Back (wheel) On The Road!

After three weeks of downtime, yesterday saw my bike's first test run on the new bearings.

Last weekend, Sasquatch came over and looked at my trashed wheel. Turns out it wasn't as trashed as I had thought: the wrecked metal was the remains of the bearing, but the race had only minor scratches which came out with a Dremel. Thanks to Sasquatch for noticing this and helping me to salvage a $200 (used price) wheel, and thanks to Duane at Bob Forrest Auto for yanking out the old bearing. And thanks to Tina and Laura for schlepping parts, holding things while I lifted, and generally being great moral support.

On Friday, the day after fixing my old wheel, my new wheels from eBay got here. I don't need them now, but I figure I can sell them at a small profit as I got a good price on them. Between the two new ones and the one 2004-era 3/4" wheel, I have a small stockpile of Harley wheels to slowly eBay away.

Installing the refurbished wheel had two surprises:

1. The brake caliper wouldn't line up with the brake rotor. I even took a photo of the caliper to show that it's completely impossible to fit anything larger than a sheet of cardboard in there. The issue, was that I had put the new pads in while the caliper was in the slid-out position. The caliper slides side to side to create space for changing the tire, and I had installed the pads in the slid-out position (I had just removed the tire). Thus the caliper only seemed to slide back inward into position, and wouldn't go fully and line up properly.

When installing brake pads, have the caliper in the "slid in" position. If you have it slid out, it will seem to seat properly but will leave you with this impossible condition.

I figured this out after an hour of examining my photos and checking Google, removing and reinstalling the pads a few times. The pads really do fit in well, the pin holds things properly, but the damn rotor just won't line up.


Moral of the story: Slide the caliper out to allow the tire, then back in before installing the pads.

2. I had purchased a new axle, as it was the only way I could find exactly the correct left-side spacer (remember it was welded to the trashed bearing to form a melted, ragged cylinder. very modern art). The new axle would not fit into the 6205 bearing, even with plenty of coaxing.

Not sure what the issue is there. The new axle is obviously slightly wider, but we can't see the difference with our eyes, and the spacers leave exactly the same little light when placed onto both axles.

Fortunately, the spacers are what I needed, and they fit perfectly onto my old axle which was in fine shape anyway. Despite the apparent, invisible difference in the axles' widths the spacers fit just the same.

Moral of the story: two 2008 Harley XL883L motorcycles can have identical axles... that aren't the same size. I'm baffled as to how that happened.

Anyway, it's all over now. It's been almost tragically stupid, how many wrong parts I've gotten, how many times I've had to carry my wheel down to Fred's on my bicycle, ... but in the end it's been educational and I'll be glad to be back on the road.