Yeah, I'm going off what HE said, you're going off YOUR experience. I think that's about the only difference here. Go back and read his posts. The problem is pretty clear.

 

I did read his posts, and then explained my own experiences, and he said it was exactly what he was feeling. Maybe YOU should go back a re-read. Can we just agree to disagree and be done with this?

 

I think the term "lugging" has different meanings to different people.

to ME it means running an engine so far down the power / RPM curve that it
is struggling to stay alive and can not "pull" smoothly. to compensate you are
having to add more throttle in an attempt to force a response, This is what
happens when you're teaching your 16 year old to drive a stick for the first
time and he tries to start out in third. Now THAT'S lugging.... and under that
definition I am absolutely not lugging the bike. There is plenty of power
available to accelerate smoothly as the bike is not "behind" the power curve,
it's just being operated near the bottom end of that curve.

In my case the bike is at a steady speed, under steady load and with steady
throttle and it "hunts"; gaining a bit of RPM, loosing a bit of RPM in a reasonably
gentle, but ongoing manner that doesn't dampen out. That's a "surge".

The people who have told me that I need to run it at a higher RPM to avoid the
"surge" or "lug" are completely correct.

The people who have told me that it's a characteristic of the bike are also
probably correct.

The people who have said that I'm going to have to find a way of driving through
the problem by avoiding that situation are also right.

To me it seems as if the EFI is not metering smoothly under those conditions.

It could be that it is incapable of doing so without modification and I really
don't think I'm going to get into some sort of mod program to help the
bike run better SLOWER..

In my opinion, this surge should not exist. It detracts from the bike's around
town driveability and once I've nailed it down more, I'll swing by the dealer
and see what they have to say. Their response may be that I'm SOL, but I'll
at least know that there isn't a particular problem with my bike.

Again, all the input has been very useful.

Mike

 

Bingo!
Let us know what the dealer says.

My guess is that they'll say it's functioning as designed. HD needs to address this problem. Other makes have experienced and dealt successfully with this EFI teething problem such as BMW.

 

+1 - PEOPLE, get over what you think the motor sounds like in 1st gear doing 20 mph.

A 1200 in 1st gear at 20 mph is only turning ~2600 rpm, if you shift to 2nd YOU WILL BE LUGGING IT.