My 09 would wobble and my 11 will wobble too. 98% of the people I've rode with who ride a Harley will never ever experience the wobble syndrome. All of so called wobblers seem to have one thing in common, high speed sweepers.

 

Exactly......... 'cause that's what causes it. If you don't do high speed sweepers you will never experience it.

 

 

How does one ride highways without experiencing "sweepers"?

Isn't this just a case of taking a sweeper too fast for the type of bike you're riding and/or road conditions?

This is assuming your bike is in proper shape (air pressure, tire condition, tires balanced, head torqued, etc).

 

This might sound bad but don't take it that way. I have some riding friends that had the same thing happen with them. As we were running in to some long sweeping turns they started to tins up and up back on the handlebar instead of pushing on the bars and setting up right when pushing. So there you can through the words at me I'll stay with my theory it works.

 

Yep. At least that's what I think it is. But there are plenty of people who believe they should be able to push a motorcycle well past any legal speed limit and under a variety of road conditions without experiencing a wobble. And I have to agree with them as well. A motorcycle should not have an unsafe wobble simply because your doing something you shouldn't be doing. Like speeding. Could you only IMAGINE taking that argument to the people who ride Hayabusa's and Ninja's. They would literally die of laughter. But the Harley faithful seem to accept it as gospel.

 

I experienced this wobble on my 07 Street Glide. Used it as a warning that I was taking the sweepers too fast. Learned that if I just backed off the throttle the wobble went away. Kind of a engine rev limiter, but for the suspension.

On my 12 the cornering speeds are now much higher before feeling that wobble warning and the wobble is only 10% of what it was.

Imagine on the Rushmores the speed can get even higher, and the wobble even milder than in earlier bikes.

Believe that because the way the HD rear is connected to the chassis, that this wobble may never go totally away, but gets lessened with every engineering change.

Don't consider this to be a "death wobble" as it has lots of warning before it can get out of control if the rider is aware of the warning signs, and simply backs off a bit. These are not racing bikes.

I also see that most other brands of bikes can also become unstable at higher speeds. See lots of videos where the chassis causes violent tank slappers, that indeed can cause total loss of control. Harley's don't loose control, and get lots of warning.

 

Any bike should certainly be able to exceed the speed limit by a wide margin. There is always going to be a physical limit that any bike can safely handle. A bagger is going to hit that limit long before a crotch rocket. A big old Lincoln is going to hit that limit before a Ferrari.

As an experienced rider, you should take those suspension clues as a warning to back off a bit. I've ridden my 2014 Limited through sweepers way above the speed limit and way faster than I should have. Way faster than I could have reacted to an obstacle in my path. Just for fun. I've yet to feel any "wobble" or other chassis clues that the bike couldn't handle the speed. If I wanted to ride like that all the time, I'd take my Suzuki 1100 out, not the bagger.

 

This issue keeps coming up. Here's what I know about it. My words and a couple bucks will get you coffee almost anywhere in the U.S. of A. And yes, this is 'wordy'.

The 'wobble' falls out of the design of our baggers, i.e., the swing-arm has 'soft' connections to the frame/engine, for the purpose of limiting vibrations and offering a 'smooth' ride. Certainly the swing-arm could have been designed to be rigid…which would have sacrificed comfort. Or heck, the whole bike could have been redesigned to be a…well, something different.

I ride Harleys because I like them. I don't want a BMW or other make. Because the general design is 'old school', or whatever you want to call it and has 'evolved' out of earlier designs, there are some trade-offs to be made riding the bikes. While the baggers have been improved over the years--never more so than in 2014--they are still inherently a bike built for style, and comfort…based on a 'venerable' format.

I have read many posts about 'wobbles'. Someone (GRBrown, I believe) had a good write-up on what 'rear steer' is, and where it comes from. It's on this forum. Posted within the last year.

Every Harley bagger will show a tendency to rear-steer at some point in its performance envelope (road-condition/speed/lean-angle/winds/tire-condition/etc.) My experience, based on riding three particular bikes, is that the earlier years (2004 and 2005) show a quicker and greater tendency to rear-steer than a later (2014) bike.

I have forced my 2014 into a 'rear steer' condition. My experience was, the 'rear-steer effect' (or 'wobble') occurs at a lower speed, and to a greater degree on the 2004 and 2005 bikes, than on the 2014. But it's still there on the '14.

In no case did I ever lose control when the bike started rear-steering. More like a gentle undulation, swaying its ***-end back and forth, slowly, controllably, just enough to make my rectum pucker. My 'solution' was to back-off the throttle. In every case, once I lost some speed, the rear-steer went away. In addition, on the 2004 and 2005 baggers, I added 'stabilizers' to lessen the effect. (Even with the stabilizers, the bikes were no better than the 2014 in these regards, and perhaps not even as good as the 2014 which has NO after-market/3rd party stabilization device).

In my estimation, I was always riding the bike(s) harder than I needed to ride, when the issue occurred for me, hard on the throttle and maneuvering at the same time.

What I'm describing is not a tank-slapper (where the forks shake or move from side-to-side), or the infamous 'death wobble' (which I take to be what I'm talking about but coupled with some mechanical fault that ultimately leads to a state in which the bike becomes uncontrollable).

I have followed threads like this one out onto the Internet to try to substantiate that our baggers are inherently unsafe to ride. (My 'skin' is worth something to me. If it's in jeopardy, I want to know). I could only ever find isolated instances of 'death wobble' (or similar terms). It seemed to me there were instances when someone had an issue. But I was never convinced, by reading the accounts, that ALL Harley baggers had a serious controllability issue. For good or ill, I do not believe they have such an issue. Or I wouldn't be riding one. That's my statement to the effect all the 'scary-talk' is BS. (Now watch me go down (er…I mean: "put 'er down") next week due to a 'death wobble'…life can be kind of comedian-like, sometimes… )

More important than my intellectual research (if you want to call it that), is my experience of riding three different Harley baggers over the past 10 years…

I am comfortable riding my 2014 and don't hold-back out of performance or handling considerations. I was comfortable riding my 2004 and 2005 baggers, with the same lack of caveat, too.

If you go too fast for the current regime (some of the factors described above), the bike will 'tell' you. You back off.

If someone is put-off by the potential of our baggers to rear-steer, then he or she should stop riding the Harley and purchase a bike designed such that the issue will not occur.

Otherwise by God, go out and ride your Harley bagger. And if you're really worried about 'The Wobble'…heck, I don't know…wear a diaper...

Seriously, if you think there's something wrong with your bagger's handling, take it to someone with the technical expertise, and who you trust, and let them evaluate your case. There could be mechanical faults that need to be addressed. But for an in-good-repair bagger built during the last 10 or 15 years (or more)…I don't believe there are any inherent issues that in themselves will cause me to wreck.

 

I didn't mean to say we're driving sport bikes, I like my rolling recliner it doesn't push me into the handlebars and make my wrest heart like a sport bikes does. If we're charging into the sweeper on our recliners we need to put the foot rest down and set upright and push into the handlebar through the turns to reduce front end wobble.