Don....from my reading on the Vrod forum (about 15-20K members) one of the problems some of the early models had was a leaking fuel flange in the tank which would be evident by loss of power, sputtering, etc. This can be checked by allowing the tank to become about 2/3 empty, peering down into the tank with a flashlight while the bike is running, and if there's a "mist" happening, it's leaking. I think they fixed this after the 04 models...again HD exercised their right not to issue a general recall on a faulty part, but instead let people try and figure it out on their own. Sound familiar?
Some have experienced a "clunk" in the front steering neck, but generally attributable to a loose or improperly assembled neck bearing/torque/fall away issue. Some have high speed "wobble". Like any bike, this can be a mulitude of things, but mostly it's been fall away related. Keep in mind some of these guys are running these bikes at speeds up to 150mph. I've not experienced any wobble issue up to the speeds I've run. The suspension out of the box, of course, sucks. There has been a recent reporting on the 07 models, an issue with a bolt engaging the water pump to the shaft not being torqued properly and coming loose, causing some issue with heat management, but it's a pretty easy fix. The fuel management is notoriously lean from about 2500 to 4000, so some bikes stumble a bit in those RPM ranges.
No issues with motors having issues though. Tolerances are tight, so a lot of sharing of MAPs happens on the forum, if you have a similar set up, with excellent results. No significant differences between engines of the same displacement. An 1130 can be made to run just as strong as an out of the box 1250. With pipes and some air box/filter mods, the 1130's are getting numbers in the 105-115 HP range, with torque from 70-80, depending. The 1250's can do 120/85, if you tinker around with the MAP enough. Those are Dyno numbers, so can be taken with whatever grain of salt you want to.
As far as the MOCO messing around with the motor, the only real changes they have made is to do the 1250 bore and heads, which have done well thus far. A lot of the guys over there put NOS on the bike and run the crap out them with no reported ill effects. No problem with trannys, though they could be a bit smoother shifting between first and second gear, IMO...just not a nice click like with the Ducati, but nothing to worry about. Clutches seem to be holding up well on those that are not obviously abused. Battery/charging capacity is marginal. The battery is turning over a motor with almost 11.5:1 compression, and you can tell it. That would have to be upgraded if ever put in a bike with a lot of juice being sucked away by radios and extra lighting. LED's are big amoung the group for that reason and others.
Probably the biggest complaint is the 3.7 gal fuel tank, but now that has been fixed for 07, and there are currently two aftermarket tanks for prior year models with good reports on them being both safe and straightforward to install. Not a 30 minute job, but one that can be done by the halfway competent home wrench. The only maintenance chore that promises to be a bit of a PITA is adjusting the valves, which requires slightly dropping the front of the motor to get to things.
The only other issue is finding techs at dealerships who know anything about the bikes. Most of them don't like to work on them, just because it's something new with some more variables thrown in there they're not used to. Plus, everything is really packed into the bike, so getting to stuff is more difficult, and adding things is a challenge just to find the space to physically put it...like a PCIII.
When HD comes out with a Revo based touring bike, I would not hesitate for a minute to give it more than a casual look. When the Ultra gets retired, if there's one on the floor, that would probably be my next bike. That'll be about 2011 for me. That'll give 'em time to get the bugs worked out of the new platform and maybe have a CVO version...
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Topic: Size matters...let's get some real motors in an HD... (Read 10484 times)