My head gaskets seem to be leaking at 80,000+ miles. Considering top end rebuild....        

Rear

                                                                        Front

I finally replaced the swing arm bearings on my 2004 883XL with 69,500 miles on it. This is the first time I have done it, even though the maintenance schedule calls for replacement of these every 30K miles. I have felt a deterioration in handling for a few seasons now, but somehow it never was so bad as to make me want to do this job. This season, however, I have felt some very funky handling while accelerating into turns. The bike just did not want to go into a proper lean and felt unstable. So I decided it's time to do the swing arm bearings.

And it was! The old ones were really loose and rattly. New ones from HD cost about $35 each and felt so much different! Very tight and almost hard to turn.

I have done the job myself over a weekend. It did not take super long. I had to fashion a tool to press the old ones out and press the new ones in. The tool consisted of a 5.5" long carriage bolt 1/2" in diameter, a 24mm socket wrench and 36mm socket wrench (both for 1/2" drive), a 1/2" nut to fit the carriage bolt and a washer. It was very simple to press the bearings in and out using this setup.

Unfortunately, I did not take many pictures, only this one  when the rear wheel was off and I was about to remove the swing arm.

The results are amazing! The bike feels like new after this service. It has so much more command of the turns! I think I have slowly gotten used to not-so-great handling and learned to compensate, but with new swing arm bearings this bike feels like it can carve some curves! I have ridden it in some places that were instrumental in indicating the necessity of this service. It feels totally different and so much better!

Please do not neglect this job on your Sportster that has more than 30K miles!

Visited the LilacLand where many lilacs grow...

Replaced the rear shocks with some used Progressive 412 units

Replaced the rear shocks with some used Progressive 412 units that came from a non-Sportster. They are measuring 14.25" long and had worn out eyelet bushings. I ordered the new bushings from Progressives for about $20 and pressed them in after pressing out the old ones. 

The bike seems to handle a lot better with more suspension travel and slightly higher leaning clearance. It definitely feels firmer over bumps, but overall very good.

The old piggy-back 1200S shocks I had on there served me well for about 15 years. Now they seemed tired out and I wanted a change in handling. I am not one to lower my bike for the looks vs. performance, so I went the way I went. I also lucked into the used Progressive 412 shocks for $64 delivered on FB Marketplace. They were in very good shape except for the bushings.

 I have replaced both front and rear brake pads. The clock says 59,000 miles. She's still running perfectly and inducing ear-to-ear grin.

Earlier this season I performed a neck bearing service and fork oil change.

At the end of last season I replaced the rocker box cover gasket on the rear cylinder. It only just started to seep, no real leakage. Front one is still original.

 This season of riding is pretty amazing. Slow spring with long periods of blooming trees. I love it.

Here is a view from Mt. Holyoke in Hadley, MA. My back yard.

Went for a ride with an old college friend to Adirondacks, NY. Beautiful riding and weather.

I went for my first ride of the year a few days ago, but today, April 16, 2014 I woke up to this scene:

It is very cold and yesterday's April shower turned to bitter cold and some accumulation of snow. I will not be going riding today :)

Clutch fixed!

I have fixed the clutch a while ago, but never got around to posting about it. A kind soul on www.xlforum.net (great resource!) has sold me their original clutch pack for $25 shipped! That's 8 friction plates, 6 steel plates, an undamaged spring plate (#!#$%%#@!!) and the spring diaphragm from a 1200 (stronger spring than an 883). According to the person who sent it to me, the clutch had less than 18K miles on it when it was pulled from a 1200XL for an upgrade to an aftermarket clutch. So, I had a choice of using the undamaged spring plate or eliminating it with a St-Fr-St combo. I chose the latter. No way am I putting back something so horribly designed and/or manufactured. This thing is guaranteed to fail in an ugly way. So, I used two steel plates and one friction plate from the donor clutch to eliminate the spring plate. I also used two good friction plates from the donor clutch to replace the two that got damaged by my failed spring plate. I did not use the 1200 clutch spring, though it was tempting. While the primary cover was off I repaired the threads in the clutch cable receptacle that I stripped a while ago. It was simple to do using a Helicoil kit. I used a drill bit of an appropriate diameter (it tells you on the Helicoil instructions what size to use) to drill out the damaged threads and then used a tap included with the Helicoil kit to create a new thread into which I screwed in the actual helicoil, which is a steel coil that is specifically made to fit the new thread and create the thread that was originally damaged. This time the thread is steel and not aluminum, so hopefully it will not get stripped so easily. The thread repair worked great and the clutch cable mated with the primary cover very securely and tightly. After I put the primary cover back on and adjusted the clutch, I filled the primary case with the last can of Sport Trans fluid that I bought on close-out a few years ago for $1/can at my dealer (!!). Fired her up and went for a quick test ride. It was drizzling rain, but the bike felt like it hasn't felt in a long time. I think I've been riding with this condition for a while because I forgot how positive the gearbox feel on the Sportster. Everything just clicked in place, neutral was easy to find, especially from 1st. Everything was just great. I rode about 6 mile loop and parked it back in the garage. It rained for the next few days, but when I finally went for a real ride I found myself grinning like I used to when riding my Sportster. I am back on the road! The feel of the clutch without the spring plate and with an extra friction disk is definitely different than stock. It engages much faster. I am still re-learning my clutching and occasionally will squeal the rear tire on 1st gear launch. It's way too easy to do. I guess the spring plate consumes some of the torque upon engagement of the clutch. Without it the clutch pretty much connects you to the rear wheel FAST! All the more reason to make that stupid spring plate more robust! Oh, well, it's fixed and it won't break that way again!

