a few months back I changed the 16" front wheel on my FLSTC to a 21". Yesterday I put the 16 back on just for a different look again. What a mistake, I could'nt beleive how much slower the bike steers with the 16 and how much ground clearance I lost. First roundabout had the boards scraping and everyone after. I was so dissappointed with how the bike handled with the standard front wheel that once I got home it was changed back to the 21.
The reason for this story is that if you have a bike with a 16" front wheel and dont like the slowness of the handling and the shitty ground clearance put a 21 on it and you will be very happy with the transformation.
Would like to see a picture of it with the bigger wheel.
Are you sure you haven't got that the wrong way round? lol
Swapped my, skinny, underbraked, poor handling, for fashion use only, with nickel plated spokes (not even chromed spokes on Harley rims, not all that shiny stuff is even chrome), rim not properly trued from the factory (front and rear were both spoked and not true from new ), single disc brake, 21 inch Harley front wheel for an alloy 16 inch, twin disc wheel (a 17 would have been OK too). Changed my front and rear wheels, tyres and suspension because the handling, clearance and braking were so sad from new. Are the spoked wheels made by an apprentice on Monday or in India or China by someone who has only ever ridden a bicycle? Being a 200 mm wide rear tyre model Harley, the original front wheel was offset over to the right of centre in the forks from the factory, and Harley make a lot of effort to try and hide it so it is not noticable. The original wide rear wheel was also offset to the right (both wheels changed, fixed now). Have you tried putting some better front springs (progressives or Ikon) in if it is scrapping in the corners (how sagged are the original springs, how old is the fork oil, steering head bearings, wheel bearings, internal and external wheel bearing spacers the right size, rim true, tyre pressure, good quality tyres? Its crazy to put $200 tyres on a $20,000 or more, bike when they are your only connection with the road. The original Harley suspension front/rear is poor from new. After finding the first faults with a new Harley, I started checking everything and did not like what I found, the front suspension internals do not appear to have changed much since the first forks in the late 40's or early 50's. Ever noticed that Harley's seem to be some of the slowest bikes to follow in the city when turning at the lights, even slower than some scooters. Lot of noise, slow cornering, big loud acceleration down the straight, then slow braking with even slower cornering with a big wide turning radius taking up most of the road at the next corner. Someone is going to say thats all wrong but unfortunately for most Harleys its not.
Put some "intiminators" in the forks as well while you have it apart (it's an easy job). They will put a smile on your face and have you coming home late because it feels so nice going round corners even on a Harley. Intiminators are the first thing I would do to a new or second hand Harley along with better brake pads, before even touching anything else, easily the best value item for money on my Harley. Was going to sell mine before changing the front wheel to a 16 inch, putting twin discs on it and changing the suspension because it was only any good in a straight line. Despite the slightly smaller diameter front wheel it is yet to scrape even though going faster leaning over more and with a smaller turning radius, before it was scraping a lot, also cornering is much easier (flows around like there is not much corner at all even though the cornering radius is smaller and the bike can do it much quicker if I want it to) and does not take up the whole lane like before to get the job done. It's sad when a big wide rear tyred Harley or chopper with a big diameter skinny front wheel which is slower than a bicycle and holds up the traffic when turning at the lights. Do an internet search on suspension mods, even if it only on this site. Made my bike feel like it has a big dollar European front suspension on it, became a fun bike and much safer to ride.
If you went into almost any bike shop and ask for a good handling road bike with a 21 inch front wheel, the only bike anyone is likely to have is a trail/dirt bike. If you ask them to improve the handling of it they will ask if you want a supermoto wheel kit with a smaller diameter front wheel. Some of the new Harley models are coming out with the smaller diameter front wheels and narrower rear tyres to try and win back riders who enjoy the ride more than looking at their bikes.
Sorry for wasting 10 minutes of your time man, but if the handling was poor and improved with a 21 inch front rim, the problems might be somewhere else. If your happy with it and like the way it handles, thats all that really matters, its your bike.
If I hadn't already got a 16 and was closer I would buy it off you unless it was spoked. As long as it feels good for you. There is not a lot of difference in the rolling diameters as the rim size would suggest, type "bike tyre diameter calculator" into google and the difference is up to the type of tyre used but mine was only 1/2 inch lower with standard tyre dimensions for the rims chosen (21 replaced with 16), which was pushed back up by the Intiminators to 1.5 mm higher than before, practically almost the same height without trimming the spacers. You really should consider the intiminators they are bloody good. Got me leaving jap bikes behind sometimes now in the twisties, They get very quiet when they can't keep up with a fat heavy lump like a Harley. To be fair my front and back, wheels, tyres and suspension are not standard, the extra torque is nice to have as well. Don't know how to fix it bike squatting when feeding on the power coming out of a corner, but its useful as it gives a bit of warning before the rear starts drifting out under power while leaning over.
