If you ride a Harley..don't go over 50.

[DJ Down Under]

I thought this was interesting news..and bad news for Harley Davidson..and even worse news for poor old Tom.

DJ


News
Man suing Harley-Davidson over 'wobble'

April 13, 2006

For years, Tom Hawkinson loved nothing more than to hit the open road on his Harley-Davidson.

But as the Oak Lawn man cruised down Archer Avenue near Lemont in 2004, the front end of his motorcycle began to wobble.

Seconds later, the 44-year-old was thrown from his bike and left with life-changing brain injuries.

Wednesday, Hawkinson filed suit against Harley-Davidson, claiming the company knew years earlier that there was a defect in the bike.

Before the crash, he was a vice-president at his family's Hawkinson Ford in Oak Lawn, but today "he can't work and is unable to maintain the life he had before," said his attorney, Max Maccoby.

"He was a successful businessman," he said. "Now he's incapacitated and has gone through a number of brain surgeries."

The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, seeks unspecified damages, but claims that users have filed multiple complaints with federal safety agencies and multiple negligence lawsuits because of defects on the Dyna Wide Glide and other bikes in the company's FLH series. One suit filed in Chicago in 2004 made claims similar to Hawkinson's.

Said to begin at 50 mph



A Harley-Davidson spokesman declined comment.

Maccoby said the wobble when the motorcycle exceeds 50 mph is so widely known that repair shops advertise repairs specific to the problem on these models.

Those "design or manufacturing defects," the lawsuit says, caused the crash and Hawkinson's injury.

"A driver coming toward him saw his front light wobble back and forth for about 10 seconds before he was thrown," Maccoby said. "Now, he suffers from disorientation, he fatigues easily, and he can't multitask. He tried going back to work, but he couldn't."

Earlier suits filed against Harley-Davidson claim the shaking and instability come from the front end of the motorcycle, as if it is off-balance from the rear tires.

[Deans BMW]

Do you supose that he was only wearing a Do Rag on his head...........

[fnfalman]

Nah, the guy was probably having on one of those cool gangsta wraparound googles.

Anyway, I find it hard to believe that a HD would have front wheel wobble badly enough to chuck somebody off at 50-MPH. The damn thing is longer than the Queen Mary and heavier than the Titanic. Plus it has no power to speak off, so how do you get the front wheel light enough to induce headshake so bad that throws the bike out of control?

[arkline]

Head shake on certain Harleys has reached the level of urban legend. I've even heard motocops talk about it. But then... My 1150R had a surging problem that didn't exist either.

[TorqueMonsterMT-01]

I can buy the story of headshake at 50 I suppose, but I find it hard to believe that the thing shook for ten seconds and the guy had no opportunity to slow down and recover. Ten seconds is a long time.

Maybe those HD brakes just don't work very fast!:)

[DarthRider]

Man, it's hard to know who to root for in this deal!

Dave

[BobFV1]

I don't think anybody ever selected a Harley because it was the most mechanically sound motorcycling alternative...

Also, barring an extraordinary mecahnical problem, this sound like something a skilled rider should have been able to deal with - I know I wasn't there, but it sounds like a classic case of "it was the bike and not me".

I had a student this week on one of the school's Kawasaki crotch rockets insisting that the bike would not function properly, causing it to stall - this at the end of the first day of riding. I got on the bike, rode it around the range twice, and dropped the student from the class. Maybe I am getting crotchety in my old age....

[arkline]

Headshake is an interesting phenomenon. I have a friend here who is an MSF instructor who, riding back from Idaho in clear weather, fell off his bike at around 60 due to a sudden, unexpected, and violent tank slapper. He had been doing, um, around 90 and got the thing slowed to sixty before the wheels went out from under him. He was scraped up a bit, but the bike was totaled. Strange thing is that it was a 1500GL, not a bike you would have expected to begin funny, harmonic oscillations...Not one that usually requires a steering damper, either.

And of course the forensics after the fact never really pinpointed a first cause. Loose head bearings? Too much weight on the back wheel? Hit a chuck hole? Nobody knows...Especially the guy who went through the experience.

[Capt. Blackadder]

...so how do you get the front wheel light enough to induce headshake so bad that throws the bike out of control?
Plop a fatass biker mama on the back of it? :D

[BobFV1]

Plop a fatass biker mama on the back of it? :D

Stop talking like that - it's making me hot.....

[Dallara]

Hey, Arkline...

