A year long 'oil usage' dance with the previous dealer ended this week.
A few of you following along might remember my trip across the South West last year and how I kept having to add oil. And how had tried 4x to get the dealer who had been great up to that point, to take me seriously, and they continued to put me off. The last time I had it in, they ruined my primary cover by skipping the nut remover across it ... after an email to the powers that be - they fixed that .... not after trying to get me buy a new one (if I wanted it fixed that day) because 'the one they said they had, all of the sudden they couldn't find'. I refused, and suddenly they found one to go back on.

ANYWAY... I talked to them again about the oil, and the solution they came up with was to change the oil, and tape off both ends of my bike where the oil goes in and comes out (to be sure I wasn't tampering with the oil level) have me ride it for 2500 miles then bring it back to them.

Granted I had been working 60-70 hour work weeks at the time ... but after I had some sleep, I started to think about that 2500 mile thing, and I it did not set well with me. I KNEW I had been using waaaay to much oil in between changes, and they wanted me to run it 2500 with out adding any at all. After a year of this dance, I was fed up.

I drove across the state line to another dealer and explained what was going on .. the service manager asked a few questions, I answered, he then asked "this is an 08 right?" I said no, it is an 05. He then held up his hand and said "say no more, 05s are notorious for this problem, in fact I just sent one out of here I had to tear down."

He explained how Harley had put in a part that had failure problems, and assured me it would be covered by my extended ... and guess what - IT WAS! A year later, and different dealer, problem solved!

He tore it down, replaced everything .. said it would take a little while for everything to break in, but my problem should be over. While they were at it, I had them throw on a new front tire and do the 25K service... all I need before my July vacation is some different handle bars and I will be ready to cross the great unknown again!

Anyone up for a 7 or 8 state road trip?

 

Its amazing what you can accomplish when you try. Good Job Amzie

 

wow! glad ya got it all figured out, its always so taxing when yr scoot isn't runnin right and yr gettin the run around to boot.

what was wrong with it? ya didn't say...or i missed it

 

Was it the valve seals? 05 bikes had problems with those.

 

i knew the 04's did (mine being one of them ) but i didn't know HD carried the design flaw for whole year

 

I didn't know the 04s had the same problem.

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/engin...ption-fix.html

 

Good to hear you got that one fixed! some of these dealers are just a pain in the arce to deal with.

 

Glad ya got "the beastie" fixed. Persistence pays off, some dealer svc. dept. and techs actually know what they are doing; glad ya found one.

 

I hope you intend to tell the first dealer of the fix and say goodbye...

 

Good deal Amzie!
I hafta wonder where half of these HD "techs" (aka: parts replacers) get their edumacation for diagnostics...