Harley Steering Head Bearing Adjustment

At this point in our service, we're going to go on to neck bearing adjustment, which is also known as steering stem adjustment. On this full dresser with an inner fairing, it's kind of hard to show you a good, clear visual of the adjustment mechanism, so we're going to use a Road King, the front end is still the same upper and lower trees, 41 millimeter fork tubes. So there's really not much difference. It's just going to be a much clearer view without the inner fairing in our way. On this Road King model, I want to take a moment and show you basic lubrication maintenance. The grease fitting, now that I've removed the nacelle two halfs is very accessible. I did this for a reason, so you can see the grease fitting. Make sure when you're greasing your steering neck assembly that you don't overdo it, two or three pumps of a good quality grease is all that's really needed at any basic maintenance. At this step, I like to take a moment and explain when removing these fork tube caps, at this point on the Road King model due to the fact that it's conventional fork left and right, the lower drain screw can be loosened and removed, the top fork tube cap, loosened and removed. And your fork coil properly measured, through a funnel, can be re-installed through the opening in the top tree and the fork tube. At this point, I want to remove the fork tubes. With the fork tubes removed, I'm going to gently unplug a couple of wires. Just get them out of our way while we're working, it's always a good idea. You want to try not to pinch wires when you're working in there, I'll take a chisel and a hammer, and bend the lock tab out of my way. You'll notice there's two lock tabs. When you're finished adjusting the neck bearings, you only have to bend one of them back. The other one is to be used in another application. Mark, please hold the handlebars. I'll have Mark hold the top handlebars and I'll crack the top stem nut loose. Once this stem nut is loose, the nut can be removed and the retainer plate can be removed. Just push it to the side, you'll notice I left one plug on it, that way it keeps orientation the way it should be when you go back together. I also want you to note that there's a dowel pin. It'll only go on one way due to the dowel pin locating the retaining tab, with the nut removed, I can lift the top tree away, this'll expose what's known as the spanner nut. When you're doing a basic fork bearing adjustment, this spanner nut is what will move whether it be tight or loose, that creates a preload on the bearing pack and allows Harley Davidson's FL self-centering front fork to operate properly. I'm going to slowly turn the top spanner nut loose. I'm not going to remove the nut off of this stem. I'm just going to allow the tree to drop away and quickly show you the lower stem bearing. This bearing that we're looking at is a typical tapered bearing Timken style that runs in a hardened race that's inserted into the neck. This is not part of a basic maintenance. We usually only grease through the fitting in a regular maintenance intervals, but since I'm here, get a little wipe of grease on this exposed bearing. You also want to clean and inspect them. Check for any pitting, any galling, any nicks or marks in the outer race. I'm going to re-install it, got a nice clear shot of the top bearing and the dust shield. It's the same story, if you're this far apart, you happen to be looking at them, check them. If you do replace them, always replace a bearing in a race as a pair, and an upper and a lower as a pair, we'll re-install the bearing. I'm going to spin this spanner down. Again I wanna emphasize, this spanner nut you see is what creates the preload on the bearing pack. It's what also gives you correct bearing adjustment on Harley Davidson's self-centering FL front ends. I'm going to re-install the top tree. I'm going to re-install the retainer plate with the dowel pin in the correct location. At that point, I'm going to re-install the top nut. Once the nut is drawn down by hand, we really can't see the spanner nut, but with the fork to fuller right left lock during a bearing adjustment, the spanner is visible. And I have to note, small increments of movement on that spanner create large movements on the bearing preload, don't under tighten, don't over-tighten this bearing pack. It will have an adverse effect on handling characteristics of the Turing models. With the nut in tight, and our bearing pack correctly adjusted, we'll torque this top nut between 60 and 80 foot pounds. Now that we've shown you in detail, neck bearing adjustment on the Road King, I want to take this FL fairing model and show you the self-centering bearing adjustment check. We're going to start naturally by covering any painted surfaces because I'll be working above them. I'm going to loosen the throttle control housing. Mark's going to start to loosen the outer fairing. What we're going to do in this procedure is remove both the throttle and the idle cable from not only the hand grip and it's feral, but we're going to remove the cables from the housing. This cable has a small circlip that retains it into the housing, if you destroy this clip, you'll have to replace it, and be careful, they do come out. Once I've got the throttle cables out of the throttle housing, I want to remove the one bolt Mark left me in the outer fairing. I'm going to remove the windshield from the outer fairing. And I'm going to remove the outer fairing. I'm going to set it aside, but I'm not going to go very far 'cause we're going to re-install it before we check the self-centering feature. I'm then going to go to the clutch cable side. I'm going to loosen the adjuster boot which we're all familiar with from clutch adjustment. And I'm going to loosen the clutch lever from the clutch perch by releasing the retaining clip. The small retaining clip that holds the clutch lever pin to the perch, once that pin is removed, the lever can be removed from the perch. The composite pin removed from the lever to release the lever, at this point, I'd like to go to the front of the fairing and again, show you clutch cable routing. This is very important due to the fact that the cable has to be returned into this position after we check the self-centering adjustment of the bearings. You'll notice there's a tie wrap to the inner bracket. Any time you cut a tie wrap, make sure you put another new tie wrap in its place. I'm going to push the clutch cable through. Mark will give me a little help down at the bottom. We're going to actually pull the clutch cable through the fairing. Use caution, don't disturb any of your plugs or wires. Once the clutch cable's free from the inner fairing, I'm just going to lay it back alongside the motorcycle. I'm now going to do the same thing with the two throttle cables, now the throttle cables have a 90 degree metal bend on them. I like to feed them through the inner fairing one at a time, so you don't disturb this metal 90 degree bend. Once you've got the both fed through again, use care, there's a lot of wires, there's a lot of factory harness. We're going to feed them through the inner fairing. Let them drop down and I'm just going to set them aside. At this point, I want to put the outer fairing back on. The simple reason for that is when you check a self-centering bearing adjustment, you need all of the motorcycle's suspended fork weight on the motorcycle's front end when you do this check. We'll carefully re-install the outer fairing. Again, I emphasize carefully because it is a painted piece. We'll also put the windshield in. It is all added weight that has to be taken into account when doing this bearing adjustment. Just put the one center bolt in. For now, that'll be sufficient to hold everything together. Before we checked the self-centering adjustment. I want to remove both covers and I just want to make a quick look around, make sure nothing else is attached to the front end that would tie the front end to the chassis, at this point, I want to make my front end self-centering bearing adjustment check. I'll hold the front end full left lock and I'll gently let it go, it should swing to right back to left and fall exactly on center as you've seen this one has done. This front fork has been adjusted correctly. If you find your front end shakes side to side, makes more path of travel than what I've just showed you or less than that, you'll have to redo the neck bearing adjustment until you get it correct. I want to make a note, once you're done verifying the neck bearing adjustment is correct on the self-centering front end, don't forget to remove the outer fairing and windshield again, re-install and readjust your clutch cable. Also, re-install and readjust your throttle cables. Check them full left, full right lock for proper throttle operation.