I do agree with the do it yourself bit. I just don't have the tools for this. I also don't have any experience working on the wheels of these bikes so it just makes me nervous. Clearly I don't know what im looking at lol.

 

This turned out kind of long, but I wanted to explain enough you can hopefully understand it.

If the center spacer can move back and forth one or both bearings are installed wrong, not far enough in. I forget offhand which bearing goes in first and bottoms out for a dual disk big twin, but it's in the manual. With that one bottomed out, the other one is supposed to be pressed in until both inner races just touch the spacer. Too much and you pre-load the bearing which will make the ***** ride hard to one side in the races, and it will fail sooner than it should. Not enough (as yours seems to be) and when you tighten the axle nut it will put pressure on the bearing that isn't bottomed out in the wheel and it can work deeper in the wheel, which will let the wheel shift sideways on the axle; that's not good for your brakes not to mention it might handle different than you're used to, and not in a good way.

If the first bearing is bottomed out in the wheel, simple enough to finish pressing the second bearing in with the correct bearing tool. If the first one isn't bottomed out, again simple enough to press it all the way. The problem with that is if the second one was pressed in too far and binds the bearings when the first bottoms out. At this point, that might be hard to tell, you wouldn't necessarily feel a small bind that would cause premature bearing wear. If the first bearing bottoms out and the spacer feels tight, only safe thing to do is pull the second bearing (and most good mechanics will tell you it's not safe to use again after that) and install a new one correctly. I would not trust the mechanic that did this bearing install to fix it, sounds like he's not Harley savy.

Something else I always do with new bearings is pop a plastic seal (tiny flat tip screwdriver inserted under the seal at the inner race and gently pry up, just push back on with a finger) and check the grease and what kind of ball cage (that spaces the ***** evenly). I've seen plastic ball spacers and metal ones so flimsy I could bend them with a finger; both unacceptable to me. A lot of new bearings have a thin bead of some kind of clear looking lube only on one side and I wipe that stuff off and pack about 3/4 full with a premium brand synthetic grease. A properly lubed bearing will seldom fail. I've seen low mileage bearings burned blue from lack of grease. Unfortunately most shop mechanics won't check, it's mostly in the do it yourself realm of maintenance. I won't let anyone else touch my wheels, bearings or tires. If yours was done in a Harley shop, a talk with the service manager might make it right, but unless I saw it done, I wouldn't trust them not to just press one of the bearings in tighter, and that might make it even worse.

 

FYI:

 

Always install the bearing on the primary brake disk side of the wheel first

 

Thanks all for the good info. I'm going to take them to a Harley mechanic I'm acquaintances with and see what his thoughts are and then take them back to the shop.

 

Let us know how it goes, hope this gets put right for you.

 

Thanks. I of course am back at work for a stretch so I'll have to wait until mid week but I'm sure they make it right. They have a good rep here.

I looked at the wheels again after the discussion here. It appears as if they just did not insert the second bearing far enough. I can see how the sleeve and the bearing would have made contact and appear to be installed properly so they stopped pushing it in.

 

If you're interested in the process to install wheel bearings and, particularly, how the bearings are set against the spacer, here's a good video.

 

Don't take offense, but unless that bearing was Grossly mis-installed (for visual analysis) or you had a prior external measurement for a reference, one would not know that second bearing was the bearing in question.

With that said, it would be highly unlikely for the First bearing to be installed "short" (because of the process)



People make this so difficult, when all you have to do is turn the "installers" around (yes, backwards) when "seating" the bearings ... then you don't have to "Creep Up" on the spacer sleeve



.

 

None taken.
I watched the video posted just before you and now have a much better understanding of the process. I looked everywhere for a video showing that exact thing and couldn't find one that laid out the process as that one did. How I didn't not find that one I don't know. Had I found it I would have bought a tool and installed my own bearings.

Any recommendations for what I should make sure this shop does for me to correct this properly? Seeing as how you shouldn't reuse bearings after removing them I'm a little concerned how this will be fixed if it's not as simple as pushing the non abs bearing in more to tighten the gap.