Clutch pulled and problem discovered

I borrowed a clutch spring compression tool from a local indie and opened up the clutch. I found a disintegrated spring plate in the middle of the clutch pack and broken rivets all over the place. Also, the neighboring friction plates were eaten away by the broken rivets. Also, a groove has been worn in the clutch basket by the springs leaves from the spring plate that were no longer held in place by rivets. Argh! Terrible design. Terrible failure mode. Fortunately, I did not ride the bike too much after the failure occurred. The groove is not bad and and the burrs on splines where  the groove is can be filed down, I hope. I have decided to eliminate the spring plate from my clutch by replacing it with a St-F-St combination (St=steel plate, F=friction plate). I measured the thickness of the spring plate and St-F-St stack and they are within 0.005" of each other, so I think I am good to go. I ordered parts from LSHD1.com (Lake Shore HD) and am waiting now. Also ordered a Helicoil kit to repair the thread on the primary cover where the clutch cable screws in. That's been on my list for a while, but I did not want to pull the primary cover. Now I had to pull it, so...

Pictures:

Clutch spring compression tool doing its job by compressing my clutch spring

Disintegrated spring plate

Friction plate damaged by failed rivets

Primary cover off and clutch out

Another view of failed spring plate

Clutch out of the basket

Groove worn by failed spring plate

Another shot of the groove and burrs on the splines

Clutch problems

Went for a ride the other day and realized that my clutch is feeling funny. It seems to drag. When in gear and clutch lever pulled in all the way the bike tries to move a little (no full clutch disengagement), neutral is very hard to find, shifting is very difficult. After some miles on the road the problem sometimes goes away completely and clutch behaves normally again. Easy shifts, neutral is right there where it should be and easy to get to. I tried adjusting the clutch (under the derby cover) to no avail. I thought I had my primary case over-filled, so I drained a bit of fluid. No joy. So I did some research and realized that it's a common problem and lots of Sportster clutches go after 30K miles or even way before that. My bike now has around 43K miles. Apparently, the Sportster clutch consists of 8 friction plates, 6 steel plates and one plate that is called a "spring plate", which is two plates riveted together with brass rivets that have spring leaves pushing outwards. This plate is not the main clutch spring, but is there right in the center of the clutch stack to take up some slack between the plates when the clutch is disengaged. Apparently, the brass rivets eventually fail and the two spring plates come apart and jam the clutch making it difficult to disengage. Also, they can do some damage tot he clutch shell and neighboring friction disks. The configuration, according to my shop manual is this:

F-St-F-St-F-St-F-SP-F-St-F-St-F-St-F

where

F=friction plate
St=steel plate
SP=spring plate

I stopped riding the bike now until I've sorted it out. I need to pull the clutch pack to have a look. For this I need a clutch spring compression tool. Argh! If the spring plate is in deed the problem, the solution seems to be to either replace it with a new part ($40) or eliminate it from the clutch pack by replacing it with two steel plates and a friction plate, which according to the people who've done it, makes up the same stack height (very important for proper clutch operation). So the new configuration will look like this:

F-St-F-St-F-St-F- St-F-St -F-St-F-St-F-St-F

This increases friction surface area making the clutch grabbier (good? bad? doesn't matter? takes getting used) and apparently no other ill effect is caused by this modification. I can also get a whole new aftermarket clutch pack with spring plate elimination already implemented. This is around $150 or so. I will consider my options once I know exactly what the problem is.

My rear brake is like new again! Here's how I did it.

