Paranoia made me put some duct tape over the battery terminal bolts yesterday. It looks like it would be ok as long as nothing comes loose. Long term I might consider putting some felt or rubber on the inside of the tank near the bolts to prevent incidental contact. I want to see if the MoCo has plans for this before I spend $2.

 

Beautiful shot of that Fatboy.

 

I tryed to post the photo but it keeps telling me the file is too large. I Dropped the bike off at the dealer yesterday, they looked confused. They said I should get the bike back Thur or Fri, A week of downtime during our beautiful indian summer here in santa cruz, CA, is not good news.

The dealer said they were going to replace the fried oil lines and find the bad ground. They did acknowledge the magnitude of what had happened and what could have happened with the bikes engine if it was not turned off right away. They said they would notify HARLEY. I hope the problem is obvious so they fix it the first time and I don't have to worry about it happening again.

I'll update as soon as I here something from the dealer. I'll keep trying to post the pic for entertainment purposes.

 

Get an account at Photobucket.com and post them there. Then you can link the images to here easy. The account is free so it will only take a few minutes to set it up and be posting your pics.

If you don't want to do that PM me and I'll put them in my account and post them for you.
I wanna see these ASAP cause I don't want to have that happen to my bike.

 

Ok, lets see if this works. Here is the pic you can see the electrical current blew the braided return line totally apart. The other line you see is discolored from the flames and barely holding on.

[IMG]local://upfiles/19589/3FBD248ABF1A47DD8D60B81AB633C147.jpg[/IMG]

 

Mind you this bike is an 07 TRAIN, 6 days old with 300 miles on her.

 

OUCH!!!! That is seriously ugly. They better come up with something better than a little bit of electrical tape. Like a moulded chunk of hard plastic for that.

 

Rino-

I had the same problem you encountered but was riding my bike when the oil lines burned out. The main wire coming from the postive battery terminal has insulation and a plastic covering. On my 2007 FLSTN, the plastic covering did not cover the insulation high enough and the insulation wore through where the wiring passed the frame. The bike had 500-550 miles when the insulation wore through. I was 4 minutes into an 8 minute ride (lunchtime) and felt the bike 'miss'. I checked the gas tank to see if I was low on fuel and had about 120 miles on the tank. I kept going to see if the 'miss' would work itself out and it happened again. I pulled into a local gas station to fill up and see if I had some bad gas etc. I looked down and saw oil on the ground on the right side. I pushed the bike away from the pump and started looking for the problem. The bike blew an oil line (exactly like your picture). I touched the oil line and a small spark occured and a fire resulted. I blew the flames out (the fire was oil burning on the pipes) and called my wife to come pick me up. The local dealership (not the dealership I bought the bike from) picked up the bike. I went to drop off the FOB and warn them that the bike might burn down their shop! They didn't believe me until I showed them that when you touch the oil line the bike starts smoking. They tried to remove the battery but the negative terminal was 'arc'ing' onto the frame and shocking the shop tech. The battery caught fire and they used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire... (I do have pictures and will try to post in a seperate post tomorrow when at work). Yes- watching your brand new bike catch on fire for the 2nd time in a day is very depressing! The dealer that sold the bike picked it up the next day and while it took longer than it should have, I ended up with a brand new bike. My bike blew oil down the road for over a mile and caught fire twice. You were lucky that you were not on the bike. I have been waiting to see if I had the only bike with this problem but I am now convinced that this is a manufacturing problem or design error. You need to have your bike completely checked out for potential eletrical problems after they fix the main grounding problem! Please check and see if the main wiring coming off of your battery has a hole in the insulation from the positive or negative side. I would demand an extended warranty if not a brand new bike.

Please let us know what you find.

 

Thanks for all the info. I would definatley be demanding a new bike if I had run the bike without oil as 90% of the oil pumped out within 15-20 seconds. I would be questioning the health of the motor. fortunatley I was just moving the bike out of the garage and shut it down as soon as I saw the chaos. Different story if it happens again. Luckily my flame was like your first, small enough i could blow it out. No other damage as a result of the flame. Our two stories are almost identical I'm sure there are others out there.

Anyway, yeah it sucked having the bike for less than a week and this stuff happening, not to mention it happened on my birthday, which was the reason I was moving the bike out of the garage, to make room for the PARTY.

Enjoy your deluxe, I had an 05 deluxe, which was destroyed after some A** H*le hit me from behind doing about 50. Wasn't pretty but i'm back on a bike which is the important part. Love the deluxe but my superstition kept me away from it this time. Love the TRAIN too!

P.S. have you put any after market pipes on your 07 yet?

 

Wow,
it seems in the end its hasnt been as bad as it sounded at first, but i think that woulda split my heart in 2 if that had happened to mine when i first got it... if nothing else just not being able to ride it for a bit