2004 Road King - Surge & Front Brake Noise

Just purchased 2004 Road King, 1200 miles approximately, dropped off for first service oil change, was told by the dealer that the brake noise in the front was normal as well as the surge at about 35mph. Would like to know if anyone has information or the same problem with their Road King? Would like to know if anyone has a website for technical bullentins from Harley Davidson?

What type of brake noise are you talking about? Continuous or just when applied? Friction, scraping, squeaking? If you straddled the hood of a brand new $100,000 Mercedes you'd hear brake noise. Are you comparing it to previous Harleys you've ridden?

What type of surge? Are the brakes surging? Are you talking about a fuel surge? Does it do it everytime? If it's a fuel surge, are you riding carb or fuel injected bike?

You can go to Harley Davidson's website under Products, Wrenching dept. and enter your VIN and it will tell you about any recalls, but I don't know if it includes service bulletins. Is your dealer not friendly enough to relate that info to you? I've had to shop around over the years, but I won't deal with an arrogant HD dealer. There's too many good, competent, and customer friendly ones around.

There's some saavy techs who frequent this forum. If you give them some more specific info, I'm sure they can find a solution to your issues. Also, the best accessory you can buy for your new bike is the service manual. I have bought one for each of the last 6 bikes I owned and they are extremely helpful. Harley manuals are especially well written for all skill levels, in my opinion.

Good luck and enjoy your ride.

more info on brake noise/engine surge

Thanks for your help the brake noise is a light scraping noise all the time unless brake pressure is applied to front brake.the surge is at steady state speed from 10 to 35 mph it is a engine surge also 2 times it has had a lean missfire after driving 20 miles at 55-60 mph then stopping at a light it spit back in the air cleaner. once it stalled but restarted fine.the bike is a fuel injected and has 1200 miles. I am not comparing it to another harley since this is my first one. I purchased both the electrical and mechanical service manual for the bike. Being an automotive tech for the last 25 years, I feel that is some sort of drivability problem.

I have a 2004 Road King Classic. With the 95ci big bore kit, my front brakes scrape also, This should not worry you because this is normal. Just enjoy the ride, remember you have a 2 year warrenty.....Ride Safe, David

brake pad compound

The scraping noise you hear is a slight dragging of the pads...more audible because of the cheap stock compounds. Its the nature of the new (in 2000) four piston calipers. I asked this same question three years ago on this forum and was set straight. Buy some Lindall racing brake pads (either gold or "Z" pads) and your noise will not only go away your brakes will stop much better. buy a service manual and do them yourself too...its easy. If you want more information on the lindall racing brakes, go to the direct parts home page and click on the articles link. They've done reviews of lots of different products and you can find tech issues like how to tune a cv carb etc. Good luck.

I read the reviews of the Lyndall pads by CD. A little confusion.

Can either the Z pads or the Gold pads be used with stock rotors? I got the impression that the Z pads can only be used with polished rotors.

I had thought that as well...until I read some posts on another forum where people were using the Z pads with great sucess with their stock rotors. Maybe they would be optimized working with polished surfaces but I can't see any reason why they would not work with the stock rotors.