Good Morning, yesterday I took the bike in to get the 10K service (bike on arrival had 8K) as I am planning a 5K +/- road trip at the end of the month and I wanted to make sure it was ready to go. While on my way, I accelerated out of a corner (not hard, just to about 4200 RPM) and I heard a clunk and smelled some burning oil, there several cars around and I thought that it couldn't be the bike, too new. The clunk disappeared and I continued on my way.

When I arrived at the dealership (Iron Steed in Vacaville, CA) I did some parts business and checked in at the appointment time. I then went to get something to eat next door at a strip mall, while walking I saw them ride it from the front to the back and continued on my way. About 5 minutes in the restaurant, they called and said had I noticed a clunking noise...told them what happened and asked if they could take off the primary to see what was happening. I agreed and finished eating and went back, they showed me in and showed me that the compensator was moving about 1/4 of an inch, there was metal in the pan and the oil was burned. I saw another engine sitting out and tried to move the compensator...nothing doing. Damn!

The stripped it down and couldn't find the cause, so they called corporate and gained authorization to split the case to look at the bottom end to see what the hell happened. In conversation with the service manager and the techs, it might be flywheel related. I am expecting a call today to update me, all this is warranty work, I have confirmed that there is nothing as a rider that I could have done to cause the issue, the service guys told me that on the newer bikes you cannot even over rev the engine due to a governor installed (something new I learned). The shop feels that it was a mechanical part failure of some kind.

Mind you this thing was my baby (it replaced my Piper Cherokee 235B, as my stress reliever), it is well maintained, very much babied (I have only scrapped the floorboards once), no super hard accelerations etc...what the hell could have gone wrong?

I am thankful it was found now, instead of on my trip leaving me stranded on the side of the road, irritated as hell that it happened at all and very irritated that it may take two weeks to put it all back together after discovering what went wrong, thankful it is still under warranty.

 

It's a machine...machines break.

 

`Shoulda` kept the Piper Cherokee 235B.....

 

Yeah, maybe, couldn't park it in the garage though!

 

You just need a bigger garage!

 

A governor set to under4000 rpm, I thought the redline, rev limiter, was 5200 rpm. This 4200 is news to me.

 

re-read the story,,

 

I understand your disappointment, but you couldn't have gotten any luckier in terms of when and where this happened.

 

I agree wholeheartedly!

 

What he said I've been involved with a couple buddies catastrophic engine failures on road trips and trust me on this it sucks to no end. One we lucked into a garage and tools to deal with it, the other spent 2 days in a tent till we came back with a truck to get him.