When I talked to my service advisor yesterday afternoon, he said that he had to take a picture or two and send it to Milwaukee for approval. It was approved.
Which leads me to believe that what we've had listed here in this thread, IS an annomoly and not the norm. Look at all the '08 SE bikes on this forum and only a few are having powdercoat flaking issues. So as CigarMike said, with a few problems they will step up and take care of it.
In some cases if there's going to be issues with more and more bikes, it's sometimes best to be first in the line. They are more willing to get you taken care of. But once it's an epidemic, they hide their head under a rock. Maybe it should be a great HEAVY rock to boot.
Look at the guys that had the new motors installed because at that time I think the MOCO "thought" that would fix the oil leak problems. Of course some of them were running without out of spec crank runout as well. But once they failed as well and tons more poeple were complaining, the new replacement motors stopped cold in the pipeline.
So on my primary case, which I think I'm the only one here with the issue there, I got taken care with just a little documentation. The other few people with the case powdercoating around the lifter blocks flaking, this may be an issue because, hey, you have to split the motor to fix this and that's a lot of money.
I think the wheels on my bike, the '08 SERK, are the same for both '07 and '08. I have small pits on the rear wheel and they are taking care of that as well. New wheel coming next week.
I was a service manager for 15 years at a Chevy/Pontiac dealership back in the '70s and '80s. I know what these guys have to do sometimes to get things covered. In about '78 we had tons of HEI modules go bad and they would cause a no start condition. The car would be towed into the dealership and before they let them down I would reach in and hit the key and they would start right up.
We replace modules and that took care of the problem, at least for the customer. When the ASM would come and use our test equipment to test the modules for warranty review, they would pass and they would not honor the replacements. I figured out real quick that if I took a couple female wiring spads and hooked them to a 120 volt power cord, I could hook them to the module leads and plug it into the wall socket. Guess what, they failed after that and there were no marks on the modules. So you do what you have to do to get paid.
I know, I've said this before, but my experience with the MOCO is not as deep as some of yours, but I can see with the gasket/cylinder issues that they should have at least said they had a problem and they would keep trying until they got it right. Even if they didn't know the extent of the cause, I think that would have gone a LONG way to keep us loyal customers. The archive book was nothing more than a bribe to keep as quiet as we can about this problem. Not that I haven't enjoyed my book, I have, but it's still just a pay off of sorts.
The only way I see that this will go quickly and smoothly for you flaky crankcase guys, pun intended, is if you're the only few that are having the problems. If more show up and join the complaint list, the harder it's going to be to get it covered, at least quickly.
So good luck to the guys with the case flaking issues.