There is also a possibility that the bore in the inner primary is not square with the primary shaft making the bearing contact each end to cause high stress loads at those points. A simple dial indicator check off of the primary shaft would show this. This in effect will also reduce the bearings clearances at the roller ends.
Ron

 

you know i would go along with the alignment issues causing the problem if it was , say red dogs customs (not a real Business i don't think. sorry if it is.) But its H frikken D, 103 years and lots of enginerring degreeswent into these bikes. the bearings that were the orignals were crap, probally the materials compisiton needed to be better than expected and changed after R&D showed they were too soft. and they learned correct the compisition.

 

jam, I'm just guessing here, but,

I do not think you would be saying this, if,

you had seen what the brainiacs engineered as a shift cam
and detent arm for the all new 06 Dyna line test bed for the 6 speed tranny.

That assembly led to a month or two shutdown of the assembly line,
and recall of about 14,000 units to install the redesigned components.

I saw the components when mine was corrected,
and it was such an obvious design flaw,
Little Stevie Wonder coulda seen it.

mud
.

 

Glad you have faith with MoCo. Fact is on the 06 Dyna there is an alignment issue with the primary and trans, pure and simple. Use the dial indicator and find out just how talented these hd people really are. The bearing shows this also. Correctly aligned this bearing would take a gazillion miles to wear out. It is monsterous for it's purpose.
Ron

 

I had my bearing analysed by an independant specialist who also said misalignment caused this faiure.

The inner primary case does not have dowels to locate it onto the crankcase. Any connection here?

 

yes, mine was built after that shindig.. so i haven't had any issues

oh i wouldn't call it faith , i work in the service industry, and have seen lotsa Release and development.

so i guess they figured out how to align it as mine is fine at this point? almost 14k since it was replaced?

For the record, the MoCo, forgot about me when they decided to become a huge glass and chrome marketing machine. This is my 7th HD, and my first new one. i have had almost every recall issue happen to mine with the exception of the jumping in gear as mud explained. I was with them well through the AMF years and rode and worked on em, before it became trendy.. I wasn't defending the Moco, i was being objective.. peace and ride on my brothers..

 

I have trouble believing the alignment issue as well. But my bearing has failed once so there is a problem.

My thinking is these pieces are produced using a CNC machine. There is little to no chance of getting it wrong. Once programed the machine makes every one exactly the same. I can't beleive they could make a full years production with a mistake like that.

The dowel pin thing is interesting. The mechanic at my local shop bought that up as well. He says the reason they took the dowel pins out is with the Dynas engine, oil tank and tranny all bolted together to make one long case, the distance between the engine output shaft and the tranny input shaft cannot change. Therefore the primary cover won't move around independant of the rest of the drive train.

I'm not an expert and don't claim to by one but when I got my failed parts back it looked to me that the bearing itself was fine but the inner race had been worn right through the harden part. It was even (side to side), if it was a misalignment I would think one side would have been worn more then the other.

 

Blast, they did not eliminate the dowels,

they added alignment dowels.

mud

 

More notes about lubrication failure from this engineer:

Normally a lubrication failure would show distinct signs of an overheating condition on the inner ring. This would be shown as heat bands circumferentially about the inner race showing that different portions of the inner ring would be running at different temperatures. I don't see that evidence in the photo's. The rollers would also show evidence of heat banding about their circumference. What is the condition of the rollers?
Are they basically in perfect shape with zero rollers showing any evidence of surface fatique or overheating?

I would email Harley Davidson and ask for a more detailed explanation of the bearing failure root cause.
It could be defective inner rings with insufficient surface hardness, but they would have to be drastically out of print spec to spall so quickly.

It could also be improper setup of the bearing running clearance, or a too small radial clearance to handle the normal running misalignment conditions.. This could be caused by a bad out of spec shaft from Harley so the mounted OD of the inner ring is too large after pressing on the inner ring so the bearing is running close to zero radial clearance or even a small radial preload. This would cause the bearing to become cross loaded (two bearing load zones 180 degrees apart). The bearing will fail prematurely if a cross loading condition existed because the bearing is overloaded due to improper bearing running conditions. This could easily happen if Harley made a small percentage of the shafts out of print, and would explain why the majority of the population works without a problem.

I would try to find out from Harley if this was an INA quality problem or Harley quality problem with their shaft or housing. This will tell you whether or not to expect repeated bearing failures with your particular bike.

 

I just looked in my 06 service manual and it shows no dowel pins. The inner primary cover they showed me at the shop (not mine) had no dowel pins.