As my previous post says, I rebuilt the rear master cylinder a few weeks ago. The rebuild went fine, but the pedal feel was still soft and the pedal travel was long. The brake felt strong enough to be serviceable, but definitely not fully there. On advice of a fellow Sportster owner I tried the following. I gently pushed the caliper piston all the way back by using a large screw driver between the pad and the rotor. It is not hard to do if the caliper is in good shape. Does not take much force. I then jammed the pad with the screw driver so that the piston would stay pushed in when I apply brake pressure. I then proceeded to bleed the brake the old fashioned way:

1. Open the bleeder
2. Gently push the brake pedal
3. Close the bleeder
4. Release the brake pedal

I repeated the above steps three times, then added some brake fluid to the reservoir and pumped the pedal with the bleeder closed a few times. The pedal travel became mush shorter and the feel became much firmer. I then removed the screw driver from between the brake pad and the rotor and gently pumped the pedal until the piston came out to meet the rotor. The pedal feel and travel remained good. Went for a ride and was amazed at how much better the brake felt. I would say it's 100% back to normal now.

Rebuilding the Rear Master Cylinder

I have received the rebuild kit for the rear master cylinder (HD P/N 42810-04B) a few days ago. The kit contained the following items:

• new primary seal (cup)
• new piston
• new piston (secondary) seal
• new piston return spring
• new C-clip for the pushrod retaining washer
• new pushrod rubber boot
• new spring pin
• a pouch of grease
• a pouch of brake assembly oil
• a set of instructions on how to use the kit

Upon examination of old vs. new parts I immediately saw a defect in the old piston return spring that would explain the primary cup failure. If you look at the pictures, the new spring is on the left and the old is on the right. The new spring has a very flat surface at the top end. This is the end that is in direct contact with the primary cup. The little nub on the cup fits into the hole in the spring and the piston pushes the whole thing from the other side of the cup inside the bore. Look at the old spring's mating surface. It has high points that will create uneven pressure on the rubber cup and eventually wear cracks in the rubber, which is exactly the mode of failure here.

I am not sure if something happened to the spring to create this uneven surface or it was like that from the factory, but I can definitely see how this will cause problems with longevity of these cups. Every rear MC failure (talking rubber-mount here) I have seen out int he Sportster community had this cup tearing in a very similar way. It may be that excessive pumping during the initial bleed of the system compresses the spring to the solid state (coils binding) and then the pressure from the piston collapses the thin sheet metal of the flat mating surface around the spring wire underneath. I am just guessing here. The only way to know is to take my MC apart in a few thousand miles and see what the insides look like. I may do this in the future, but for now I am just trying to get my bike back on the road.

Rear Master Cylinder Failed!

Well, it happened. The rear master cylinder on  my Sportster failed at 41,600 miles. It really wasn't all right since the rear pad change at 30,000 miles. The rear brake has been weak and required a bit pf pumping once a day to get the pedal to not sink too far down. Once pumped up it would stay up for a relatively long time (days). The rear brake was not totally mushy, but it was not all that strong. I could still lock up the wheel, but with more effort than I thought was necessary. Anyway, since the brake was sort of serviceable, I left it alone until an opportune moment to deal with it. Well, that moment arrived a few days ago when I removed the rear wheel for a tire change. I get my tires online at Motorcycle Superstore which has the best prices on tires for my bike, BTW. I then remove the wheel assembly and take it to a good shop to mount the new tire. So, while the wheel was off the bike I decided to bleed the rear brake and get rid of that funkiness.I hooked up my MityVac and proceeded to vacuum bleed the brake via the bleeding screw on the caliper, which I removed from the swing arm and hung up such that the bleeder screw was the highest point in the system. This causes air bubbles to collect at the bleeder and not in that arch the brake line makes when the caliper is on the swing arm. If you own a rubber mounted Sportster you know what I mean. Anyway, after bleeding I had NO REAR BRAKE AT ALL! WTF?! Well, I read up on various forums, but mostly here that this is a rather common issue. After changing the pads and pushing the rear caliper cylinder back to accommodate the new pads many, many, MANY people observe the failure I had. Even the pictures look the same as what I found when I disassembled my rear master cylinder. I have ordered a rebuild kit and will rebuild this thing and see how things go.

Cold ride yesterday

I went for a ride yesterday and damn near froze my butt off! It was way colder than I expected. I cut the ride short and made myself a hot beverage when I got home. Brrrr! Where is that spring?

