OK gents, I think I found the secret! Whitewalls handle better than blackwalls!

Seriously - I took Bertha out two-up with my wife on the back yesterday for about 110 miles - mostly highway, some secondary roads and city roads. She is now a bona-fide Dancing Elephant! The difference in her handling with these new wheels and H-D Dunlop D402F tires is simply amazing! I thought the Metzeler ME880s were good - but these new H-D Dunlops stick like GLUE, and seem much more sure-footed at any speed.

With these much lighter wire wheels and the new tires, her handling has completely changed... for the better! She feels like a totally different bike now - much lighter, even with both of us on her, and she is much more responsive on curves. The front end seems much more nimble now, and has a much lighter feel all around. Where I used to have to coax her around curves a bit forcefully, now she dives into them with only the slightest prompting from me. I really didn't expect a big handling improvement like this - but I sure got it! I am totally psyched!

Dale - you asked about the handling of the 140 rear tire. I can only report a resounding thumbs-up on it!

Question for the group: There is a very slight rubbing of the belt on the rear tire, so I'm going to have to get a spacer to move the pulley out a bit. Those who've done this... can I just move the rear pulley out 1/16" or 1'8" with a spacer, or will I have to move the front pulley out the same amount to maintain belt alignment? I really don't want to have to pull the inner primary just for this (although she does have some leaking primary seals that need replacement...). Thanks for any guidance on this.

Lastly - If anyone's interested in my old wheels and ME 880s with only 5K miles on them, please PM me. I'll probably list them in the HDF classifieds and on eBay too - to help offset some of the cost of the new ones. But I want to give my fellow Evo friends first crack at them.

Man, I wish I had some right now...

 

Dancing Elephants in white shoes,
Cake and donuts, beer and bagpipes,
Personal invitations to Scotland....
all on the same page!

I gotta check if my wife's been slipping some drugs into my drinks.

You EVO guys are wacked.... glad I'm one.

 

This thread is dam sure more interesting than tv these days. Like a box of chocolates. "You never know whatcha gonna get".

 

Mike, How is Austin doing, by the way?
Growing like a weed?

 

Sure is Dale. I will pm ya some new pics.

I emailed them

 

Sorry chaps, been away over the weekend, to see the sea at Brighton.

You probably know Scottish pipes, which frankly are not particularly tuneful (they're intended to put the fear of God into the enemy - works for me!). Northumbrian pipes are quite different and quite sublime, and Kathryn Tickell Kathryn Tickell is an especially fine player and rather good looking too. She's filling the airbag with a bellows under her right elbow.

I should have added that the border reivers lived in the North of England and Scottish border region and were a pretty lawless lot. Hadrian built the roman wall to keep them under control, but they continued to occasionally bring terror into the region long after the Romans left. Ideal candidates for exporting to the penal colonies!

 

Ken, sounds as if future cakes will have to have white icing!

I have faced the challenge of tyre to belt clearance twice with my bike, once when fitting a 140/90 rear tyre and last winter when trying to get in a 150/80. What I noticed with the 140 is the following, which in the absence of a pic I will try to describe.

With the wheel out of the bike, look down the side of the tyre with the pulley on (may be possibly to do this with it in the bike, but not so easy). With the top and bottom edges of the tyre in line with each other, check how much of the pulley you can see. Hopefully the belt track is fully in view, which means the belt should miss the tyre. However if things are as close as you describe I suspect you will not be able to see much of the inner pulley flange, only the belt track.

When I did this with my 140/90, I could just see daylight behind the pulley, about as much as a thin piece of card (~.010"). So the clearance I had was the thickness of the pulley flange, plus that daylight, I reckoned about 3/16" in all. I aligned the wheel in the bike so, when tightened up, I had that space between tyre and belt. I actually used a 3/16" allen key as a 'feeler' between them.

When trying to fit the 150/80 with my original wide belt, the spacer I needed to get clearance was so thick the pulley hit the swingarm and I couldn't get them all in the bike! I ended up using a later narrow belt.

The front pulley is much wider than the rear pulley and will easily manage the size of spacer you need. Sounds to me that an 1/8" spacer will probably do the trick. My only concern is that if your front pulley is very worn there may be a 'track' the belt currently runs in, which could mess with a realigned belt.

Hope that helps.

Further thought! Having checked your actual belt to tyre clearance as I described, you may find the rear wheel is very slightly out of alignment and a small adjustment will cure the problem. Checking at the rear pulley will confirm that, or confirm you need a spacer.

 

You can put a 1/16" spacer behind the rear pulley without moving the front.

 

Thanks for the advice, guys. I don't know if 1/16" will do it... I may need 1/8". It's not rubbing much, but it obviously is rubbing.

Graham I did exactly what you recommended before I installed the wheel, and I could barely see the inside edge of the pulley across the tire - so the rubbing is not surprising to me. The frustrating thing is that the Metzeler 140-90 had plenty of clearance... it was almost 1/2" narrower than the Dunlop 140-90. I don't get it... a 140-90 should be a 140-90, dammit!

I will try your alignment trick first, and see if I can get just enough clearance to eliminate the rubbing. I'd rather not have to even take the wheel off again because it was a B***H to get on and get the rotor between the pads. I definitely do not want to have to mess with the front pulley at all unless I absolutely have to!

White icing has always been my favorite, BTW! White cake, too! I love chocolate - just not chocolate cake. Weird, I know... but in this thread anything appears to go!

 

Ken,

Unfortunately tyre width seems to be unpredictable! I had problems fitting my 150/80 because its actual width when measured was wider than the published width and my previous 140/90 was narrower. I 'lost' several mm of theoretical clearance! Also the published fitted widths vary between manufacturers. Especially within the narrow confines of the rear ends of our Evos it makes messing with oversize stuff a bit fraught!

It seems you have close to zero clearance using my patent method, but if you have even a small amount, set your wheel alignment so you have that amount of clearance where tyre and belt pass each other. In other words ignore wheel alignment, as your wheel will be parallel to the belt. If that stops your rubbing we've cracked it. If the tyre rubs while riding, which is a possibility, then a spacer is the only way out of this.

Be assured the front pulley is much wider than the rear one. With a torch you may be able to peer into the rear of the transmission, to see where your belt currently sits on it.