This is the second time in 5 months that my rear spokes on my 2001 road king classic have come loose. Is ther any body out there that can help, infact I have one broken spoke and the rest are loose,right now you can't even ride the bike because of too much wobble in handle bars, Is there anything I can do ? the rim is total stock.

 

I ride an 01 RKC as well, and have never broken a spoke in 30,000 miles of hard riding (and I weigh in at 300+). I had a 72 Sportster when I was a young pup, and it broke rear spokes like crazy. It pretty much stopped when I quit trying to do wheelies and burn-outs. Not saying that this is your problem, but it taught me a lesson.

I think you have no choice but to pull off the wheel and find someone who knows how to relace it and retrue it. It needs to be "trued-up" on a wheel jig with a dial indicator to make sure the rim is perfectly round, and centered over the hub in both directions (from the side and from the top). I'd replace all the spokes -- the ones you have are either broken or damaged. It's not worth being cheap at this point.

When the job is done, the spokes should all be at about the same tension, and they need to stay that way. Here's a trick I learned with the Sportster: jack the bike up so you can spin the wheel with your hand. LIGHTLY touch a screwdriver at an angle against the spokes so that when they hit it, the spokes makes a "tink tink" sound while the wheel goes around. They should all make about the same sound. If one is loose, it will make a "thunk" instead of a "tink." You can gently tighten that spoke back up until it makes a "tink" and all is good.

I check my spokes at least once/month, usually when I have the bike up on the jack for a good cleaning. I find loose ones rarely, but stay ahead of things with these regular inspections.

From what you describe, it is my opinion that your bike is unsafe to ride until you get that wheel fixed. When a spoke breaks, the load it carried is transferred to all the rest of the spokes. Some spokes get tighter, potentially to their breaking point. Others end up more loose, and the wheel distorts. Then another spoke breaks, and things snowball from there until you have catastrophic failure, probably when the wheel is under the most stress (cornering, braking, accelerating). It would mess up your whole day.

Spokes are pretty, but you have to do the maintenance.

 

You don't give any context for the spoke problem. Was the rim damaged at some point? Who did the spoke work last? What did they do?

Only time in 40 years of riding I've seen spoke problems were when I hit something that knocked the rim out of round. Never broke a spoke, though. I bought a new rim and rebuilt it myself. Otherwise spoked rims have been a minimal problem. YOu can do a fairly decent tuning job on spokes at home as mentioned by plhog. Service manual has details on spoke truing and installation. Before I'd ride a bike with a bad wheel I'd either rebuild or buy a new one. Good luck.

 

Sorry to hear

 

I did not write down any context for the problem with spokes because there was none, I do not ride the bike hard at all , I also did not hit a pot hole or any debri , Thats the problem it does not make sense to me. Harley wants about $396 for new rim , Ebay has one for $275 plus $30 shipping, I am up in the air about what to do , I could buy new spokes & nipples for $65 but who"s to say when I do that I find out that the rim is not true, anyway thanks for the input, if anybody else can think of anything else please let me know.