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[DCFIREMANN]

Perhaps the low cost bidder shouldn't be chosen every time  :nixweiss

DING DING DING DING!!!!!!!BINGO!!!!!!! We finally have a winner!!!!!!

The biggest problem is the BEAN COUNTERS!!!!!!!

Be Safe

THE DAWG

[Rooster]

And probably none of them ride or things might be different.

[Midnight Rider]

It's all about balance, IMO.  HD bids some parts out to the lowest bidder that supposedly can build the item to their specifications.  The corporate attitude at HD seems to be more concerned with stock prices than with overall customer satisfaction.  That comes from the top down.  When they came out with the 110 in '07, there was absolutely NO EXCUSE for the problems that many, many people had with those engines leaking oil from the cylinder bases, rockers hitting the covers, and the several other problems buyers had.  No excuse.  If they had taken 10 pre-production bikes and actually ridden them between 5-10K miles, 5 of them would have developed oil leaks.  Recent problems with lifter failures are another example of inadequate long term testing, inferior (likely low bid) component material, etc.  IMO, what HD depends on are buyers who ride very little...how many Harley's do you see advertised that have 5K miles on them and are 5 years old? Quite a few.  Those people are not riders...they are toy buyers, bar hoppers, or weekend warriors.  Certainly, no new product is going to be 100% and not need a few tweaks here and there, but if you are producing a motorcycle that costs as much as a very, very nice cage, is intended for long distance riding, and is supposed to represent the very best of the best in your product line, to have some of the types of problems they have is simply inexcusable. The occasional electronic glitch, a bad batch of bearings, the bad tire here and there, etc is one thing, but crankshafts that are so far out of true that they start taking out other engine parts, lifters that fail and eat the rest of the engine after only 25,000 miles or so, stereo systems that do not function properly...that is NOT rocket science, and the incidence of those types of problems should be practically non-existent. Nobody here would put up with a new car/truck that had some of these types of problems, and rightfully so.  There will always be the occasional "lemon" that comes off the line for whatever reason, but they should be very far and few between on a two wheeled product costing nearly $40,000.

It's like the old skit on Laugh In where Lily Tomlin played the phone company operator and her standard line for a customer reporting a problem was "We don't care...we don't have to".  If HD was more concerned with building reliable bikes and less concerned with how much they are going to pay their CEO, how much the stock options are going to be worth, and what kind of earnings their stockholders are going to receive in any given year, and instead focused more on customer satisfaction, admitting to problems without the "they all do that" attitude, the money would follow, regardless.  Maybe not as MUCH money, but gracious plenty for all but the most greedy.

American car companies learned that lesson the hard way when they kept producing the same old chit with different paint jobs or cosmetic changes...the Japanese took over the market, and justifiably so.  Brand loyalty will only carry an inferior product for as long as there are old customers who will buy the chit regardless of quality...once those folks quit riding or die of old age, the company will find itself in a world of chit, playing catch up.

[grc]

..........................................................................
Brand loyalty will only carry an inferior product for as long as there are old customers who will buy the chit regardless of quality...once those folks quit riding or die of old age, the company will find itself in a world of chit, playing catch up.

Your entire post is right on Terry, but I especially like the part I singled out.  I've been preaching that same thing for ages, and while Harley acts like it is finally starting to see the need for something different to appeal to the younger generations, they aren't talking about better product quality, reliability, and customer service.  What they're talking about is cheaper models built in India or China that the younger folks can afford.  In the meantime they will just continue to soak the middle aged "faithful" loyalists for every nickel they can, and continue to treat them like excrement to be scraped off their boots.

The fact of the matter is that they either don't do real world testing of production level product, or they don't design tests that will expose the defects that always seem to make it to the early customers.  If they had actually tested the bikes destined for consumers that they've been building since May, there is absolutely no doubt they would have found the coolant overheating and puking issues, the thermostat housing leak issues, the clamp leak issues, the audio system issues, and most likely the hydraulic clutch issues long before the first bike was uncrated at the dealerships.  We are left to decide whether Harley just didn't do any real testing of production level bikes, or whether they knew about the problems but didn't want to delay the customer launch while they found and applied fixes to all those bikes in inventory.

No product launch ever goes exactly as scripted, and anyone who expects otherwise is clueless about how these things work.  But there are ways to minimize the impact of the inevitable screw-ups on the consumer, like batch and hold programs used during production ramp up to contain the vehicles and then apply production upgrades and fixes for problems found in the launch testing process before the vehicles are released for shipment to dealers.  This is the sort of program my old employer incorporated many years ago to improve customer satisfaction and reduce recalls when launching new models, and based on the results I saw in my industry the system works.  Little stuff gets by of course, but the big repetitive stuff does not.

Jerry

[CVO2FIXUP]

I've had two CVOs with 110" motors and experienced ZERO problems. Your point is?

Jerry

  That's because they were never taken apart and checked. Pretty sure there was damage inside.

[Skipper]

  That's because they were never taken apart and checked. Pretty sure there was damage inside.

Not necessarily. Up to 10k miles they are O.K. 

[phato1]

Not necessarily. Up to 10k miles they are O.K. 

Usually.......

[phato1]

  Certainly, no new product is going to be 100% and not need a few tweaks here and there, but if you are producing a motorcycle that costs as much as a very, very nice cage, is intended for long distance riding, and is supposed to represent the very best of the best in your product line, to have some of the types of problems they have is simply inexcusable. The occasional electronic glitch, a bad batch of bearings, the bad tire here and there, etc is one thing, but crankshafts that are so far out of true that they start taking out other engine parts, lifters that fail and eat the rest of the engine after only 25,000 miles or so, stereo systems that do not function properly...that is NOT rocket science, and the incidence of those types of problems should be practically non-existent. Nobody here would put up with a new car/truck that had some of these types of problems, and rightfully so.  There will always be the occasional "lemon" that comes off the line for whatever reason, but they should be very far and few between on a two wheeled product costing nearly $40,000.

