I've done 500 mi fluid changes on all 3 of the new Harleys that I have had, however this particular posting only deals with my Road King. I have rode it 'close' to what the manual calls for with regards to proper break-in with a few quick blasts up to 4k rpm just very recently.

Below are the before and after pix of my primary drain plug showing the amount of 'break-in' metal on the magnet. I believe it to be normal, but then again I'm not an expert. The trans plug had about 1/4 of that amount of particles. I was glad to not see any biguns!

One thing that crossed my mind is that I doubt that the magnet could have held much more material so most definitely there were more particles floating around the drained fluid. I also believe that the amount of particles on the plug justifies changing the fluid at the 500 mi mark based on my usage. YMMV

And yes, I changed the o-rings and added a bead of white loctite (just like it came from the factory and how the local dealership does it).

Any thoughts?

 

My primary always looks like yours, give or take, and grinds to paste between my fingers. My engine and trans plugs always come out clean. If my trans plug came out like yours I would not be concerned and bet it will be clean the next time. FWIW, I did 500,1000,3000,6000,9000 +/- changes on my M8. I run all HD fluids too.

 

It looks normal to me. My primary looked the same at 1k miles.


FWIW, the rear drive on my Honda ST1300 looked much worse when I changed it the first time.

 

Looks pretty normal to me.

FWIW I just came in from doing my 10K service. Primary drain plug looked almost like that one pictured. The oil drain plug looked better than it had during the 5K and 1K services and quite a bit cleaner than that picture.

 

That looks normal for the primary on a normal bike. My primary drain plug looked like it was growing a worm at 540 miles. The trans plug looked like your primary plug. The engine plug had about half as much as your plug shows with metal shaving in the oil. Needless to say the engine was grinding it's self up.

After the rebuild on the motor and 1500 more miles I changed all three holes this weekend and all three plugs were very clean with syn3 in all three holes. Put it back on Amsoil and riding on.