What Goes ‘Round

Installing wheels on a Softail

intro by Steven Wyman-Blackburn
captions and photos by Tricia Szulewski

The new wheels are complemented by the matching rotors, pulley, and chrome hardware. Bearings not included.

Before …….

When installing anything new on your bike, you’re going to have to decide whether or not to follow the latest trend. As you’ve probably noticed by now, when it comes to wheels, a lot of guys are dropping loads of dollars on those giant, custom 30″ front wheels. Not only is this hard on your wallet, it’s just hard in general, since it requires extra mods, such as altering the rake on your bike. This is difficult to do on a Road Glide, let’s say. But popping a 30-incher on a bagged motorcycle outside Harley’s Touring family is even worse for obvious reasons. Rather than taking the high road, the owner of this 2003 Heritage Softail Classic decided to keep the wheels close to stock size, choosing 16″ front and rear wheels. In the next few pages, we’ll show you how mechanic Dan Michaud of Sound Motor Sports installed Harley’s ThunderStar custom front wheel (#43609-07/$649.95) and rear wheel (#44544-08/$649.95) using the correct installation kits for this year and model bike. He then provided step-by-step photos of how he wrapped them in new Dunlop rubber, D402F MT90-B-16″ front (#43022-91A/$174.95) and D401 150/80-B-16″ rear (#43264-02/$203.95).

… After!!

The original spokes on the stock wheels had loosened over time and wore out the pockets in the rim. This caused a high-speed wobble. Since new rims were ordered, we decided to go with matching rotors and pulley. We went with Harley-Davidon’s Thunder-Star style, and ordered a matching billet sprocket (#40126-00/$399.95), ThunderStar custom floating front brake rotor (#44365-00A/$159.95), and ThunderStar custom floating rear brake rotor (#44366-00A/$159.95). If you plan on installing these extra parts in addition to the wheels, you’re going to need the proper tools. We decided to stay with Harley-Davidson and bought its chrome front brake disc hardware kit (#46646-05/$13.95), chrome hex head hardware kit for the rear belt sprocket (#94773-00A/$29.95), and chrome rear brake disc hardware kit (#46647-05/$13.95).

Read the step-by-step pictures on how to install these wheels on a Heritage Softail Classic by getting the issue exclusively on GreaseRag.com!

To purchase the issue, click here!

HARLEY-DAVIDSON GENUINE
PARTS & ACCESSORIES
800/258-2464
Harley-Davidson.com
SOUND MOTOR SPORTS
203/368-9411
SoundMotorSports.net