This worked for me.

 

I've used the tool shown above and it got the job done. I used the weld method many years ago but it was while I was doing a bare frame rebuild. The bottom one fell out due to shrinkage, ditto on the top one since it was easy to turn the frame upside down and let it fall. The tool lets you do the job 'cold'. I seem to recall that one of the bearings came free fairly easily but the other one was so tight I thought I was going to break the tool. I seem to recall that I had to do a bit of grinding on the tool to 'sharpen' the parts that grabbed under the bearings.
Also as mentioned above, some threaded rod and the right size socket or the old races made it easy to draw the new bearings in. You want to be sure your 'driving' surface only bears down on the outer race.
It's going to be a bit tough working outside, hope the weather holds well for you. If you don't have one, it would be great to acquire a shop manual to help things go smoothly. It's all very do-able.

 

Thanks, I do have a Clymer shop manual and I read the procedure, but I know it's not always as cut and dry as the manuals make it sound.

 

I threw my Clymer in the trash or gave it away, I can't remember. The factory Service Manual is the best manual I've seen so far. A competant YouTube video would be worth a watch.

I remember the races in my FXR was a pain in the *** to remove. I didn't have the proper tools, I was machining what I needed on the fly. These days I invest in whatever tool is needed.

I hate doing repairs outside. If I get stumped I can't surrender.

 

I hear ya, it really sucks if you have an all day job to.

 

Sometimes it is best to have a dealer or independent do the job, save yourself some headaches, and move forward. There are many maintenance items that I perform on my motorcycles; however, neck bearing replacement is not one of them. I just suck up the cost of getting it done as buying the special tools to do the one time and never use them again is how I see it. If I can buy a special tool and use it multiple times then the investment may be worth it.

I do have some special tools that I purchased for doing specific things on a couple of cars that I own, they have sat for 15 years in the tool box taking up space after I used them once. Lesson learned.

Just my $0.02 worth of thought.

 

I have the same mentality. I would rather spend $100 for an indy to fix it than to spend $50 for a tool I'd likely never use again and a couple hours of my time.

 

A “couple hours” won’t even get the front end disassembled to reach the bearings. At least not at the speed at which I work.

 

Had to have mine done years ago on my Dyna...They came from the factory loose and couldn't tighten them enough to get rid of the death wobble. One of the local HD dealers did it as I didn't want to put that much time into doing it even with a HD shop manual.. That was about 2008 and the cost was about 200 bucks but it fixed the problem.

 

I spent a couple hours tinkering the other day. I took off the clutch and throttle cables and re-set the fall away for the second time. The first time I did it a few weeks ago it was barely in spec. The manual says fall way should be between 1-2 inches and it was dead at 1 inch so I set it to 1.5 inches and still had a very twitchy feeling at high speeds.
So this time I set it at just under 2 inches and it seems to have settled it down. Before the bike would weave whenever a truck passed me on the highway or of a gust of wind caught the windshield. Now its pretty stable.