I have experienced the same on my 13. It actually is dangerous, depending upon when the bike decides to sputter. Since I will be upgrading the bike soon, I will live with it for the time being. However, this should not be the case, and given the safety issue, should be a recall item in my opinion.
You are absolutely correct, it is a safety defect and unfortunately it isn't anything new with Harley. My '05 stumbled and stalled, as did earlier and later model years, and of course Harley did absolutely nothing to fix the problem. They would much rather sell you illegal tuning devices and other parts to fix the problem, and they and their dealers have made tons of money doing just that over the years.
This same sort of problem results in recalls in the automotive industry, but Harley for whatever reason is still being given special treatment by various government agencies like EPA and NHTSA. Before you just assume Harley won't do anything and go out and spend a grand on fixing it yourself, at least contact them and get your complaint on record. You may also want to go to the NHTSA website and file a complaint there. If enough people would do this, we might see some changes in how H-D responds to these issues.
Btw, if you do decide to buy a tuning device and fix the problem yourself, at least consider buying something other than what Harley sells. I refused to give them money to fix mine and went with an aftermarket tuning device. I'd love to see more folks take the same attitude. As long as Harley is making big bucks selling stuff to fix their sorry crap, they don't have much incentive to fix the problems in production do they.
Jerry
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Topic: Popping through air intake (Read 1867 times)