nuts! front wheel bearings

[Hoople]

- rear bearings have had it at less that 6K.

That sure is a lot of work (belt tension, wheel alignment etc) to go through in just 6K miles.

The seals used on 6205 bearings were not designed to be the 1st line of attack in applications where they are exposed to sand and water hitting the hubs at possible high speeds. They are exposed to all the elements with no primary shield of any sort. The exposed wheel hub bearings really need a primary shield to separate the bearing from the "big stuff" first. The seals used on those bearings are just too fragile for the application.

I sure don't agree with how HD did it and think it's a bad idea. Don't think HD will ever go back to the taper bearings with real external weather resistant seals, but in time they will probably address it and put a patch on it..

 

[Jack Klarich]

Absolutely. A fraction of a drop inside the bearing would never evaporate. I would really like to get my hands on those old bearings. They represent a great sample (late model 2009 w/only15K) to take apart and try and understand if it was really a seal failure or a true ball bearing failure. I have heard of this happening to a bunch of late model bikes and it really should not be since they are used at low heat & very low RPM.

Timken has some good information on how to reverse engineer bearing failures and identify root causes.

Tapered Roller Bearing Damage Analysis
http://www.timken.com/en-us/products/maintdiag/Documents/6347.pdfHoop have a look at this it should be in our self help section I think