What muppet orders too little oil to complete a service (Harley content)...

That'll be this guy. Meh.

My 04 Road King has basically been playing garage ornament since the middle of last year after I lost confidence in it and my abilities[1]. I finally figured that I either get my act together, give it a service and ride it, or trade it in for something else. But before spending a lot more money on another bike, I decided that "better the devil you know" was a good approach, got everything together for a 5k service, made the usual mess when changing the engine oil and then went to look for the sixth quart of oil so I could change both the transmission and primary drive oil.

That's when I noticed that according to my math, when you need 5.5qts, 5 is good enough , so I put the transmission and primary oil change on hold. That oil is mostly due because of age and not miles anyway, so I guess I can wait for another parcel from Amsoil. Yeah, I could get the primary chain lube from the local dealer but the PO has been running Amsoil in the bike since it was new and it seems to have worked well, so why change now?

I also ordered about a grand's worth of suspension goodies - Progressive 944 rear shocks and their "Touring link" that should finally, hopefully, fix the rear wheel cornering wobble that these bikes are prone to and that makes up a large part of my lack of confidence in this bike. As the parts guy at the Reno HD dealer said, "if those don't fix the wobble I don't know what will". Wish me luck, because if it doesn't work out I'm going back to BMWs.

[1] I had two rear tire blowouts within about three weeks last summer. In both cases, I managed to get the bike to a controlled stop from about 50mph, so I shouldn't really doubt my riding skills that much, but I really didn't fancy riding for quite a while after that. So instead of doing my usual 5k-7k minimum a year, I barely cracked the 1k mile mark last year.

Good luck. Hopefully the suspension work will cure the handling issues. I've been riding for a long time, and a lot of miles, and only had one blow out which was due to a very bald tire. What caused the blowouts on yours?

Suggestion, lift the bike, slacken the belt, and see if your swing arm moves side to side. Mine did (04 RK as well). I found quite a bit of clearance between the shaft and the inner swing arm bushings. No wear, just oem slop (verified with new oem parts that had the same clearances). I shimmed the bushings and eliminated the rear wobble.

Playing with the oils in the forks and the shocks can do a whole lot for making the bike ride nicely without crashing through potholes, or trying to flip you off the seat, or having the nose dive so hard. I'm currently running Drag Specialties 20 up front, and Motul 15 in the rears, zero air pressure at either end. This has worked superbly for me, including some very inappropriate semi-off road riding.

Shimming fork springs to correct sag numbers really changes it's attitude.

3/4 to 1" max sag from on the stand to seated rider.

Cotton wrote: Good luck. Hopefully the suspension work will cure the handling issues. I've been riding for a long time, and a lot of miles, and only had one blow out which was due to a very bald tire. What caused the blowouts on yours?

First one was a roofing nail that I picked up in the rear tire - that one must have held there air for a while until it suddenly didn't anymore.

Second one - after I had a brand new inner tube and rear tire fitted - the brand new, quality brand inner tube blew. No apparent reason (I'm anal about tire pressures so it was properly inflated), no damage to anything but the tube, but that one had a hole almost the size of a quarter.

Picked up the Progressive Suspension goodies this morning, let's see if I get around to fitting at least the shocks before the weekend.

foxtrapper, I'm pretty sure the forks want fresh oil, too. Supposedly the wobble comes from the fact that the transmission can move sideways as well as up and down, which is what the touring link is supposed to fix.

Once the rear end has calmed down I'm probably going to put some Progressive springs in the forks, together with some fresh oil.

Bear in mind I've had one whole Harley. So take my observation with the appropriate amount of salt.

I've read lots of things about the bagger wobble, stablizing the swing arm, aligning with the engine, etc. Now that I've had the bike apart, I'm pretty sure most of it is wrong.

The swing arm bolt is attached to the frame. That's what locates it and holds it in place. It's not the engine/transmission, that's just hanging loosely on it.

People talk/write as if the frame bushing is a soft squishy thing, it's not. It barely deflects in my vice, and looks to be stacked steel plates bonded with rubber for vibration dampening. Flexible or squishy it's not.

The swing arm shaft fits tightly in the frame mount bushings. There's no play or adjustment here. The frame mount bushings fit tightly into the frame, with locating tabs, all squished tightly by the bolt on cover. No play or adjustment here either.

The swing arm fits tightly onto the shaft with bearings and bushings. No adjustment here either. Caveat, I'm going to come back to a problem here.

