I got this from a friend and I have no idea what might be causing this....I thought maybe someone here might have an idea..?





"I have about 37,000KLM on my 2008 Street Glide now, and I have noticed a problem with the starter. Over the past 15,000KLM the problem seems to have gotten worse. Occasionally, when I try to start the bike, the starter drive seems to kick out from the ring gear, and make a terrible grinding noise. Lately, this will happen a couple of times in a row before the starter spins the motor enough to start. This only seems to happen if the bike is fairly warm and almost never when the engine is cold. Has anyone else had a problem similar to this on 2008's?

I have the bike in the shop right now getting repairs to damage cause by getting rear-ended at a stop light. Fortunately the guy in the cage that hit me was going very slow, and only pushed me forward a couple of feet. The bike only needs a new saddle bag and possibly a new rear fender. So two months for new color matched parts to come in causes me to get "free storage" for the winter.

Anyway, as the bike is in the shop, is there an issue with the starters on this model that should be addressed?"

 

May be your Compensating Sprocket.. If gonna replace have it replaced with a SE Compensator which is now standard equipment in the New Ones ...

 

thanks Jay will pass this on to him

 

Starter malfunction when hot points to electrical problem.

heat results in resistance in the cables and any poor connections external, and possibly internal to the solenoid and starter.
probably external, as the voltage drop allows the solenoid to release the starter shaft prematurely ( rather than holding it against the ring gear)

essential that the battery be at capacity, a duff battery can cause damage to the solenoid, indicated by chatter.

easiest fix for this situation is to loosen, clean and retighten battery cables, at the battery and at the connections to frame and starter.
some find it helpful to run a second negative cable from battery to a point on or as near as possible to the starter or primary.

Rule of thumb- MOST electrical problems are caused by a poor connection

MOST poor connections are remedied by loosening and retightening

MANY times parts swaps are a "repair" simply because the poor connection was fixed.
which is OK, but expensive.

rule of other thumb- everyone seems to think that "starter relay is bad"---starter relays do not operate under stress and are rated for 100,000 of duty cycles. They rarely fail- I have never had one go bad on my or Pal's bike. ( swapping relays sometimes fixes the connection as mentioned above).
also many, many posts on the internet blame the compensator for everything from headlight flicker to global warming.

Mike

 

I am having exactly the same problem with my 08 Street Glide (37k miles) been doing it for about about a month now. The HD stealer also recommended to change the Comp to the Screamin Eagle one. Im not really buying that for the starter fix.
Let me know more info. please