Front end problems

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A good friend, the one who convinced me to replace my Harley with a Nomad is having steering woes on one of his three Nomads, a 2001 EFI model with about 80K on the clock. One of his others has well over 100K with no issues.

Mike has a house in Port Orchard, WA along with one in St Marys Georgia. He was on a cross country ride from WA when he slowly developed a front end wobble about 1500 miles from home. At 60 MPH it was a real tank slapper. He arrived safely home but last night told me that when he is at a stop, with the wheel turned, the wheel immediately goes to center if he lets go of the bars. He rode one of his other Nomads back and will be returning in his truck to Georgia within a few days

My guess is that his steering head bearings have self destructed. He used to be able to ride that bike at 80 MPH, take his hands off the bars it she would be rock steady.

Although Mike is an excellent car/bike/anything mechanic and can build house from scratch, he is not "computer friendly". I told him I'd go on the forum and send him a link to a couple of the steering head bearing threads with the photos and process for repair.

For some of you who have changed these out, do you think Mike's problems are symptomatic of steering head bearing failure. He's going to replace the fork seals and install progressive springs while he has it apart.



I think this is the bike with the problem. That's Buddy on the tank who goes everywhere with Mike. The old dog is deaf and blind now and just loves riding. Since this pic was taken Mike made him a better riding bed.