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Front Wheel Bearing Gone

Jonas said:
How do you check the wheel bearing?
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I can only speak for my bike. Both Front & Rear are 6205 (special seal) Caged Ball bearings. The easiest way to test them which will give you an early warning heads up is to ride the bike in a Very quiet area with the engine off. Get up to 40 miles per hour,, pull in the clutch & KILL the engine. Now in dead silence,, sweep the bars left to right and bias the bearing from a left sweep to upright to a right sweep turn. Do this as you slowly loose speed. With the engine Off in a quiet area, you will know if your bearings are going bad.

I have had Ball bearings sound and feel "Pretty Good" while the bearing was in my hand, but sounded absolutely terrible while under pressure with a heavy load. The Race is a channel so the Balls will support a load while the bike is 90* vertical and also when the bike is leaning. Load the bearing in all plane and listen. Any imperfection in the bearing will travel up the front fork legs. Small imperfections get amplified especially in the Front wheel. The Rear will be a little harder to notice.

You can also jack up the bike and push the brake pads back into the calipers. Since the front wheel has no belt drag, it should be DEAD silent with no small "cracking" noise while turning by hand. A Good Bearing will be DEAD SILENT.
The rear wheel is more of a challenge because of the belt.

When you ride the bike you will hear bad bearings WAY before they are falling apart.
 
One of my sub specialties at work is bearings.

I use oil (and rarely, grease) analysis, vibration, and ultrasound to find and diagnose bad bearings.

All rather difficult to do on a moving motorcycle.

I know I would hear a bad bearing with my ultrasonic if I jacked it up and spun it.

Since most of us don't have that stuff I read Hooples plan carefully.

i would add, make sure no cars are coming!

Thanks Hoople!
 
Hooples idea is a very good way of checking the bearings. Have been using this approach with front wheel drive cars. Spin the wheel with it jacked up, if the bearing is bad you should feel the noise or vibrations in the legs. The back wheel will give you more trouble tho if you can spin the wheel you should feel the noise or vibration on the rear shock springs. Softails I have not figured out just yet, Capital Jack:s
 
Hoople said:
The Rear will be a little harder to notice.


The rear wheel is more of a challenge because of the belt.

When you ride the bike you will hear bad bearings WAY before they are falling apart.
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Hoop, my noise came thru the back as a very slight rumble. Just something that didn't sound quite right. Maybe being a retired maintenance mechanic I am a little more in tune to the sounds my bike makes.:D
 
A friend of mine has an 09 Ultra with 23,000 miles. He just call me last Sun. from about 300 miles from here waiting on his bike while it was having front wheel bearings put in it. He's been a wrench turner for 30 yrs, and is very meticulous when it comes to his bike. He said there was very little warning, he heard a little noise, then within a few miles he new it was real bad. As Hoople said, when he first heard the noise he turned the radio off and pulled the clutch and killed the engine to hear better. he knew the sound and then started looking for a dealer that was open. Found the dealer but no service. But as luck would have it a Tech just happened in and put new ones in under warranty. Great ending for what could have been a real bad deal. The Tech took the seals out of the bearing and there was a lot of rust in there. Yes, he washes his bike, but as I said he watches, and is very careful not spray directly into the bearing, his last bike and 06 had 56,000 when he traded it with no problems. For those of us that wash the bike and winter coming on this might be a good thing to look at real close.
I would like to add on the China bearing deal. We use to get our thrust bearings that were marked Japan, they would last for about a week. The company got some made in China and we were lucky to get 4 hrs out of them. They are a directional thrust bearing, and we took the seals out and found that they had put the markings on wrong and we were putting them in wrong. So turning then around did help, but only for about a day. Went to a different company from Japan and back to a week.
I came from a time when we could make a great product in this country. We need to get our hotel out of our alpha and buckle down. Sorry I carried on so long.
 
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