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[MN JIM]

Did Harley change engine design after coolant leak lawsuit?  I did a search didn't see anything

[Road Dad]

No. No need to.

[grc]

Why change the engine design?  The problems were related to poor design and part quality of the cooling system components, not the engine.  No different than any other new items from Harley in recent memory, the first couple years are just beta testing by the customers so Harley won't have to spend money properly testing anything.  It's been working for them for at least a decade now, and people keep buying them, so obviously Harley knows what it's doing (at least on that one point).

Jerry

[DCFIREMANN]

Why change the engine design? The problems were related to poor design and part quality of the cooling system components, not the engine.  No different than any other new items from Harley in recent memory, the first couple years are just beta testing by the customers so Harley won't have to spend money properly testing anything.  It's been working for them for at least a decade now, and people keep buying them, so obviously Harley knows what it's doing (at least on that one point).

Jerry

Exactly!!!!!

Be Safe

THE DAWG

[journeyman]

If I remember correctly they blamed a bad part at first.
But ultimately had to reflash the bikes to keep the fan on for an additional 30 seconds at high temps after shut down.   

[grc]

If I remember correctly they blamed a bad part at first.
But ultimately had to reflash the bikes to keep the fan on for an additional 30 seconds at high temps after shut down.

They blamed several parts, from the pressure caps to the lines to the clamps to the actual overflow bottles, and I'm pretty sure I missed one or two more.    And indeed all of those various parts had issues, either vendor quality or a design that wasn't robust. 

The original setup used coolant temperature to determine if the fans would run after shutdown of the engine, and for how long (quoted from Harley document, "the fans will run after engine shutdown until coolant temperature reaches 203 °F (95 °C), or three minutes, whichever occurs first.")  I'm not sure what they are doing now, but IMHO a better approach would have been to keep the pump and fans running until the coolant temp dropped to a lower number than they originally used.  And using time alone isn't the best approach either.

I seem to remember a couple fairly recent threads from owners of current year models that still have problems with coolant puking btw.  So obviously they still have issues that haven't been fixed.  What is it called after beta testing?  Whatever that is, it appears we have moved from beta testing to that third option.

Jerry

[MN JIM]

Thanks for the responses, my dealer (which i do trust the Service Manager) says with all the twin cooled models, they have replaced one thermostat,  and two coolant pumps both I believe he said were 2014 models

[Mr. Warlock]

More to it than just that. However, I do not recall them actually doing a reflash recall for the fan temps. I do think that they tried that on a few to see if it helped (masked) the problem.
The biggest culprit was/is the thermostat housing.

AND..............Heads that are seeping coolant either into the combustion chamber or into the exhaust port. Mine is actually seeping into the exhaust port through a poor casting. If your loosing coolant and can't figure out where it's going, pull the exhaust off and see if there is rust forming on the inside edge of the header where it meets the port.

[DCFIREMANN]

It was more then a reflash to just keep the fans on. We have member here that actually was on of the dealer mechanics that was involved in the FIX. If I remember correctly there were two different thermostats one in the head (or for head/coolant temp) and the other was measuring engine oil temp. They were fighting each other and the lower temp stat was over riding the higher temp stat. So your coolant was never cooling down like it should upon shut down. Hence the puking. Yes the first blame was on the coolant tank caps. Then it went on for a while till they got the software right. I have not heard a thing about this be an on going problem since the fix.

Be Safe

THE DAWG