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[porthole]

Did 300 miles Sunday, 200 with my wife ( trying out my fourth seat). All was well, then on Wednesday morning I hopped on the bike to head for work, shifted into second gear and the bike died, barely cranked over, backfiring. Managed to get it running and made a very noisy retreat to back to the garage.

Went to work in the truck hoping it was just spark plugs.
Today when checking the bike it sounded as though it lost a valve, compression check confirmed it, no compression in the rear cylinder  :-/.

So BamaHarleyDude that is one of the reasons I have a trailer.

Didn't make an appointment just pulled up to the service entrance and gave Tony the service manager my sob story.

Told me to just leave it outside but as I was pushing it over to park it he came out to help me get it inside as it was starting to rain. That was nice considering they had 27 new 07 models all over the street in various stages of un-crating and everyone was very busy.

Little disappointed, only have 10880 miles on the bike. Reminds me of my POS 1974 XLCH, that bike dropped the crank at 4500 miles

[ace4059]

HOPE IT IS STILL UNDER WARRANTY!? Sounds like that could get expensive

[Road_Glider]

Yep sorry to hear something like that.  Let us know what it was.

[Twolanerider]

At least it happened in the driveway rather than a thousand miles from home on a Saturday night after closing time.  [smiley=nixweiss.gif]

[porthole]

Well the shop tore the bike down already, seems it has bent valves, front and rear cylinders.

Service called for authorization (don't know why) and some guy named Hector denied it, saying I abused the bike and over rev'ed it [smiley=furious3.gif]

Boy am I pissed ... called customer service and got a little runaround but left the call with "that someone from tech support will contact the dealer to try and figure out what happened"

WTF, the valves are bent, replace them.

The bike has 10884 miles and is 16 months old. On my way to the dealer now to see for myself.

[ccr]

Service called for authorization (don't know why) and some guy named Hector denied it, saying I abused the bike and over rev'ed it [smiley=furious3.gif]

Even if you did over rev the engine once or twice, you would not "live" in the area all the time.  We have all down shifted to get a little more control in a corner or on-ramp etc.  How would the tech on the phone, be able to make that determination?  The MoCo service tech is listening to what the service manager or writer is telling him over the phone and the mechanic that said it to start with is still in the shop continuing to work on bikes, cause that is how he gets paid.  

[Fired00d]

Sorry to hear about you scooter, even worse what they are telling you about correcting the problem. Good luck, and let us know the outcome.

 [smiley=pumpkin.gif]
Ride Safe,
Fired00d
 [smiley=fireman.gif]

[arcticdude]

You're have to "over-rev" it enough to get valve float to bend a valve.  I'm not sure a semi-stock HD can get there.  Especially if the stock limiter is still in place.  I think I'd have a "chat" with the service dept.

[grc]

porthole,

The only way you can "over rev" one of these things to the point of valve float is if you miss a shift and grab a handfull of throttle, or just sit in neutral and nail the throttle.  I'm pretty sure you'd remember if you had done something like that.  Otherwise, the rev limiter will shut you down well before the valves will float.  If it didn't, that in itself is a warrantable issue.

There are other things that will cause bent valves that have nothing to do with over revving.  Jumped cam chain, broken valve springs, sticking valve, etc.  So don't give up, hopefully someone with a little more sense at H-D will get involved.  Good luck.

Jerry

[SBB]

Porthole

Listen to Jerry ,,, he's right

That whole line below is B/S
"Service called for authorization (don't know why) and some guy named Hector denied it, saying I abused the bike and over rev'ed it"

The rev limiter shuts you down at 5800 and with the S/E download 6200 is the limit.
Either of those limits is not high enough to float the valves.  
DAMN dealerships ,, don't let them hose you!


  [smiley=soapbox.gif]

[ace4059]

The dealerships make a huge profit on warranty work. I don't understand why your dealer would even hint to the tech rep that your problem was caused by over-revving. Remember the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Keep on complaining to dealer and HD, phone calls, E-mails, certified letters, etc. until the matter is taken care of to your satisfaction. Perhaps 4Stars could help you w/ some advice on how to handle the matter since he deals w/ these same issues every day regarding cars and trucks. Any advice 4Stars? If you don't hear from him, cause he likes to ride his bike a lot, send 4Stars a PM and see if he can give you any advice on how to handle this w/ the dealer and factory.

