Thank you Don, you make a great straight man!
OK gang, listen up. Lesson Number One: Never jump the gun on determining a problem! Use due process to determine what happened before claiming what happened. I must apologize if my apparent motor failure scared people away from what was done to improve this bike. My motor did not fail! Do I have your attention and curiosity now?
More HD junk broke on the bike. The entire motor is fine. It was broken in beautifully. The combustion chamber, pistons and cylinders look beautiful. No valve failure or any failure except for one. More HD junk.
What HD junk you ask. Another automatic compression release failure. Your engine does not run with the stock ECM with the ACR's disconnected. Because of the marvelous design of our ACR system on the 110's, we've been having nothing but problems with the ACR's. Over the course of the last 8 months, the wiring harness, which lays on top of the head and under the rocker boxes in the center of the head, eventually fried the wiring harness to the rear ACR! When it finally burnt all the way thru, it caused the wire to short out, instantly killing the engine. The instantaneous shutdown of the engine at 90 MPH, caused enough remaining fuel to detonate, and blew the ACR right out of the top of the head! Took all the threads out of the hole. Like a spark plug blowing out of the old Shovelheads. Explains failure of the cylinder leakdown test and compression test. There is no damage to anything but the ACR hole in the rear head.
How do we fix our ACR problems? We get rid of them, that's how. Like all the HD weak links that needed to be removed and replaced with stronger, better racing chit, the ACR's must go too. It's the stupidest design I've ever seen. They're completely inaccessible without removing a lot of stuff. They are tied into the ECM instead of the starter, yielding undue complications instead of keeping it simple. And the wiring is sitting in a frying pan, waiting to burn up at some point or another.
MAKE SURE YOU CHECK YOUR ACR WIRING AT THE HEADS!!!Well, it's a weak link. How do I get rid of them? The SERT allows you to turn off the ACR's. Well don't I need them? You should have CR's on big inch motors, even with stock compression. Who said they need to be automatic. Who said the need to be inaccessible. Another re-engineering of HD's crappy design is required here for reliability. I'll be welding the ACR holes closed and having Manual CR's installed into the heads. I'll drop a bare minimum base map in from the SERT I'll install, and program the ACR's off. This will allow the motor to run on the PC, while disabling the ACR's. I don't mind manual CR's. They're much more reliable anyway. I'll then ride back up to Joes to have the bike tuned with the SERT. If we wind up with a better tune from the PC, I'll retune the PC with the newly mapped ECM. If we get a great tune from the SERT, I'll remove the PC entirely.
It really sucks that more crappy HD chit ruined another vacation. I'll be able to salvage the best part of it, which is seeing my friends in HS! I'm not happy I won't have my bike, and that I lost the first 5 days in KY. But it is what it is. My motor's fine, we're fine, and I'll have made another improvement to the many issues we have with these 110's. The head gasket did not blow and held fine. There were absolutely no leaks. The oil was from blow-by from the breathers, which no one can stop. The breathers blow by. Period! Even with MistFree's. Don't waste your money on them.
To all that have been following this thread, I need you to know that the engineering and parts for this build were sound! The bike ran unbelievable until it shut off. Nothing to do with the build. The parts should be back next week, and I should be on the road by next weekend! With all the homework I did to eliminate the inferior items on this motor, I still missed one. And it bit me in the ass and I paid for it. But I found it, eliminated it, and fully expect this motor to hold together as designed and planned. I have full confidence in my designer and builder and only another HD weak link caused this. I feel great about that, and I'll take it over anything else I could have found.
Learn your bike. Learn your motor. Pay attention to everything you see and hear. Make inspections of things you don't even think need it. But I stand behind my build and am proud to say it held up to everything. I still believe I built it right and it will last and not leak. Now we're back to only time telling. Thanks for everyone's support throughout this trying time. I've been very upset the last few days. I feel absolutely great about my bike again. It will come back stronger than ever!
Hoist!
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Topic: Cybil, My New ‘07A FLHRSE3TQ (Read 102737 times)