Check the front wheel offset in the forks as many harley wheels are not symetrical. Which means that if you put them in the other way round the tyre will sit across to one side in the forks to what it was before, Most of the wide rear tyred harleys have the front wheel across to the right hand side of centre in the forks. A quick look at a Rocker front end will show it up without having to use a tape measure if you do not understand what I mean, as they are a narrower front end with a wider rear tyre so the offset to one side is quite obvious. In spite of that I haven't met a rocker owner who has even noticed it yet until it is pointed out to them. Mine used asymetrical to be until I changed the wheels (its not a Rocker). If your wheel is spoked you can put the rim where ever you want to. Most Harley spokes are not chromed but nickel plated, If I kept my spoked wheels I would have put much better spokes in too. Good luck and enjoy riding it.
What were the tyre dimensions? My front is now a 130/90/16, this lifts the bike a bit when leaned over, as the tyre is wider than the skinny 21 that was there before. Kept the same fork tubes, but put in progressive front springs and intiminators which kept me at almost the idntical height at the steering head. This kept all my steering geometry almost the same. I was looking for a -1 rake set of triple trees which are on a few models as the standard ones on mine are +1. Its going so well I don't think I'll mess with it as steepening and lowering the front gives quicker steering but brings other problems. Same of our twisty roads have dips mid corner and feel like they just sprayed bitumen over a gravel road so the bit of extra rake works in my favour and keeps it stable when it gets rough. My mates on jap bikes had to get up to 130 km/hr to catch up when I was still going 85 while waiting for them after a rough and bumpy set yesterday. i stopped and was turning to go back on another rough set when they came out, those fine tuned bikes are only best on a fine tuned road. On a race track this would be the reversed with the big heavy pig. Still yet to scrape anything anywhere on this one since modifying it.
I measured the height difference at the axle as this is where the wheel is connected to the bike and where it will be affecting the bike from. Not sure how long your fork tubes are but am assuming you used the same ones which may be longer because of the original smaller front wheel and the better springs which would lift your front end. Would have thought it would have made the steering a bit slower and more stable in feel with better ground clearance and maybe a tiny bit slower turning in the carpark. A skinnier front wheel will lose a bit of clearance when leaned over compared to the same diameter rim with a wider tyre. Is the new wheel and tyre lighter than the old one? What are the dimensions of your back tyre, is it the wide 200 rear or the better handling narrow one? I took off my wide rear tyre and put a narrower rear rim on to stop it trying to stand up in corners and to get the wheel back in the middle of the bike. Because of the way the Harley primary is set up, putting a big fat rear tyre on means the wheel is shifted out to the right. It cannot stay in the middle because the belt can't be moved over to the left any more or made any narrower, from the factory it comes out over to the wheel to the right of the bikes centreline on the wide tyred ones. Those Harley rear shocks are not so good either, they are made by a company who make some good stuff, but not in Harley's case. Is it to make the parts as cheap as possible or so that we will have to buy new ones to improve it, maybe both?
I thought the 17 and 19 inch front rims had almost identical rolling diameters using stock tyres. I assumed the reason for this was Harley could put different wheels on bikes without having to change fork lengths or spring rates and keep using the same parts across a wide model range. Many of the models are only really different wheels, fenders, tanks, seats, handle bars, exhausts, trim etc. Its good for swapping and modifying though as lots of bits are interchangeable.
Don't think I can stop the squatting as from what I can find out, it is affected by the swing arm pivot point and the primary stops it being any closer to the drive cog. Will just have to live with it or buy a Buell if I want a Harley grunty motor. This one feels so good now its gone from about 30 to second on the list of my favourite bikes. Why don't Harley make them like this from new, is it just so the can sell even more parts and increase the profit margin? Then again some of the customers make a lot of changes which reduce the braking, reduced the handling, make them even heavier and put louder exhausts on which look or sound good to the owner but make the bike slower, noisier and thirstier than a good set. We did over 300 km of twisties yesterday and a loud exhaust would have had me in the Hardware shop buying chicken wire to stuff in there to reduce the racket half way through the day. Had a good day, not as many bikes or traffic as I would have thought there would be, the double demerit points seemed to keep the cops on the major roads with lots of people on their way back from holidays. We only saw one and that was in a town and on foot and he waved to us!.
