cables, wiring harness, wight of brake rotor etc all affect how the wheel turns. There is also no quantitative way of measuring exactly how much pressure is involved in "tapping" the wheel to find the fall away point.

Personally, I tighten until the front end is snug but still turns freely, and take it for a ride. If there is no looseness, clunking or binding in the front end, then it's good to go. It's a very important part to get right, so perform this maintenance any way that you feel most comfortable with the results.

 

if your bike is single front disc that will happen. cuz of the weight distribution of the caliper/rotor, the right side when facing the bike. it's not a big deal.

if you are using the correct set up you have some sort of reference pointer pointed at the tire and some tape across the fender or tire to mark your fall away. the center of the fall away will not be straight ahead in most cases with a single rotor bike...meaning that the wheel will be turned. facing the bike, the wheel will be pointed left counter acting the weight of the caliper and rotor.

so because you said it falls away within 1" one way (probably while tapping it towards the rotor side) and 5" the other way...face the wheel towards the side with the farther fall away distance and use that as your center...so it'll fall away 3" one way and 3" the other way, like i said, the wheel wont be pointed straight ahead at this point.

if any of that makes sense.

also, tapping is just that, tapping, to the point of where you feel like its about to fall then really really small taps. you'd be surprised how big of a fall away you can get if you learn to tap really lightly, which is the way it's supposed to be done.

some tips:

just clutch cable needs to be removed. dont worry about the other stuff.

bike must also be level.

once the wheel falls away, cycle the steering a few times left to right to reset the bearings. bring it back to your found center, and tap the other way. keep doing that process and loosening and tightening as necessary to get the correct fall away.

hope you can make sense of all that.

 

Is the procedure right by torquing the nut first to 80 ft-lbs, then adjusting the adjuster nut on the FX models anyone? The FL's have the same pinch bolt setup as found on the XL's which I prefer. Gotta do this sooon - got mainly high speed wobble. Low speed wobble pronounced with no hands on bars.

 

There are mechanical differences among the different Harley families as to how you take out the slop in your neck bearings. The general idea is that you need to take all the slop out of the steering and have a little "drag" at the midway point so the bike has no shake or wobble.

I would agree with other posters that "fall away" is just a general idea to compare how tight your own setting is and not very usefull other than to tell you you are tighter or looser after an adjustment.

My "book" setting of one to two inches of friction was way too sloppy in my case and I am now closer to drag friction for five inches as I gently push the forks from side to side with the wheel off the ground. The bike returns to center nicely, steers with no binding and has zero shake or wobble. It feels like a rock.

My bike has three components that have to be fooled with to change how tight the neck bearings are: It has pinch bolts that lock the fork legs to the triple tree. It has a turnable adjustment "wheel" nut with coggs sticking out. It has a locking nut on top of the stem to take out the slack and lock the adjustments in place.

It is very important in my case to loosen the pinch bolts, loosen the stem nut after bending off the locker tab, and then tap the adjuster cogger wheel clockwise to take out slop.

Then you tighten the top stem nut and lock the tab to hold it in place. And AFTER you let the bike down off the jacks you then tighten down the pinch bolts LAST.

My Harley manual was sortof murky about the order and it is CRITICAL. If you tighten the pinch bolts first and then tighten the stem you will bend the crap out of the triple tree and not really adjust dooky.

I might add that only by riding the bike and looking for shake to disappear (mine had it bad at 45mph) the answer is not in a book. You just keep tightening until all shake is gone and you like it. You might want to test at higher and higher top speeds to be sure you didn't go too tight and cause it to weave from being locked down too tight.

So what I am suggesting is that you have to test drive the bike to know doodely. Fall away is just a way of comparing how much drag it took to have the handling the way you liked it.

I hope that was helpful. Setting the neck perfectly changes the whole way the bike feels. It is a fun to blast up to 80 and shut off the gas and experience not a trace of shake or wobble. What a difference.

 

Been very interested in this adjustment and how to do it, My FLSTN has a bad wooble at about 70 MPH especially in turns and banks. Anybody have any links or good web based info on "how to" adjust Fall away and such. Don't want to spend the $40 on the Service Manual if I don't. Thanks...

 

Here's a 128,000 links I found just by doing a Google Search on adjusting the neck bearings on a Harley...

just read a little and pick the one U like best.

Ur might try it (Google, that is) the next time U have a question about Anything...

https://www.google.com/search?source...=Google+Search






.

 

Lots of really good posts in this thread. In my opinion (spouse in the bearing business, and lots of fabrication and bearing setup experience myself), "fallaway" is a really poor substitute for measuring play, either with conventional things like dial indicators, or test riding.

I understand that service departments can't always put the time into test riding, to know as much as the owner does. And service departments don't always contain the best and the brightest.
That's why this thread is unusually good.

 

Everybody likes a lil ***, Nobody likes a Smart ***..
Thanks for Nothing..

 

When I did mine I loosened the pinch bolts and torqued her down to 65lbs and tighten'd the pinch bolts back up.

Read that in a thread somewhere. Worked for me.



I think his point was that there are a billion ways to do it. Research it out and you'll see. It can be very confusing.