Great ride today

As I planned yesterday, I did go on a ride today. I started by giving the bike its Spring Bath (it usually gets very few baths, so this is special :) ). I then rode over to North Star where my older son Jonah does most of his home schooling. The staff there was interviewing parents of teens who go there for a video clip to put on their web site. I did my interview and just as I finished the interview my riding buddy Bill pulled up to the building (as per prior arrangement). We left Hadley around 1 pm and headed over the Rt. 9 bridge to Northampton and from there north towards Deerfield on Rt. 5 and 10. From Deerfield we took 116 north to Ashfield, which is the best piece of motorcycling road around here and is probably a mini Dragon. From Ashfield we took 112 north to Vermont border and in Vermont we took Rt. 100 north to Rt. 9 east, which is another amazing road with a great overlook of the valley to the south and east. Rt. 9 east leads straight to Brattleboro, which was our tentative coffee break stop. We had our respective beverages in a great little coffee shop (I had tea, Bill had coffee) and headed out of town on Rt. 5 over the Connecticut River to New Hampshire, where the same road becomes Rt. 119. We followed this rode along the river to Hinsdale, NH where it meets Rt. 63. We took Rt. 63 south (again along Connecticut River) all the way to Massachusetts. By the time I got home around 6 pm I had 140 miles on my trip odometer covering 3 New England states. That's one of my favorite loops around here. But not the only one.

Ricor Intiminators

I purchased and installed Ricor Intiminators for my front end. I have installed them according to instructions cutting about 0.5" off the preload spacer (the intiminators take about 0.5" just below the spring). I have added this upgrade in search of better handling and more stability from the bike in the twisties. Time and miles will tell how well these things work and if they are worth the money. I will update this post when I have more info. So far I can say that the install is very simple. Drain old oil from forks, take the springs out, pop the intiminators in, add a bit of oil, push the intiminators down to the bottom with a spring, but keep the spring out for the time being. Add correct amount of 5W Amsoil Shock Therapy (fork oil recommended by Ricor for this application), add spring and preload spacer (adjusted for the 0.5" of the intiminators), button it all up and it's a done deal.

Update April 16, 2010
So far I have logged over 300 miles with the intiminators in the front end and the short summary is: THEY ARE GREAT!!!

The longer story goes as follows. Right after installing the intiminators and going for a ride around the block you may say to yourself, what the heck is the big deal?! Why did I just spend close to $300? Well, that's just the thing. Around the block or on a gentle ride to your favorite watering hole you may not notice a significant difference. And frankly, in those situations Sportster is already good enough anyway. Well, some of the smaller road imperfections seem to go unnoticed even at an easy pace, but that's not worth $300, I don't think. So, if you are thinking of buying these things and expect your bike to become a Cadie on two wheels, forget it. Here is where the intiminators really kick in. Twisty back roads where you tend to go a bit over the speed limit :) The thing is that even on those roads the bike does not feel much different, except when you look at the speedo. First time I did that I had a bit of a shock and quickly closed the throttle instinctively. I was going around curves I knew very well at about double my usual speed without ever realizing it. Everything about the turn felt the same. The lean angle, the effort at the handlebars, etc. The speed, however was much higher. Catching a small pothole (or even a large one) in the curve did not upset the bike any more. The stability of this Sportster was improved by an order of magnitude. I am still playing with some settings like the height of fork tubes in the triples, etc. But in general the front end is very, very VERY good right now. It also made the rear end behave better. I have dialed the 1200S shocks in and now I have pretty sweet handling Sportster. I am very impressed and highly recommend the intiminators to anyone who is frustrated when pushing the Sportster through the curves (too slow, way too much lean, I am going to scrape stuff if I go any faster around this curve, that type of frustration).

1200S Showa Shocks

I've been running 13.5" Progressive Suspension 412 shocks on this bike for a long time. They ware a great improvement on the stock shocks. But they still felt harsh and the handling still left a lot to be desired. I knew of the 1200S fully adjustable shocks for a while and finally got my hands on a pair from eBay. These shocks came stock on the venerable Sportster 1200S Sport and are made by Showa. They have adjustable spring pre-load (4 settings), adjustable compression damping (15 settings) and adjustable rebound damping (10 settings). They measure about the same as my stock shocks, 13.25". They seem to have a much softer spring than the Progressive 412, but I don't know that for a fact.

I mounted them in reverse, left shock on the right and right shock on the left to accommodate my Easy Brackets with saddle bags. This way the oil reservoir is forward of the shock rather than behind it, which would interfere with the saddle bag brackets. The small problem with this is that the left shock can and sometimes does interfere with the rear brake caliper. This can be solved by adding about 0.5" more spacer to get the shock away from the caliper.

Rear Running Lights/Brake Lights Module

I bought this module, HD P/N 69463-06 to convert my rear turn signals into running lights, brake lights and turn signal. This was a very quick and effective plug-and-play affair. The module makes existing single fillament turn signal bulbs work as running lights (constant on at low power), brake lights (high power when brakes are applied) and turn signals (alternating between low and high power when the turn signals are on). The kit included red replacement lenses.

My Only Dyno Run

This is the only dyno chart I ever got for my bike so far. This was done about 4 years into ownership and twiddling around on my SeatOfPants Dyno. I think I have it dialed in assuming I am  running drilled out stock mufflers.