I agree with your entire post and that of GRC.

 It does seem that HD has forgotten the AMF days (for the record I was wee lad back then) when they alienated pretty much their entire customer base with shoddy quality and crappy after the sale support. It also appears, to me at least, that there is a lack of "finite analysis" - running THEIR test bikes into the ground to expose flaws like Faulty cam chain tensioners, oil leaks, self destructing lifters, crappy cranks and now liquid leaks and overflow issues. By test bikes I would mean a production unit, not a hand assembled "skunk works" prototype. I remember the Disovery Channel program about the development of the VROD and the great testing facility HD had in AZ and how proud the company was of the "rigorous" testing that model endured. It would seem to me that every model should be subjected to the same abuse prior to public release.

Unfortunately this is apparently not the case, hence, it seems we the buyers are performing the real world testing - I wouldn't mind it if they would GIVE me the bike to test for them instead of me having to pay for it and sometimes paying for the repairs also as I did with the cam chain tensioners on my '01 Fatboy.

[iski]

http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-news/2012/motorcycle-dealer-satisfaction-study.htm

Link above is to a 2012 motorcycle customer satisfaction survey.

Guess who is on top?

Despite all the postings around and about, it appears other motorcycle brands have issues as well as more dissatisfied customers, too.  If we biatch as much as we do about our ride, and the overall brand rates that well, it says something about other brands & those who ride them.

Sure there are folks that owned an "XYZ" brand & never had 1 minutes trouble blah blah.  Have owned a few other brands through the years myself. Each had their own problem sets, and so does my current ride.

[Para Bellum]

http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-news/2012/motorcycle-dealer-satisfaction-study.htm
Link above is to a 2012 motorcycle customer satisfaction survey.

Unfortunately, it's not.  This wasn't a survey of riders after they bought and rode a bike for awhile; it was a survey of mystery shoppers to see if the dealer's sale force introduced themselves, offered a brochure and a test ride, etc.  It says nothing about reliability or service after the sale.  Quote from the story that accompanied the graphic:  "Industry benchmarking study shows widespread improvement in dealership treatment of motorcycle shoppers."  Another: "Harley-Davidson dealerships led all brands in sixteen different sales activities such as offering test rides, obtaining contact information and asking for the sale."

[Rooster]

Well said Terry. When I bought my 07 I also bought the service manuals like always and inside it said maximum pinion runout three thousands. A couple of months later Moco changed their mind and 12 thousands is acceptable. Seems to me replacement motors were getting hard on the stockholders pockets. I heard recently 12 is now 15

[dlaws01]

Well, based on the variety of comments here, it is obvious that some drink the cool-aid, some spew it out of their mouths and some try to add sugar to make it more palatable. 

[iski]

Unfortunately, it's not.  This wasn't a survey of riders after they bought and rode a bike for awhile; it was a survey of mystery shoppers to see if the dealer's sale force introduced themselves, offered a brochure and a test ride, etc.  It says nothing about reliability or service after the sale.  Quote from the story that accompanied the graphic:  "Industry benchmarking study shows widespread improvement in dealership treatment of motorcycle shoppers."  Another: "Harley-Davidson dealerships led all brands in sixteen different sales activities such as offering test rides, obtaining contact information and asking for the sale."

Searched JD Power & other places & if there is a brand survey of riders/customers could not find it.  And if Consumer Reports has anything would not trust it for a second since they are very biased toward foreign brands particularly Japanese ones to the point of being ridiculous.

Consumers vote with their $$.  Earlier in this thread I expressed an opinion that HD s not interested at present in adequately testing (my opinion) changes to existing models to keep problems away from first purchasers.  As long as their sales numbers are good, they probably see little reason to change.  If it's an engine failure, often when the bike is torn down - at a dealer for warranty work for example - there is an attitude to 'go ahead & change out XYZ as long as you are in there anyway.'  That equates to sales dollars for HD, so a failure to us is a sales opportunity for them in a lot of cases. 

Indian/Victory may well give them some real competition.  Harley more or less defines the current American cruiser & big V-Twin market. Others copy the design & style & have heard "looks like a Harley and sounds like a Harley" from so many wannabe riders it becomes funny.  But the real HD buyers as well as riders are getting older & older as each year passes.  Unless they appeal to the younger buyers, their market share will shrink.  Notice the 500cc & 750cc new bikes they are about to sell here & guess what market that is geared to.

[Para Bellum]

Consumers vote with their $$.  Earlier in this thread I expressed an opinion that HD s not interested at present in adequately testing (my opinion) changes to existing models to keep problems away from first purchasers.  As long as their sales numbers are good, they probably see little reason to change.

Agree with everything you said, but especially with the quotation above.

[FLHTCUSE7]

In my case its not the cool aid. It is am American designed and assembled product, I don't expect it to be good out of the box.  Are we good at engineering - no, are we good at manufacturing - no, are we good at process control - no.

There are a few good companies out there that learned engineering from Europe, manufacturing and process control from Japan but in general we are not good at designing and making stuff.

So with that in mind I am fine with some issues on my $42K toy. (I don't trust my life to it so does it really matter)

Firearms and parachutes - I am a little pickier there