Maybe Harley just stay in the middle ground of it all and just keep selling bikes and bits to the fashion trends and raking in the money.
Back to work! Back to work!
Standard Softail frame with a standard 32 degree rake, standard wide rear end, 41.3 mm forks in a standard wideglide front end, 16 inch alloy wheel with Road King sliders to get a twin disc front end. (made a mistake in previous post if the spec sheet was correct, the forks have +1.5 degrees, fatties have 0 degrees and some CVO's have -1 degree). Took a little bit off them as I put a washer in between the what looks like a PVC spacer and the springs. It was only the width of the washer I removed. I wanted to keep the front end the same height and have a fixed baseline to start from. The washer would have been put in even if there had been the length of the Intiminators taken out, as it looked a bit rough to me. So I put a metal washer that spreads the load over the whole end of the bit of plastic, not just where it contacts the spring metal. Only used one hand to get the caps on so the preload is not that high and the suspension compresses more when cornering anyway. Have been intending to try it with the standard springs and also with another spacer with the length of the Intiminators taken out, but have been too busy. Its not hard to ride, quite smooth, if hard needs to be described to was the original Softail rear shocks, made to look like a hardtail, ride like one and incapable of keeping the rear wheel in contact with the ground on a bumpy or rough road. One of the European manufacturers made some better rear shocks for the Softail but couldn't sell them, probably because they weren't chromed and lowered, they ended up going at half price to get them off the shelf.
To tell the truth it's far better than I expected or hoped for and in no hurry to change it. I was expecting to be messing around with it for ages but got a nice surprise. No need to be using all sorts of oil, springs or spacers, well not yet anyway. There are guys changing the disc's in the intiminators but I'll wait and see what happens, when they've done all the hard work, before doing anything. Best value for money I've seen in a while.
Maybe at the end of February will have some spare time to go my mates place and make some spacers out of aluminium on his lathe to try some different settings. At the moment I'd rather ride it than mess with it when there is a spare day, as I am that happy with it. If you can tell me a good engineering reason why its all wrong please tell me. Whats the ??? for?
The ??? are for no reason other than I was asking questions...I cut about 40mm off my spacers (I think as it was a while ago) on my 2010 Wideglide as per instructions and now I have a 17" front wheel I have lost a little clearance and was wondering if I put the 40mm back in I would get a bit back...The preload is fairly stiff as it is so I don't know how I will go getting the caps back in with an extra 40mm...
No worries, can't say how it will go on yours, I can only say what worked on mine and I haven't finished with it yet and it will be a while before I start changing it around again. If the preload was already stiff it might not fit in there. I haven't see any problems from the smaller wheel at all, the difference in heights at the axle was smaller than I thought it would be with the set up I used. From the first post in bold below it shows how different the frame and fork rake is on different models and how it is difficult to compare different bikes.
The reason I wanted to have a base point to start from as in the past I have changed a few things without having a starting point to return to if it goes pear shaped. What happened is I just got confused as more than one thing had been changed at a time. So I made an effort to keep the steering head at the same height to start with and that was how I did it. Don't know what height it will be with the spacer shortened as not done it yet, it was very close to what it was previously so I left it as it was, it will probably be the next change I do and or changing the triple trees to 0 degrees. Maybe I'm being too careful but its working up to now.
Also have a read of this as it shows why I was so careful, Google search "Raked trees on Softail to fix trail? Harley Davidson Forums" Post 16 is a warning, read through to the last post, or "Harley death wobble" if you want to scare yourself or "rbracing-rsr rake and trail" link to this calculator from the raked trees on softail pages. Can't seem to copy and paste on here for other sites. The forum above had Softails as +2 degrees when some of the spec pages have them at +1, some others have them at +1.5. There are more sites that come up when researching how to change the front end. Gets confusing as there are so many sites, stories and theories, so I went down the traditional path slowly and its working very well at this point. Will put a laser light on the trees next time they are off to see just what degrees they really are.
Had a think last night, why do you want to raise it, is it grinding? If it isn't just leave it the way it is and enjoy riding it.
