ORIGINAL: glens

I, too, have been accused here of being an H-D shill. I am not. I don't work for them or anyone involved in any way with anything involved with them. I have a bit of design experience under my belt and I recognize the "cruise drive" tranny to be an excellent design. The implementation perhaps suffered somewhat, but the IDS takes care of that little bit of inelegance. I suspect the IDS was part of the original package but was nixed by some other group at H-D on the way out the door.

Baker came along and offered an helical-cut 5th gearset. Along with that came the necessary heavier bearings and backing plates to handle the increased thrust which the engineers originally designed out of the package. Also, the speedo pickup needed to be redesigned for the Baker. Baker changed nothing else. It was merely a different cut for 5th gear. If the design was a piece of junk he wouldn't have put his reputation on such a simple modification.

I recently met a person with an RKC one month older than mine. It also had mid-6k miles on it. He's had, he guesses, nearly half that mileage put on by the techs in the shop. He said nearly the same thing some of the others here have said, namely "I spent $20k on a bike and I expect it to be perfect." His has had the tranny replaced.

We rode a bit, swapping bikes back and forth and commenting on them. He's still not entirely satisfied with his tranny but I am with mine. Know what? His driveline is a lot quieter than mine. I've countered the challenge here that I wouldn't buy someone's bike in the condition it was in with "How do I know mine's not worse than yours? Would you buy mine?" I now feel confident that mine is and they wouldn't.

But I'm perfectly satisfied with mine. I think it's a great design and fairly implemented. Life's too short to get so irate over something so unimportant.

ORIGINAL: panheadache

Just a quick update on my 07 FLHTC. [TMax+SE A/C+04 Stock Muffs+F6F]. Now closing in on 5000 mi. F6F very quiet in 5th, now the gear I use most. No whine, no clatter. Just a tight, silky feel overall. A diff bike than was delivered, fer shur. Still in honeymoon period after initial as-delivered blues. Might be a keeper, we'll see. Check ya'll later.

ORIGINAL: Dogdoc

Just an update on my situation. My bike is now at the dealer. They have denied that thereis any problem and say that the noise is " Normal" They are all following the company line. They have admitted that much of their warrantee work is checking out this problem. I am so freaking dissappointed in this. The fact that the Harley Davidson dealership is just towing the company line. I feel Like they should be MY advocate in this matter and they are not. I have NO advocate when it comes to this problem. The head of the service department had never heard of the fix. I had to show him in the book. It is still quite amazing to me that I spent 22k on a bike and it vibrates so badly in sixth gear at 70 mph that it sounds like the bike is just going to self destruct. The noise is so loud that everyone who has ridden with me can clearly hear the clatter. And the dealers response is that this is "Normal". I am ready to go out and get the part but I will never go back to this dealership and this will probably be my last Harley. I am still stunned by all of this and bitterly disappointed in HD