Never heard of a stiff bearing. I replaced mine at 26K, even though they were good, because I did a new rear tire.

 

Mine have 45K on them. Just installed front tire. They are tight. Probably some due to seals. Its an effort to take two fingers with wheel off and turn them. However, smooth and free. Most of the time, you are turning both bearings since the spacer is on the inner race. You really have to over torque to damage since one bearing..usually one on disk side or wheel face with groove goes flush and the other is stopped by the spacer. It will turn mounted with caliper off but it stops pretty quick as soon as you release. Had rear off about 5K ago. About the same. If it's smooth and no play, you are fine. If it was damaged and tight, when you turned it, it would fill rough and have tight and loose bumps in it off the bike. Would half to be pretty bad to fill it on bike. Your's does only have single row with thrust in one side of race and may be slightly different. I inspect my seals often and bearing anytime wheel is off. About the only way you can really inspect back.

 

I put new wheels on my 06 and pressed the bearing in to tight. The front wheel would not spin freely. Pulled them and put new bearings in and only kissed the spacer when installing the second bearing and now the front tire spins freely like it should. Just my experience.

 

1+ on the tire guy finding a bad wheel bearing, I bought that exact puller and it worked perfect, no problems at all. I have three bearings in the rear of my bike, I didn't think twice about replacing all three. As it turned out, 2 of the three were bad. I reasoned that the third one wasn't far behind and considered it preventive maintenance, proactive if you will.

 

Sage advice!!

Back to bearings, that puller is surprisingly good quality for 90 bucks. i have one and use it regularly. Please use anti-seize when assembling dissimilar metals.....

 

'00 to '07 sealed bearings were the best Harley's ever installed ('08 and later are crap.)

On my '00, I swapped my first set at 100,000 as preventive maintenance but they still looked fine. The second (made in China,) are past 45,000 and still look good too.

I wouldn't worry about it without additional issues.

 

When checking wheel bearings by hand/finger it will feel some stiff. It is permanently sealed. Remove the caliper and check it. They will spin some but not very freely like rolling it like a front and it keeps spinning. That won't or can't happen
Turn it and then do it with the caliper on.

 

this what I would do, lift the bike to hang the wheels, get a can or CRC power lube and put the stray on the can, give each bearing a short spray on crc on the bearing seal, the crc will find its way around the seal and into the actual rollers (just a quick spray, of a few drops), spin the wheel about 20 times.. and then try and spin the wheel, if nothing changes (not easier or harder to spin) and no new noise from the bearing than the bearing is good...if the bearing gets easier to turn then the grease is drying out and the bearing is on the way out (although it may last several thousand miles) and if it gets harder to turn, I don't know what to tell you as it has never happened to me, but I would replace it if it did....

 

Thanks for the input.

Was at a swap meet today, and there were skads of wheels. So I stuck my finger in many a wheel bearing, and all of them were as stiff as mine are. Old, new, dirty, clean, it just didn't seem to matter. They were all stiff.

 

Did you check any made in 48??? Now I'm worried.