Wheel end play questions
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Joined: Sep 2022
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From: Florida
Wheel end play questions
In all my years tinkering with Harleys, I’ve been pretty fortunate with wheel bearing spacing. Either whatever I’ve put together has been super close and all I had to do was add a shim here and there or I bought aftermarket and it’s been dead on.
I bought an aftermarket wheel for my softail. It has zero in play. There are no shims or spacers. Just the tube spacer and Torrington Bearrings.
so I’ve milled 65,000 off of the wheel hub spacer that goes between the bearings. I put it all back together (dry) And added the top hat spacer that goes against the one of the bearings (it’s 45 thou) And I still have 13,000 too much end play. Now I can shave another 15 thou from the tube spacer and use 2 -4 thou spacers to get as close to 2 thou total…
But the thought has occurred to me since this thing was cheap aftermarket, is there something else going on? I’ve never seen an inside tube that had to be cut down under 4 inches. Is that normal practice or do they have some crazy off brand Torrington style bearings in this thing?
Some of you guys who repair bikes all the time and set up and play may know that that’s pretty common. I’ve never seen them have to be shaved down that small. So it makes me question if there’s something else going on that I’m not noticing?
Online all the center tube spacers I see are between 4.308 and 5.25… so hard to accept mine needs to be under 4 inch?
Do they make top hat end play washers thinner than 45 thou? Be easy to find one at 30 thou if they make them?
I bought an aftermarket wheel for my softail. It has zero in play. There are no shims or spacers. Just the tube spacer and Torrington Bearrings.
so I’ve milled 65,000 off of the wheel hub spacer that goes between the bearings. I put it all back together (dry) And added the top hat spacer that goes against the one of the bearings (it’s 45 thou) And I still have 13,000 too much end play. Now I can shave another 15 thou from the tube spacer and use 2 -4 thou spacers to get as close to 2 thou total…
But the thought has occurred to me since this thing was cheap aftermarket, is there something else going on? I’ve never seen an inside tube that had to be cut down under 4 inches. Is that normal practice or do they have some crazy off brand Torrington style bearings in this thing?
Some of you guys who repair bikes all the time and set up and play may know that that’s pretty common. I’ve never seen them have to be shaved down that small. So it makes me question if there’s something else going on that I’m not noticing?
Online all the center tube spacers I see are between 4.308 and 5.25… so hard to accept mine needs to be under 4 inch?
Do they make top hat end play washers thinner than 45 thou? Be easy to find one at 30 thou if they make them?
Last edited by Rains2much; Aug 2, 2023 at 11:04 AM.
HDF Community Team
Joined: Jan 2020
Posts: 1,434
Likes: 800
From: Colorado
Depending on how well they seated the bearing races to begin with, may still get there or more in the end.
But just goes to show that someone making min wage abroad was installing the sub par chinese bearing/center races, and never checked the free play to begin with/ will bank that the bearings where pre-greased in the wraps, and could not have check the free play correctly with the bearing already having greased.
So on the postive note, get to pull the bearings again on the next tire change in 20K, get to a take a good look at the chines se bearing and races to see how well they are not holding up, knock all the crap out to replace with either good Japan or USA Timkin bearings/races, and get to do the whole thing over again.
As for hub spacers, or just making a new spacer, often find that on after market rims, better to make your own, since the ends of spaces are not lathed either concentric or surface mating flush to begin with. So in your case since the spacer was too long, at least they left you enough length to clean up the ends in the first place.
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