Horse on a Hog

Still waiting on parts, but I popped out to my mate's place this evening and had a bit of a tinker with the bike. I wanted to get familiar with the lift and putting the bike up and down, and see if I could re-attach the spring for the jiffy stand (that's the official HD nomenclature for what yer average motorcycle enthusiast would call a "side stand").

The lift is working nicely, once you get it positioned correctly under the bike, and it's fairly easy to move the bike around while it's on the lift. Which is handy when you're borrowing space in someone else's garage and want to be able to poke it in the corner out of the way when you're finished for the night.

Next step was to take the saddlebags off, which I hadn't tried before with this bike. Discovery: it's trivial, just undo the wire-lock things and lift them off.

When the belt broke on the Chateau-Plateau ride, we'd pulled the spring off the jiffy stand getting the bike on the back of the trailer. So I thought my first real maintenance effort would be to replace it (as moving the bike around with a dangling stand was starting to be annoying). But at this task, I failed. It looks like the force that disconnected the spring also bent one end, and wouldn't stay hooked to the stand - looks like I'll have to add a new spring to the parts order.

Once I'd given up on that spring (and washed my hands - I may have washed the bike on Saturday but clearly the underside isn't going to give up its grease and road grime so easily) I decided to have a look at the bike's alignment. I've been convinced that the bike is crabbing, and both when the belt was replaced in October and 3 weeks ago at the last service I asked the shop to check the rear wheel alignment. Yet the bike has felt unchanged afterwards - still feeling to me like it's not straight. It's also been suggested to me that the rear wheel being out of alignment could put unbalanced stresses on the belt and contribute to it breaking.

So I followed the manual and checked the alignment the way Harley says I should check it. And surprise, surprise - the rear axle is out of alignment by about 10mm on the RH side, so it's twisted slightly clockwise. Which is the way I thought it was out. And it shouldn't be because of the lack of belt tension, as the belt pulley is on the LH side of the wheel, so under tension if anything it's going to try to pull the rear wheel more clockwise.

As well as ensuring the rear wheel is aligned to the swingarm and engine/transmission, the Harley touring bikes also have a separate alignment procedure for getting the whole engine/swingarm/wheel assembly in line with the frame. I didn't look at that tonight as that's a bit more involved, but I will check that once I've got the belt back on. I've spent a bit of time reading the unofficial US HD forums, and it's fairly standard advice from their membership to new owners: buy the factory service manual.

I'm starting to see the wisdom of that.