Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Turn signal stops working on the step-daughter's Harley. General consensus is a bad switch, switch is inside the grip assembly. Assembly is held together by two allen drive socket head bolts. One comes out easy. On the other, the socket is stripped out.... and the bolt is stuck. Stuck hard. Use a screw extractor, drill a pilot hole, get the extractor seated, and....... it snaps while the step daughter is torqueing it. Clean flush with the head of the bolt. Shyt!! No way that bad boy's coming out of there!

Now someone's got to drill that bolt out, but with a tool-steel extractor stuck in the middle of it, that's not going to be easy. I told her we might end up buying a whole new grip assembly, by the time we get done with "destructive disassembly" of the old one.

Stay tuned. Part deux tomorrow....

I know it's too late and the damage is done but have you ever used these extractors from Irwin?



I have a full set and they are great! I have used them to chew and remove stripped button head allens screws from rotors as well as the POS allen heads made out of provolone that they use on Ducatis.

HYPERR wrote:I know it's too late and the damage is done but have you ever used these extractors from Irwin?

No, I've never seen those. That's kind of interesting.

Step daughter works at an auto parts store, she ran over there and picked up a set of conventional extractors, which is what she broke.

jstark47 wrote:

HYPERR wrote:I know it's too late and the damage is done but have you ever used these extractors from Irwin?

No, I've never seen those. That's kind of interesting.

Step daughter works at an auto parts store, she ran over there and picked up a set of conventional extractors, which is what she broke.

You should grab yourself a set. The bite and the grip they have is incredible.

Another lifesaver for me and probably a must have for anyone with an older motorcyle is this impact screwdrive by Sears Craftsman.



It has saved me many times. My most recent use was removing the altenator inspection cover when replacing the starter on my 900SS. The cover is held by a phillips screw made out of provolone that is totally recessed. A shot of WD40 and a few whacks from the hammer loosened that stupid stripped phillips.

I looked at the Harley again, the problem with the Irwin extractor is clearance alongside the head of the bolt. The grip assembly comes very close to the bolt head on one side, I doubt there's room to get the extractor over the bolt.

After fiddling around all week with various size drill bits, chisels, and punches, trying to either get the bolt head off or shatter/remove the broken-off extractor shaft, she finally got that damned bolt out tonight. It was the darnedest thing - while working on chiseling off the last remaining bit of bolt head - the bolt started to turn!! I guess all the banging we did finally loosened it. Once the bolt was out, the rest of the grip assembly came apart easy. I'm pretty sure the switch was the culprit - contact on it was pretty eroded - 20 years of use does that I guess. She'll get a new switch from the local H-D dealer, and that will be that.

It would have been a 20 minute job if that bolt hadn't been stuck.

Time for another installment: went to the local dealership (Barb's H-D in Collingswood, NJ) last Saturday and found out the turn signal switch has been discontinued by H-D! I know the bike's 21 years old, but am really surprised about that, because that switch and grip assembly were made for years and years and years. It's not like it's a single-year part.

So we went online to the J&P Cycles website, found the part in 2 minutes and ordered. (Shoulda done that in the first place.) Ordered the switches for both sides because if the left side failed, the right side switch is probably close.

HYPERR wrote:Another lifesaver for me and probably a must have for anyone with an older motorcyle is this impact screwdrive by Sears Craftsman. It has saved me many times. My most recent use was removing the altenator inspection cover when replacing the starter on my 900SS. The cover is held by a phillips screw made out of provolone that is totally recessed. A shot of WD40 and a few whacks from the hammer loosened that stupid stripped phillips.

A great big +1 on the impact driver, had one of those in the old days when I first started riding, they were a prerequisite for anyone doing work on their bike...