With wheels ON the bike, I take a Sharpie marker and put a few little arrows on the brake rotors for direction of rotation. Its engraved on there already, but kinda hard to see when bike ages and gets dirty. Not quite noticeable to a passerby, but a nice failsafe (for me at least)

 

How do you know which way the spacer is supposed to go? I'm having the same issue with drag on wheel rotation. I took the wheel off to have the tire swapped out at an indy shop. I then reinstalled the wheel and torqued to the specs in the factory service manual. While everything was apart I replaced the brake pads on the bike.

The wheel drags significantly now, and I assumed that it was the brake pads dragging. I did all this three months ago and I can't remember 100% for sure if I kept the spacers on the same side they originally were installed on. I certainly can't remember which side of the spacer is facing inside/outside.

The bike has been sitting on my lift ever since then (I did the work right before deploying out of the country) and I'd like to figure out what to look fore when I return to the states. I have a 2009 FLHTCU (ABS equipped).

Thanks for help!

 

Beveled edge of a spacer usually goes toward the bearing.

 

If your bike is abs equipped, you’ll only have one spacer. The abs sensor acts as the other spacer but must be installed correctly with the wire lead towards the outside of the wheel.

Did you clean your pistons in your calipers before pushing them in to install your new pads? If not, you probably pushed dirty pistons into your calipers and your dust & square seals are causing the drag. Those brembo calipers cannot be rebuild so you need to be very careful when working with them.

Also, you should flush your brake fluid each time you change your pads. Brake fluid is always most dirty at the bottom in the caliper. If you just push the piston in without a flush, your pushing all that crap back towards the top into your master cylinder.

 

Harley spacers, at least for the last 10 Years have two grooves on them and they’re installed with the grooves facing outboard towards the fork or swing arm.

 

Right Side


Left Side with ABS Sensor

These are from my 14 FLHTK (w/ABS)

 

Thanks for the pics. Those are very helpful. I'll have my wife go out to the garage and take a pic & send it to me so I can see which way mine are.


CSMHOG,
I'm pretty sure that I have the ABS sensor installed correctly. I had the FSM out and pulled up a few youtube videos to make sure everything was installed correctly.

I didn't clean the pistons, but they didn't look dirty. I attempted to flush the brake fluid but I didn't do a very good job. There is just a hint of sponginess in the brakes now. Since my bike is in the year range affected by Harley's ABS brake fluid flush recall I was going to have it done at the dealership when I get back.

At this point I'm unclear if the issue is related to the brakes or the wheel bearings/spacer. I planned to pull the caliper off and spin the wheel to get answer. Obviously if the problem goes away with the brakes off then the wheel is fine, but if that didn't solve the problem then it's possible I installed the spacer backwards.

Thanks for the help guys! It'll give me a starting point when I get back to the states.


That's a good piece of knowledge to have. Wish I would have figured that one out earlier.

 

Thanks to everyone who replied to my request! The issue has been resolved. The tire/wheel was installed originally in the wrong direction. I went ahead and disassembled the wheel/tire from the front fork and reassembled in the correct direction. Every bolt was re-torqued to factory specs. Took the bike out for a road test and the amber anti-lock indicator is now off and the front brakes are working properly. Many thanks to you all!

 

 

One last note to those who also experienced the excessive drag when attempting to rotate the front wheel. The reason I experienced this issue of excessive drag was because when I first installed the wheel/tire in the wrong direction, I found out when I removed the Brembo brake caliper on the sensor side (left) I observed metal wear on the inner part of the brake caliper because the rotor was pressed up against the inner area of the brake caliper once the axle nut and cap nuts were torqued. Fortunately, there was no evidence of damage to the rotor or brake pads.