Interesting issue came up today. I own a 2008 Street Glide. A friend of mine gave me a set of his Airstrike wheels off of his 2011 Street Glide. An 18” front wheel and a 16 x 5 rear wheel, which I couldn't use. The front wheel was no problem, changed out the bearings to Non-ABS, bought a new tire and it popped right on and it looks great.

Here’s where the problem begins. My bike being a 2008 has the older frame and requires a 16 x 3 rear wheel. I took the 16 x 5 airstrike and exchanged it for a 16 x 3 Chrome Airstrike wheel, which I’m assuming is HD part# 41288-06A so the front and rear would match.

I removed the rear wheel, which is a 16 x 3 slotted 6-spoke wheel, HD Part# 43929-08 which is not typically found on a Street Glide. The hubs of both wheels look identical so I figured all that would be needed is to swap out the bearings for Non-ABS, mount the pulley, which went on without a problem, put the same tire back on, remount the wheel and were done. No such luck.

When we remounted the rear wheel, it wouldn't line up. It appears the spacers are different. The disc won’t line up to fit into the caliper. We went to the local HD Dealer and they are scratching their heads. It appears we may have to shave a little off one side and build up the other side to line the wheel up. Were only talking about 1/8 inch. Any suggestions out there from someone who may have had this same issue would be greatly appreciated.

The only thing HD can suggest is to buy several different size spacers and see which ones fit…Hmm!!!

 

Interesting! Some models of '08 touring bikes use the exact same rear wheels introduced in 2000, so even allowing for using a different style it would naturally follow that they are all interchangeable. The wheel you took off will fit across the range of big twins, as should the SG wheel you are having challenges with. I have a softail wheel in the rear of my Glide, so know the hub geometry is the same, as you rightly figured.

It'll be interesting to see if someone has a workable solution for you!

 

I'll keep you posted. Thanks for the reply

 

Do you still have the IDS pulley that was O.E. on the 08 or has it been changed out to an earlier style pulley?

 

I'm pretty sure it is the IDS Pulley, OEM that was on the bike. I do know that the bike has a an upgrade from 96 to 103." I don't think that would have required changing the pulley to an older version. It mounted right onto the new wheel with no problem.

 

That's frequently how it's done. You might try making mock-up spacers out of PVC pipe. Just trial and error, until you get the rotor lined up correctly, and double check that everything else is lined up. Then order the spacers you need.

Last time I fitted a custom wheel, I calculated what I was going to need, based on the size of my new hub (softail wheel on a touring bike). I mocked it up using pvc, measured those and machined a few spacers of slightly larger and slightly smaller thickness, and used the ones that worked the best.

You're dealing with tolerances of tenths, it's not like building a motor. The rotor side is the more critical one.

 

Wow!! Great advise. I never would have thought of that. I'll get on that tonight.

 

Ok, the problem has been solved. I won't mention the name of the HD dealer who couldn't help out of courtesy, but I will give a thanks to Laidlaws HD for finding the solution. As I mentioned in my first post, we were off exactly 1/8 inch. What is mind boggling is how two different HD dealers with access to the same training and parts catalog come up with different opinions.

Laidlaws pulled up the schematic layout of the wheel and all required parts and spacers associated with the installation of an "Airstrike" wheel. What they saw was that the Airstrike wheel requires a bearing spacer which prevents the bearing from being pressed too far into the hub. That bearing spacer is 1/8 inch thick, the same amount of offset we were having trouble with. Once we installed the bearing spacer, the wheel mounted right on with no problem.

Apparently the 6-spoke slotted wheel I had on the bike did not have or require this spacer. So naturally when we removed that wheel to replace it with the airstrike, all we did was remove the wheel. There was no need to removes the bearings because we weren't going to use I them again.

Once were figured out the solution, we removed the bearings from the 6 spoke just to see if that bearing spacer was there. It was not.

So if anyone should encounters this problem, it appears "Airstrike" wheels require a bearing spacer when your using them to replace non-airstrike wheels on Street Glides.

It appears the original owner of the bike ordered it with the 6-spoke slotted wheels rather than the "Airstrike" wheels, which are OEM on most Street Glides. I'm sure there are a few Street Glide owners out there that may have ordered there SG's like this....

Thanks for all those who replied to this post

OPDSam30

 

This is a guess, but it is possible the wheel that needs a spacer is designed to take a twin-row 1" bearing, hence has deeper bearing cups. For certain years Harley wheels can take 3/4", 1" and 25mm bearings, while they sorted out the ragbag of sizes they had been running in parallel. Now everything runs on one standard bearing size, I guess they have reduced cup depth to suit single row bearings only. Your '08 was the first year of the standardised 25mm bearings.

 

The 16x5 rear is too wide for your 2008. The cush drive hub is different than the hub on yours as well. It is not going to bolt right on unfortunately.