Harley/Hannigan not on the road yet

[Spector]

The saga continues. Last Sat. after 11 weeks at Hannigans, I picked up my trike at Coach Rice's. After driving about 25 miles the ABS light came on and the rear brake started failing intermittently. I called Coach Rice and his advice was for me to drive it for another 100-150 miles to "work out the bubbles". I knowenough to know that this is dangerous, bad advice and I took the bike to Harley for their assessment. They said it was in the design and they called Hannigan to let them know that there was a fault in the system.

This week Coach Rice put a new set of tires (a little larger) on the trike. No fix.

Coach Rice took it back to Harley to have the ABS reset. Light is out but no rear brake. Harley doesn't want to fool with it any more. Can't say as I blame them, their probably afraid of getting drug into something they had nothing to do with.

The trike is on its way back up to Hannigan this weekend.

I left out a lot of details for the sake of brevity and to keep my blood pressure down. I'm sharing this so that hopefully others can avoid this trap.

[Tonyd]

Harley's ABS is meant to work with 2 wheels not 3...I suggest, unhook the ABS and ride yer ass off...I have an 03 Road King with a Hannigan set up and it brakes just fine....when ever you add something thats not built with the bike some concessions have to be made

Tony

[tis]

You must have had the first '09 Triked by them. You would have thought that they would have done more by now. I do believe Tony had the answer for you though. Ride that Trike and get the smile back.:yes::yes::yes:

[Gorilla]

Guys,

I have a 07 Police with ABS that I did my own Champion conversion on. The setup is a little different on the 07 Police model in how the ABS unit picks up the signal, but the principle is the same. Tonyd is correct. The issue when you trike an ABS Harley is they have to find a way to send a signal to the ABS/ECM from the rear brake/axle. The 08/09 Harley ABS civilian version use a special outer wheel bearing on one side in both the front and rear wheel, then has a pickup coil that goes next to this bearing on the axle.

When you trike the rear the problem becomes how to get a pickup signal. You can not just disregard the rear signal. The ABS/ECM will think that the rear wheel is locked up because it is not receiving a rotating signal from the pickup module. The rear brakes will not work properly or not at all. Trike conversions normally have some type of automotive brakes and adapting something in the rear to produce an ABS signal to the Harley ABS/ECM is tough. Nothing is impossible given time and money which is what you are running into. It appears the engineering by the trike factory has not resolved the issue. I bet most of their past conversions have been on non-ABS equipped bikes.

On my 07, I just took my rear coil pickup wire and ran the wires to the front pickup and spliced them in. My ABS/ECM is then getting the front and rear signal from just the front pickup module. It is not probably the best way, but it works. I have ABS on the front wheel only. The ABS light glows dim on the tach but I do not have a problem with that. The brakes are fine. I can lock up the rears, but not the front.

I'm not advising you on what to do to your brakes, just what I did not make MY system work. Think it through and if you are comfortable then do what you need to do for yourself. Ted

[porky]

I got the FIRST ABS trike set up by Hannigan. They took it to Factory and used mine for the test to get computer to talk to Rear end. I have had NO trouble with the ABS on my bike. Got trike in Sevierrvlle, TN. at Volunteer Cycles. Randy and KIm were very helpfull. I have a 2008 ultra glide.