Another set of eyeballs

[MSgtRick]

A few weeks ago, I mentioned on this forum about having a wobble on my 2016 Tri-Glide. The consensus seemed to be the front neck bearing were bad. I took it to a couple of local HD shops and they all agreed the bearings needed to be changed. So, I finally got scheduled to have the work done at my local shop. When I took it in this morning a mechanic who had not seen the trike before saw something nobody else had. When he shook the trike before taking it on a test ride he noticed the top of the engine was moving a bit side-to-side. He took it out for a short ride and noticed the same thing when he got up to speed. When he got back to the shop he noticed one of the two bolts holding the top engine mount was loose. The other bolt was broken. He had to drill and tap the broken bolt which took him a while due to its location. He replaced both bolts and everything is tight as a drum, no wobble, no bobble. He also said although it doesn't happen very often he's seen this problem before. Took him a couple of hours from start to finish. All I paid for was labor. Sure beats the almost $800 I would have dropped to have the fork bearings replaced.

 

[GrumpyVet]

Glad it worked in your favor!

 

[Pegasus1300]

That begs the question then, were the neck bearings really bad and what led the other to shops to say they were bad? Do you still have bad neck bearings? just wondering

 

[MSgtRick]

That begs the question then, were the neck bearings really bad and what led the other to shops to say they were bad? Do you still have bad neck bearings? just wondering

I had the neck bearing replaced at the 50K checkup because of some occasional clicking coming out of the fork area. I don’t have the original set of bearings. The wobble didn’t actually start until at maybe 54K. I’ve got 56K on the trike so the problem hasn’t been around that long. Two shops said they thought the issue was being caused by bad bearings. It wasn’t until a third tech noticed the shaky motor and missing bolt that the problem was identified and fixed. The attached pic shows the replacement for the broken bolt. Two other bolts are down and to the left of the top bolt. They’re really hard to see because they’re painted black and it’s dark up there! From now on I’ll know what to look for during routine maintenance.

 

[Pegasus1300]

It's always a blessing to find a sharp-eyed tech. Glad you got the correct diagnosis.

 

[Burnerboy]

Glad you actually found a honest technician

 

[Dan SC]

I had a failure of the same part about a month ago.

I noticed an intermittent squeak on my `22 Tri Glide, It turned out to be a broken engine stabilizer bracket that is bolted on to the front cylinder head.

I was on a road trip, about 1,000 miles from my home in SC.

I called a local dealer, they did not have one in stock, so they overnighted it and I brought the bike in the next day, it was replaced (and bike washed) in 90 minutes.

Covered under warranty.

Thanks to Harley Davidson of East Hartford Ct.

Note: In the first picture below, you can see the nut (that is supposed to be welded onto the bracket) is missing.

The second picture shows the new bracket.




New bracket