My bike is a 1997 Sportster 883, in the process of chasing down a noise I discovered that the belt was loose on the pulley at the transmission. I took the cover off and was able to take that HUGE nut off with my fingers. I tightened is tight as I could with a pair of channel lock pliers and then put everything back together. The noise stopped for a little while is starting to creep back now. What can I do? What is the solution to keep this from happening? I put the lock nut back on so it shouldn't be loosening. Is there possibly and alignment problem or maybe a bad bearing of some type?

Any help will be greatly appreciated..

 

I had the same problem. What I did was buy the socket and 1" driver for it. I can't remember off the top of my head what size the socket is. I took off the sprocket, cleaned out the fine savings in it, put back onand put thread lock on the threads use #222 threadlock, it stays put but it won't give you hell if you want to take it off at a later time. Tightened it up put the lock nut on and used the same threadlock for those bolts too. It's been a year now and I haven't had ANY problems with it. Hope that helps.

 

By the way, I have a '95 xl 1200.

 

That nut requires the use of RED Locktite and the nut needs to be torqued to 50 ft. lbs. I believe that is also a left hand thread, counter clockwise to tighten.

 

Mine works great w/ #222. You can use what you want. Like i said, no probs in a year, I ride at least 5 days a week. (100 miles or more a day.)

Good Luck

 

If it works cool. I was just quoting the service manual. I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was typing my post while you posted yours.

 

Cool, I'm w/ ya bro.

 

Well I pulled the cover again and low and behold I removed the nut with my fingers. I noticed that the nut has a groove worn at each corner where it has been rocking inside the lockplate. I tightened it back up with some locktite this time. I also have ordered a new nut and lockplate, so once they get here I'll put them on with the locktite. Thanks guys.

 

My manual list's the sprocket nut to be torqeud to 150 ft-lbls along with locktite, and 10-12 ft-lbs on the lockplate screws. If available, i recomend using a good impact wrench to torque the sprocket nut down, that is what I did when I put my 30 tooth sprocket on. Also in case you didn't get a socket for it yet. it's a 1-7/8" socket you'll need. If your still trying to torque it down with a channel grips, DON"T, you won't even come close to having it torqued down properly, so make sure you get a socket on there, and crank it down with either an impact wrench, or at the very least a decent size breaker bar, atleast 3 ft long, preferably longer. Also try to align the nut with the lockplate so it just fits right with the edges of the nut resting on the lockplate so it absolutely can't back out any..............hopefully i explained that right.

 

Problem solved... Finally.

Initially I thought the only problem was that the nut was loose and rocking inside the locker plate. Well after replacing the nut and lockplate with a new one the noise was still there. So I pulled the sprocket off and come to find that the teeth from the sprocket were ground down to almost nothing. The only thing that was holding the bike when pulling was the locknut and plate!!! I got a new sprocket, which had nice deep teeth and put it on yesterday along with the new nut and lockplate. I also got a 1 7/8 socket and torqued the nut along with a little loctite, so no more noise