(Edit in) ""You haven't said what springs and the tyre specs are. If it is a standard 2010 fatboy 17 front rim (140/75/17), the difference in diameter to a 2010 Wideglide 21 front tyre (80/90/21) is 35.6 mm. Half of this at the axle gives 18 mm lower, almost identical to mine with the 130/90/16, same tyre as a Fat Bob. The 19 inch Harley tyres I looked at were also almost the same diameter as the 16 and 17 inch ones, very close. I figured mine didn't scrape as the tyre is wider which raises the bike as it is leaned over compared to a skinny tyre and better springs with a bit of preload so the suspension is not compressing as much while going around a corner. Can't adjust the fork height in the triple trees on mine very easily either, been waiting for the Harley scrape but nothing yet. Try half the spacer size or go up in 10 mm steps maybe until it stops scraping or slightly stiffer springs.""
Later on will be putting shorter spacers in mine and if still handles well and does not scrape, will probably not change the front end any more after that. I would have been happy with an 17 front as well as there is a bigger range of tyres available for it. Only bought the 16 as it was available at the time, new, alloy, came with twin discs, bearings and spacers still in and was too good a price not to buy it even if I did not use it. At the time was venturing into unknown territory for me and a wheel which could be sold at a profit if it didn't work out was a good option. Very happy with it and see no reason to change something that is working so well just for the sake of changing it. One of the shops advised me to put a fork brace on it which I did, but did it when I put the Intiminators in so its hard to tell how much difference it has made.
I may have over done it by not taking anything off the length of the spacers, was pissed off at the awful way it handled and scraped from the factory. Started out with it set at the original height because I did not realise or expect the springs and Intiminators to be as good as they are. The not properly trued spoked wheels which were both off set to the right in the frame had me thinking the forks, triple trees and or frame was bent because I could feel something was definately not right with the bike. Getting the wheels back in the centre where they should be, twin disc's, better rear shocks and getting rid of the front 21 inch and rear 200 mm did wonders for it, later on putting the Intiminators in was the best thing I've ever done to it. Since found out other people have already done simular things before me but not put it up on the net and they like it too. If I knew then what I know now could saved myself a lot of time and money. Was still expecting the forks to need be pulled apart for a lot of changes and adjustments before it was any good, which was not the case, VERY NICE SURPRISE. I was just hoping to be able to keep up with the other bikes, to end up leaving them behind was another surprise, was going to get rid of the bike before as its not much fun lagging behind the others. It is better for cruising or twisties now and could cope with a bigger motor, the bigger motor won't get it around a corner any better though. It might not look as cool but I'm not riding along looking in a mirror so it don't matter. I could buy one of their bikes with the time and money I've spent on this one, if they spend as much on their stock jap bikes, they would be going better as well.
I'm done, back to work.
Another thought is to use Fatboy or a similar Harley with a similar sized tyre with similar rake and get the forks tubes for it and the springs or maybe not the springs if keeping the Intiminators in there, as they take up some space. If everything else was left the same to raise the front to the same height if it had been dropped 18mm by the 17 inch tyre would need 21mm longer forks to put it back to the same height. This must have been done hundreds of times before. As most Harley stuff is imperial the fork tubes, at a guess would be 3/4 or more probably 1 inch longer (25.4mm) to make up for the 3/4 inch difference in ride height between the 21 and the other tyres. Bit more expensive maybe but its possible using stock parts if the longer fork tubes lenghts are correct and sell the originals after to recover the money. I try to use stock parts when changing stuff as its easier to get, get seals etc, or sell if it doesn't work out. Depends how much the clearance and scraping is bothering you. Anyone know about the difference in length of the fork tubes?
Edit in (Just realised yours might be the model that came out with 49 mm tubes so it might be Fat Bob tubes that are longer and might fit to lift the front a bit).
Another edit in (If the specs I've found are correct The 2011 Wide glide has a 34 degree rake at the frame and + 2 degrees in the trees giving 36 degrees at the forks. The 2011 Fat Bob has a 29 dergee rake in the frame and -1 degree in the trees giving 28 degrees at the forks. The difference in fork tubes lengths needed to keep the same 18mm neck height difference are, 22.2mm for the 36 degree forks and 20.4mm for the 28 degree forks, not much difference at all. Doubt that level of accuracy would be needed but its usuful to know how much instead of guessing and hoping for the best. Didn't realise some Dyna frames came out with different rakes at the steering head, thought it was done in the triple trees like the Softail frames, unless Softail frames have variations as well.)
Probably put every one to sleep by now, anyone done this swap, come on people swap stuff on Harleys like women changing shoes and handbags.
