[kingomtn]

Armed with lube gun and 90* fitting I lubed, and lubed and lubed the steering head bearing. I could see no evidence of lube coming out around the top and bottom prior to beginning. Bike has 16k miles, so I believe it had not been lubed in the past.
Is it my imagination or does the first time lubing this assy require A LOT of grease?
I can imagine the factory only smears some grease on the bearings and leaves it to the maintenance schedule to fill up the interstitial space.

 

[High Torque]

Depending on the stroke of the gun, or if the cartridge won't purge the air you will pump like you were 13 again! Mine took around 12 pumps before any push out around the neck.

 

[berserker]

Takes a ton of grease, before you see it oozing out. How much you actually need, dunno. I pump until I see it. But I am not a neat freak.

 

[DR_DEUCE]

First time you grease it, should usse approx 1/2 a tube....the large tube.

 

[Ed Y]

The bearings are greased when the front fork is assembled. And the fork neck is NOT filled up. In normal situations, that's more than adequate. This is not a high speed application. I've taken apart front forks on 50 year old bikes. Original grease was still there and bearings were fine.

With that said, it also doesn't hurt to fill up the neck unless you're using grease that's going to ooze or drip when it gets extremely hot. Then you're gonna have a mess.

 

[MegaGlide]

Can I turn this into an oil thread?
Bel-Ray waterproof grease works great and doesn't run like that crap the manual recommeds.
Hell, Harley's own wheel bearing grease is more resistant to the heat than what is recommended...

 

[kingomtn]

I used the sticky red lucas stuff, have to see how it performs. Being a bit of a neat freak I'll keep an eye on it.
fwiw, the 1/2 tube estimate is about spot on, I kept pumping and pumping, thinking wthe 90* grease gun fitting makes it a lot easier to access.