It's one of the reasons I bought the place. Halls are wide enough that you could drive a car through them literally and the elevator holds a Dyna perfectly. I did get a ton of brake fluid all over my floor but whatever... bygones.

I'll adjust that rear cylinder again this weekend and see what happens! I have hope. I want my 100/100+ motor and it better come soon because global warming has blessed Minnesota with little snow and sunny skies and this m'fer needs to RIDE!

 

Whatever you find I hope the fix is simple. Everyone I know has been ridin' during this warm winter and I'm in California where it's in the 60's and my bike is tore down waitin' for parts. It's makin' me crazy. There's nothin' better than ridin' a 100/100 machine.

Oh well...no cryin' over spilt milk...er, I mean, brake fluid.

 

Well, here's what I did in total to figure this out... and then I found (see picture).

- Re-installed the pushrods. No go.

- Re-mapped the ThunderMax with a known working map. No go.
Checked the rear cylinder injector connection. No go. Noticed I put a zip tie around its wires right above the connector. Dismantled it enough to see there was nothing wrong. The wires are showing they're getting juice when they're supposed to and the injector spits gas. Moved zip tie (which was used to lock down the extended coil wiring).

- Installed old injectors anyway. No go.

- Tried the Delphi ECU. It wouldn't even start the front cylinder (it had a Stage 1 96" map in it and I didn't have the exhaust O2 sensors plugged into it so that probably didn't help at all).

- Took apart the top-most box cover. A tiny bit of smoke poofed out. Smelled like poorly combusted gasoline. Rotated the engine with the top cover loose but in position and noticed that it moved up very slightly on the left front (when looking forward from the rear wheel) when that rocker was up. There's no evidence of contact with the cover or on the rocker (but maybe that's just because I haven't spun the engine much).

I decided to go deeper.

- Took off the rockers/breather and pulled out the adjustable pushrods. In the rocker covers there's no evidence of any contact. The adjustable rods as-set are literally the same length as my stock rods. Either I still screwed up the adjustment (again) or I wasted my money on adjustable pushrods. I had these rods in the bike with my 96" and it ran a little better than it did with the stock rods so I don't believe I f'd them up (especially twice).

- Then I saw this by chance (see picture) with light green-looking seepage coming from it. I figure this is either oil or gasoline mixing with micro-dirt on my silver casing. As you can see, where the cylinder mounts there is a v-shaped crack almost 1/2" wide.
Decided not to rip off the head as I was about to blow my top.

So... could this be the problem? I don't see how it could effect combustion as opposed to allowing oil to leak out eventually. You tell me. I don't remember if it was there before or not but I do know that I did not drop or shove the cylinder into the case. I was very gentle with that thing and actually put my no-lint towels around that area when putting the cylinder over the piston just in case I were to contact that area (but didn't). Or... maybe I did and didn't realize it. I have no idea at this point.

By the way, those black spots are boot rubber and road crap that wouldn't clean off before the install and since it was so stuck I just left it until I could spend more detail time with it.

Anyway, I tried to highlight the discoloration in the box in the photo. I tried smelling it (and in places there was still water-ish liquid dots of whatever it is) but my hands were too dirty with gas smell from disconnecting the gas tank so my nose was too gassed up to distinguish any new smell. Really seems like gas, though. It's too thin for oil and not really the same color as my Redline oil. But I suppose it could be. Seems more watery than oil.

I'm giving up knowing without someone coaching me through it right there with me there's no way I'll be able to split the cases, look in all the right places to see if this metal bit ended up in the engine or not and replace whatever with confidence. I'm handing my bike over to Walt's H-D Repair in St. Paul. I'm not going to a dealer, I do not want to hear their g'dam lecture. I won't see my bike from him until it's running like a top - he's been great to my friends and he tells the cold hard truth about what's wrong with it.

But... it's going to cost me. I guess I learned the expensive way this time.

Thanks for the help everyone. I did a 88" to 95" the other weekend and that went just fine so I know I can do this sort of thing but something just went wrong with my bike.

 

I wish I could help, but I don't have a clue.

I know it's frustrating.

 

It's not so much frustrating... it's been fun in a way learning more about the bike. What's frustrating is I did this myself to save money and now I'll have to pay the labor anyway to get the bike running and now I'll probably have to replace that lower case. Grrr.

At least we're having a snowy winter where riding would be a big nope. I wait... there's no snow and it's global warming all over the place. That might be frustrating, too.

 

You sure put some decent effort into trying to solve the problem.
Frustrating not to find a solution.
You will be so much happier when you get it back running.
Please let us know what the problem was.

 

If you know someone that races see if they have a leak down tester and test that cylinder. That will test the rings and the valve seal. You can also put air into the cylinder and see if you hear air leaking past the valves. You can take the dip stick out and if air is leaking by the rings you can hear it. You will get some air by the rings but not much. Valves should not leak at all with the rockers off.

 

Yeah, probably going to have that done. I did a compression test and it was essentially the same as the front but didn't do a leak down. It was the first time I put rings on pistons but its not like that is difficult. Put them all in the right spots. The spacing was done by the guy who built my 103" kit plus I checked them. If there is a compression loss, I just can't see it being so vast that it wouldn't fire at all in the rear cylinder. But... could be. Someone suggested to me that I might have screwed with the ion/knock sense when extending my coil by messing with the wire resistance and so it wouldn't run right but again that shouldn't stop it from running altogether in one cylinder.

I don't know. You get to a point where you can test, test, test via process of elimination and eventually I'll figure it out but a guy who's been working on Harleys since he was damn near born will probably be able to nix this B.S. much faster and without f'ing up something else in the process. I'll probably have to take out the ThunderMax and put the Delphi back in because nobody around here is familiar (or an advocate) of them and I doubt Walt is. Probably won't put it back in anyway as I wasn't as impressed as I should have been. I won't be doing any more modifications after this so its time for a real tune.

I'm out of town for a while and will probably get the bike to Walt this Friday at the earliest if I can squeeze playing hooky from work to get a trailer. We'll see what he figures out - I'm guessing at this point, though I haven't pulled the head to look, that something mechanical is screwed up in that rear cylinder at this point and so I might have to replace a good bit of it. Depends on how much that costs, but if he has to replace my case I could have my crank trued and get nuts with a 117". Yeah right... who's got the money for that? Not me. Dreams. I'll update with what it turned out to be. Cross your fingers that it isn't a catastrophe! I do have to eat...