Just had new rubber put on my '08 Fatboy. Shop discovered the rear wheel bearings were on their way out. 7K miles - ouch.

 

Shop owner probably had a Vet payment coming up?

 

The rear wheel bearings on my Fatboy were gone at 5k. Back in the day I put 27k miles on my 90 model sporty & never had a problem with wheel bearings

 

Wasn't it '07-'08 that had all the wheel bearing problems?

 

Harley went to the single row ball bearing'd wheel bearings in '08. They are 15 mm wide. That's when and why Harley went to the 25 mm axle from the 1" axle that had double row bearings (21 mm wide) from 2000 to 2007. $$$$$ ( My 2000 with "double rows" went 100,000 miles and were changed out as Preventative Maintenance...They were still fine.)

And '08 was the first year and also the worst year for the cheap bearing failures. Complaints of not enough grease when assembled were prevalent.

They still use the skinny bearings today but apparently have solved most of the issues in more recent years. ( But I'm not giving up my 2000!)

 

I put new bearings in my rear at 8k on my deuce... but because someone forgot the anti seize ar the factory and spent 2 hours pounding on the axle.... it was siezed on the bearings

 

My rear bearing had to be replaced with 12,000 miles on the bike I have heard other stories of them lasting well into 70,000 + miles,but i have all the bad luck.