Rear Drive pulley bolts loosened up!

☼

☼Sunshine.

New member
iclick,

Thanks for the info. I'm definitely interested in that rear wheel.

Also, you have to bear with me...like I said, I'm new to baggers and twin cams. My last bike was a homebuilt 113" Evo hardtail bobber.

What's IDS?
 
For everyone that wants to know. The 07 book (page 2-5 and 2-19) says ALWAYS replace the pulley bolts. DO not reuse them and the torque is 55-65 lbs ft. There is no mention of locktight or as someone mentioned the "torque turn method" I think yhey confused that with the axle bolt sequence. I will be using red or blue when I get my pulley back from the powder coaters (after I buy new bolts)
 
Wow, I didn't think this was all that common. I had an indy change my tire on my 05 Classic several years ago. About 500 miles later, I hit a bad speed bump a little harder than I meant to. A couple of miles later at a stop light, I thought my transmission had gone out as I suddenly had no power transfer to the rear wheel. On inspection, all the bolts had sheared off but some may have gone earlier and the speed bump just finished off the last ones. A couple were broken off in the hub and the others were no where to be found. Red loctite and proper torque and now I do a visual inspection anytime I have the saddlebag off.
 
Dealer is currently repairing my 07 SG under warranty for this deal. As I posted in another thread it was a complete failure of all 5 bolts. I asked to look at all the replaced / failed parts when I pick it up. We will see.
 
Just wanted to bring this thread back up to the top one more time.

My thanks to Bob aka iclick for hooking me up with some used replacement parts at a very reasonable rate.

Despite Fed Ex's best efforts to lose the pulley (only took about 10 extra days to get to my house ) the bike is fixed and back on the road. We took a very enjoyable ride to Savannah for dinner tonight. Thanks again Bob.


Also a reminder, especially if you ride an '07 FL...

CHECK YOUR
PULLEY BOLTS!!!
 
Pulley bolts are one time use bolts. If you loosen them, you have to replace them. They are made to stretch. Once they have been torqued, the stretch is gone and they will not hold any longer. Never re-use them.
 
Touring bikes are not the only ones to have this happen. I got a friend's Dyna in my shop right now that sheared off all the pulley bolts.

Last year, 2 months after buying my Sporty, I got lucky and noticed all my pulley bolts were loose several turns. I recheck them often now.

I had the dealer install IDS on my 07 road king before I took delivery and I firmly believe the IDS absorbs the torque induced shock waves that cause so many pulley bolts to loosen and break on non IDS bikes no matter big twin or Sporty.

This is a common problem and you really should not only check yours soon, but also follow all advise posted above by others.
 
Hi Everyone,

The rear wheel on my Roadking locked up after a long ride with my wife riding pillion. Luckily it happened at low speed, upon inspection, we saw a misshapen hole where a pulley bolt should have been. (check out the first image below...)

The remaining bolts were loose, it...we road home, safely, in the slow slow lane...

It get's worse...

When the pulley was removed, lo and behold we saw that 3 out of the 5 bolts (not just one) had already failed.

Check out the other image, one bolt was already fractured although the bolt head was still in the wheel, the other bolt had a deep crack, near the shoulder, that had cut 75% through the bolt.

The two remaining intact bolts showed some necking near the shoulder at the start of the thread.

I suspect that 1) HD stock bolts are too ductile 2) If the bolts loosen then the resultant shearing stress leads to very quick catastrophic bolt failure.

So if you have EVER had to tighten your bolts then you should remove and check them, and for the $5 it costs, probably just replace them ....

My bike had a wheel change 200 Miles before the failure, the bolt failure happend very soon after.

It's also possible that the bolts were not correctly tightened after the service. It's also possible that one of the bolts snapped increasing the load on the others...

Ride safe!

2WG
 
Glad to hear you are both safe. The pictures show how important it is to inspect critical fasteners very carefully and often. Not trying to fault you, but lets all learn from these kind of failures. Id bet you anything the wheel change 200 miles prior was directly responsable for this failure. I say this as a mechanic because most premature failures happen just after someone works on it, 99% of the time.
 
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