Earlier Honda Gold Wing Interstates had one hell of a deceleration wobble problem... One so bad it caused a complete recall of any GL-1100 factory equipped with a fairing. It didn't happen all the time, but under the conditions as you were slowing down, brakles or no brakes, and went through about 45 MPH the damn things would start wiggling the bars in your hands... Sometimes simply gripping the bars a bit firmer would stop it, but other times the wobble became so self-energizing and increasing in amplitude it would scare the beejeezus out of ya' - I know, as I rode so many customers' bikes that had the problem, and all the guys around our shop got real good at getting the damn to wobble just to prove the customer had a legitimate beef, mainly because Honda wouldn't admit there was a problem at first...

Honda's cure for the nasty wobble?

They sent us these big cast iron weights and a set of brackets, which all mounted up between the fork tubes and triple clamps, all a bit forward as though they were a headlight on an unfaired bike. The damn weights weighed about 10 or 12 pounds. These supposedly changed the oscillation frequency in such a way that the wobble went away... Must have been something to it, as they did cure the problem, but man, oh man, I never trusted a GL-1100 Interstate after that - and did everything I could to avoid riding one.

When the GL-1200's came out they had much alrger fork tubes and completely different front end geometry, and no wobbles...

But all that was a long, long time ago.

Cheers!

Allan (Dallara - NACD)

[Acacia]

Just got back from riding the northern part of the TX Hill country. This set of posts was on my mind during the 500 plus miles.

The wind along I 10 was blowing hard off the Starboard Quarter - right front. Traffic moving at an indicated 75 -80 plus. Passing some 18 wheelers was a chore with the wind blast off the front of the tractor. The gusts off overpasses had me hanging on as the bike was hit by gusts - some pucker moments. It was not pleasant and I was glad to get home and off the roads. R1150R I would consider a stable platform.

There are so many factors that will make a bike unstable apart from the design - such as described above. I have ridden behind many HD's as they tailwag at speed and could see that given some side gusts they could be un-manageble - any bike could be.

Going to be interesting to see how this pans out - rider ability/decsion making responsibility or bike design?

[Wild Will]

to ride a dinosaur at 50 mph. Hard to believe that HD would open themselves to this kind of lawsuit when they could avoid the expense by fixing a problem. Recall the side gas tanks GM trucks had that exploded upon side impact? Weird shit happens on this planet. Nobody's safe any more.
Last summer, we were riding north through the redwoods near Garberville when we came upon a long line of Harley Dinosaurs. We passed them and at the front of the pack was a female (I could tell by her fun bags) riding pillion on her bad boy's bike. She wore a salad bowl beanie and a white thong, and her large curded thighs swung free, dangerously close to the rear wheel. Her dimpled posterior caused us ALL to slow down to take in this amazing scenery. Up ahead we stopped for fuel. They all rolled in, and Ms. Pillion de-biked. She was the real article! The sight of a gnarled bottle blonde, somewhere north of 225 tightly wrapped in white thong and calf length black lace up boots, replete with road grime slicks running up the back of her puddled and dented hamstrings was too much! She had tattoos and I spied several male names on board.
Out here nobody inflamed with The Motor Company has any palaver with the sport bike crowd, so no greetings were exchanged, but they sure did get our attention. I'll never forget that sickening sight. Was she afraid of deer? Nah.
Another time at Laguna Seca WSB, at Cannery Row festivities and cop-overseen madness they allow on one night per year, there was a guy on a GSXR 1000 leaving the curb with a gorgeous female on pillion, in a bikini. The guy thinks he's the focus of the whole undulating crowd of thousands (it was THE GIRL) and he cooly peels off a wheelie, at which time the glowing skinned, perfect 10 babe falls off the back onto her sweet asphalt! The crowd is dumbfounded. A collective groan rises up and she quickly re-mounts and he rides away slowly as hundreds chant after him, ASSHOLE, ASSHOLE, ASSHOLE.
That guy, and gal, will never forget that close call. Had he not ridden away he'd have probably gotten some unfriendly nudges from the crowd, disgusted by what they (and I) saw.
That Harley with the Dairy Queen on back didn't display any headshake at around 70, but there was quite a stabilizing counterweight on that hardtail after all.

[DarthRider]

Wild Will, you can certainly spin a tale!

Dave

[Deans BMW]

Wild Will, you can certainly spin a tale!



No kidding, can you imagine a coffe table book filled with his snippets and pictures.

[RandyRandy]

"...Archer Avenue near Lemont..."

That road ain't exactly smooth. I ride it a lot (and know where the worst patches are) but yesterday almost had the handle bars yanked out of my hands by a big pot hole. It's be nice if Harley fixed up that road for me.

Seriously, though, it would not be the first time a corporation put profits ahead of safety.