This morning I got caught in the rain leaving work. I have nearly an hours drive and they were calling for rain all day so I had no choice but to keep going cuz I knew the rain wasn’t gonna let up. Anyway, the bike (18 Fatboy S) did fine for the most part, it actually handled a lot better than I expected considering the fat tires and wet roads, but as I got closer to home and on the highway, I got on it a little and it started to hesitate, the more I opened the throttle the worse it got, almost to the point of stalling. When I held it steady at around 60mph it was fine but any more than that and it would start to sputter. I figured I’d ask on here as there seems to be a lot of knowledge and I don’t know jack...is this normal ? What caused this ? Maybe the coil or plugs got wet, or sucked in some water through my breather ? I did put the rain sock on it about ten minutes into my trip, I forgot about it when I first left( and it hadn’t started raining yet), but the problem didn’t start till I was almost home. And btw it was a pretty heavy downpour almost the whole trip...

 

Most likely you're sucking water into your intake filter.

I've also had it happen if I over oiled my K&N filter element.

 

Was it very hot? Did it smell? Did you happen to check oil level when this was happening?

 

It's the rain saturating your air filter and going down your intake. This has happened to me numerous times while running an open air filter like a Ventilator. Never had it happen on a stock bike but surely it's possible.

 

I've never had that happen with large open filters in heavy rain. If that is indeed what happened, I'd want to do an oil change.

 

I didn’t stop and check the oil I was just trying to get home. I checked it later in the day, nothing unusual and the level was right. I was gonna take it for a ride and see what happened but it’s still raining here

 

This happened to me on very wet ride from ME to VA this past summer. If rained from ME to NY, overnight and then all day from Ny to VA. I had an open filter (V&H V02) and I agree it’s water getting into the intake. Change the oil and you should be good to go. I ended up stopping on the ride for a rain sock and that seemed to help.