i had a 3 inch bdl open belt drive installed little over a year ago and the front seal leaked. went back to the shop and they replaced the seal, well it still leaked but not that bad. finally i took the front pulley off and pryed the old seal out and spacer, took them to a local shop and ordered a kit, spacer and seal. this is my question, the mech. at the harley shop said my old seal was put in backwards, flat side out and the open side with the spring was facing in. at first i didnt believe him but he showed me two engines in the process of reabuilding and both had thewre seals with the open side facing out, where you could see the little spring on the seal. he said this is the omly seal on a harley that is like that, the rest are put in the normal way. any one come across this on there bike. also if they have put there seal in with the flat side facing inward what did they use to install it. thanks

 

On my Shovel, I think I used a piece of PVC pipe. It fit inside the seal and didn`t rest on either edge. I think for most new bikes open covers are available to support both ends of the drive. Guess all that spinning with that 3" belt and pulleys might cause the smallest amount of (wable?) and be a little hard on the seals.
Good Luck, Daryl

 

yeah. the shop said they would loan me the seal installer. guess if i fix this leak it will just leak somewhere else. i found out it was installed backwards but i also found out that some times people have put them backwards to keep it from leaking with the bdl setup. ill install it the right way and see if that works.

 

well i finally found the info in the harley manual, dry clutch=seal lip inward, wet clutch=seal lip outward.

 

Great. Hope everything works out, or in?