Six days ago I dropped off my 2011 CVO Street Glide at the dealer because I was hearing a loud intermittant knocking noise from what appeared to be the primary. I told them to keep it and ride it until they heard the noise. That day they called and said they heard nothing. Told them to keep it and really ride the darn thing. Several days go by with similar responses. Yesterday I asked the service manager if they even looked inside the primary. Guess what... NO.
So I told them to pull the primary cover and look inside. If they saw nothing I told him I would come down and take a picture of the nothing and pay them for their labor. Since I'm friendly with their top mechanic I called him at home and asked him to take a personal look for me.
This morning they said to look at what they found. Went there and they had pulled the cover, disassembled the compensator, clutch and pulled off the inner primary cover to check for any bearing failures. Wear on the parts looked normal, really looked pretty new for 15,000 miles, so I told them to put it back together. I really felt good that nothing seemed to be wrong.
After waiting about 2 hours I saw the tech coming back from the test ride. Moments later the service manager asked me to come back in the shop and listen to a noise they heard.
Guess what, COMPENSATOR NOISE!!!! They were all shocked and couldn't believe that a compensator could make intermittant noises like I was describing.
Bike is still at shop while they waiting on the already back ordered SE Compenstator, plus they are going to install a NEW automatic chain tensioner.
Just goes to show that "NORMAL" by Harely's definition is not normal for the rest of the world. It took me pushing them to search for the problem and then going so far as to tell them to take it apart at my labor expense.
Knowing the head mechanic (who by the way just did my brothers cam/piston/head work at home on the side and will be doing my Yaffee bars soon) and getting him to do a hard look proved out to be my real advantage on this one.
I will say they were all very apologetic and will not be charging me for any of this labor.