The engine/transmission sits right in the middle of the swing-arm, with a large and somewhat sloppy hole. Just like virtually every other motorcycle. The swing-arm bushings do gently ride against the sides of the transmission case. This is where I think people make the mistake of believing the swing-arm is attached to the transmission. It's not, it just looks like it is. Instead, the transmission is hanging on the shaft.

Harley uses turn-buckles and squishy rubber mounts to hold the front and top of the engine/transmission in place. Weird, but ok. You can adjust those turn-buckles to zero out preload on the shaft and the rubber mounts. That seems to be what the factory manual describes doing. You can also use those same turn-buckles and screw things up, attempting to deflect the swing arm shaft via the transmission case. That would create bind and vibration, and I really doubt the swing-arm shaft will be impressed. This seems to be what many folk are doing when they "align" their bike with those turn-buckles.

Coming back to the swing arm on the shaft, this is where I did find "bagger wobble" in my 04 Road King. It was in the swing arm bushings. Instead of fitting tightly onto the shaft, they are sloppy, with 0.010 clearance. This allows for nearly 1/4" movement of the rear wheel. You can only feel this when the drive belt is loose. If the belt is tight, it holds the swing-arm against the left side. You aren't strong enough to pull the wheel over, but I'm pretty darn sure the weight of the bike can, particularly bouncing along leaned over in a turn.

I shimmed my bushings, reducing shaft clearance to 0.002", nearly zeroing out free play and rear wheel movement. When I put it back together and rode it, I had no more wobble or wiggling in the rear.

I've looked at the stabilizers, and they seem to basically be band-aids for the swing arm play far more than swing arm deflection of the frame bushings. Some attach to the transmission, some to the frame. Both types seem to attempt to hold the swing arm from deflecting side to side. The ones that get stuffed into the frame bushings seem to be band-aids for worn or damaged frame bushing mounts.

My whole two cents.

Tim, your second blowout was probably a pinched tube when it was installed. I hate spoke wheels. Tubeless is a big improvement.

Interesting observations, FT. I've not experienced instabilities/wobble on my bike, '86 FLHT, basically the same suspension design.

Oh, and BTW, my oil for the primary: Mobil1 ATF. Transmission: Mobil SHC630 (available at Grainger's). Try it. It will shift like you wouldn't believe. I use HD regular (non fully synthetic) in the motor, but then Evo's don't really like fully synthetic motor oil.

In reply to Dr. Hess:

The inner tube that caused the second blowout did have little "nubs" on it and it was one of them that was the area of the blowout. Tube didn't look pinched, but it's hard to tell afterwards. Either way the new drag racing spec one does hold air well enough now.

Thanks for the lubricant recommendations, I'll try them for the next change. Shift quality on this bike is really good as is, my local mechanic who's been around Harleys and Brit bikes since the 60s was very impressed with its slick shift but if it can be improved ...

Anyway, time to bolt the Progressive bits to it and see if they make a difference.

They do make a difference. Took the bike down some of the rougher roads around here and back home via the local bypass (65mph limit) and it rides much smoother and feels more planted. Now all I can feel is the front end patter as I think it wants some fresh oil in the forks.

Funny tidbit - I appear to be underweight for a Harley rider. The shocks I fitted are the ones with regular duty springs and you're supposed to set the preload at 2". Even at full soft I can't compress the springs more than 1" .

I think I also figured out why I didn't have enough oil. The bike is supposed to take 3 1/2 qts (+ 1/2 qt for the oil filter) but when I did the hot oil level check as per manual, it ended up taking a total of almost 4 1/2 qts to get to "almost full". Guess I have to crawl underneath it again but I wouldn't be surprised if the bike has a non-standard oil pan.

Make sure you are checking the oil level per the manual, whichever way that is: Upright or on the Jiffy stand.

In reply to Dr. Hess: I don't know about yours, or Tim's '04, but my '09 & '11 both had individual marks for upright and on the Jiffy stand.

Manual says on the jiffy stand. I double/triple/quadruple checked that . IIRC mine only has max/min marks.

As paranoid as I am I'll check again tonight - I "only" did about a 7-8 mile loop to warm up the engine yesterday, so the 25 mile ride back from work might yield different results.

BoxheadTim wrote: Second one - after I had a brand new inner tube and rear tire fitted - the brand new, quality brand inner tube blew. No apparent reason (I'm anal about tire pressures so it was properly inflated), no damage to anything but the tube, but that one had a hole almost the size of a quarter.

Tube tires sometimes blow if they are not inflated, deflated and reinflated to get all of the wrinkles in the inner tubes to flatten out. I learned this from an old tire guy when my Triumph TR3, tubes in radials on spoked wheels, started going.

Jack