Springer Front End Inspection

Let's now look at Harley Davidson Springer front fork. All of the service procedures are in detail in your service manual. Although many of them are very complicated, this is a very complicated piece of machinery. The front fork pretty much stands alone in the industry. Whether it be with a 16 inch front wheel, or a 21 inch front wheel. Use your service manual unless you're thoroughly mechanically qualified, I highly recommend going to an authorized Harley Davidson dealer for all of your service, maintenance and proper tuning specifications on this front fork. When I say tuning, I do mean tuning this front end will need to be adjusted at regular intervals, it will need to be lobed and it will need to be checked not only at your regular service intervals, but depending on mileage, age and driving conditions maybe more often. We'll first take a look, the upper steering head bearing and dust cover. You can see the lower steering head bearing, there's also a dust cover, but it is concealed up inside the frame. On the right side of this Springer frame, there is a grease fitting. You need to supply an adequate amount of grease to both the lower and upper steering head bearings. Not only do they need to be properly lubricated but kept in the proper adjustment all the time. You wanna make sure all your wiring harness in cables stays out of the contact position of the Springer front fork, fork stop. As you can see for this demonstration I've put this motorcycle up on the lift jacked it up on a center lift. That allows me to rotate this front fork full left, and full right lock. Again for demonstration purposes only. From here, I wanna take a look at what Harley Davidson's added over the years to the Springer assembly. They've put a double wound set of springs, they've also added a hydraulic shock absorber to the front fork. This takes a lot of wear and tear off the spring pack and off the steering head bearings. It takes a lot of the road stress off of the rigid fork and off of the moveable spring fork. They've also added a rubber mounted headlight. The Springers of old whether they be 21 inch or the newer 16 inch configuration had a tendency to pop or break the headlight bulb or the headlight lens. This rubber configuration has seemed to resolve most of those issues. Moving downward on the fork, you'll notice it is still a pieced fork under rigid section, your brake line runs inside, comes out to a single piston caliper, you'll also note that there is a rocker bearing. This bearing needs to be serviced regularly. It needs to be serviced at 500 miles and it needs to be checked depending on age, mileage and environment at least every 2,500, maybe every 10,000 if environments are friendly. The lower spring fork mounts to the rocker assembly, you'll see the end of the axle with the axle nut it is a nyloc nut, every time it's loosened, retort, the nyloc should be replaced. It uses a standard rotor, spoked wheel configuration. This model is 16 inch tire, again, the 16 inch tire transfers a lot of road vibration and road bumps to the spring fork in the rigid fork. Let's take a walk to the right side of the bike, I wanna show you the grease fitting. You'll know there's a grease fitting for regular service, there is a locking tumbler which locks the Springer front fork when the motorcycle is parked for security. You'll also note we have a clear view of the upper staring bearing and dust shield, the same will apply on the right side as it does the left. Make sure all the holders for all cables and lines and wiring harness stay in place when this front fork swings, you don't want any of them to get pinched in the fork stop. Again I wanna reiterate, this is a critical component on the Harley Davidson motorcycle. Unless you have proper tools, proper service data and a properly mechanically qualified to service and work on this particular front end, I would highly recommend owning the service manual as a reference material only. Use it to review what you're paying for when the motorcycle is serviced or repairs are needed on your Springer front fork.