[porthole]

Just to be clear here, the dealer did not suggest that I over rev'ed the bike. That came from the dipchit warranty person.
I don’t believe the dealer would intentionally cheat someone out of a warranty repair (I’m talking about my dealer here, not in general)
I forgot to ask the dealer why they called in the first place but my guess is because this is the first SE engine they had this problem with. I’ll be checking Monday.

•      Also, no way I floated a valve with revs. I had just left my house and shifted into 2nd gear, I was only in second for a few seconds when the engine went south, at first I though it was seizing up by the way it slowed down (it also cranks over very slow now for some reason).

•      This happened on Wednesday, 1 block from my house. I shifted from 1st to 2nd at about 2-2200, I keep it quiet at 6am when I go to work.

•      I have a race tuner map in the ECM and the rev limit is set to 6K, of which I have only hit it twice, and that was a year ago after I did the pipes, air cleaner and download, just to see how it ran.

•      Tech support had the mechanic pull the side cover and check the cams, everything ok in that end, including the follower. BTW, there was no tell tale mark on the piston from valve contact.

•      The HD tech support numbskull even had the mechanic go check the rear tire to see what it looked like (still plenty of tread with almost 11K miles)

•      The service manager was mistaken; it is only the rear exhaust valve that is bent, which they don't have in stock.

•      I’m kind of thinking that a guide might be a problem; it was 100 degrees here Sunday and was riding 2 up for 200 of my 300 miles, up in Bear Mountain, NY.
I also mentioned this to customer service “what’s the matter these pansy Screamin’ Eagle motors can’t handle a little New Jersey summer heat”? She took offense to that.

•      I also asked the customer service rep if she was familiar with the “Magnusson Moss Warranty Act”, because some tech out in Wisconsin had no business accusing me of abusing my bike. She got a little snippy with me then saying” we have been in business for 103 years ……..”

•      Prior to my Fire career I did 18 years as an Class A Line Technician for a couple of Chrysler-Dodge dealers, I am no stranger to engines or warranty work (in 1984 I was the number one tech in the New York Zone (which covers the tri-state area) for Chrysler

•      Something I noticed while looking at the torn down engine, there is a lot of carbon on the pistons for only 11K miles, they said that was normal.  

[Unbalanced]

Port,

I would not allow these guys to ruin or even allow yourself to believe you did it when you went for a ride with your lady.   Even at 100 degrees unless you were sitting in traffic and not moving like a bikeweek you should have no issues.   Its 90+ here with a 90 to 100 percent humidity more times than not in florida and the only times i have seen this is with faulty equipment or someone sitting in traffic and even then the bike usually shuts off with a sensor or the guy does exactly what the dipchit on the phone suggested, cause when the libations hit the common sense does go out the window .    Forgot the one other way I have seen this occur and that is with detonation.  In my case too much compression for the cam and couldnt retard the timing enough.

I would definately not let them off the hook, what you found is most likely a weakness in product if it lasted 10k miles.   It was just its time to go.   But since you have the heads off might be a good time to have them check spring tensions / put in roller rockers / make sure everything is aligned correctly.   Might also make sure that the pushrods arent bent even a little.   I would also suggest making sure no excessive wear has been done to the lifters or that one hadn't gone bad?  

Best of luck with it,

-harry

[BLM777]

Problem seems to be why Milwaukee was even involved.  One would have to guess that the service writer was inexperienced and felt the need to get HD approval on a warranty issue that would be resolved in the usual course of business with any dealer.  One way or another, HD owns this one.  

[grc]

Problem seems to be [highlight]why Milwaukee was even involved[/highlight].  One would have to guess that the service writer was inexperienced and felt the need to get HD approval on a warranty issue that would be resolved in the usual course of business with any dealer.  One way or another, HD owns this one.  

Bill,

I'm not sure about H-D, but I know that auto companies require prior approval on some types of warranty repairs, or any warranty repairs if a dealer is running well above average on warranty cost.  It's possible this was one of those deals where prior approval was required.  Still doesn't excuse the stupid answer from the rep.  All I can say is he must have been a rookie trying to be the bad cop and impress his bosses.

Jerry