I bought my 2011 Street Glide last year with 6,500 miles on it. It was under warranty until late June this year.

Right away, I noticed that there was a weird noise coming from the engine on shutdown. It sounded like someone dropped a bag a wrenches on the ground.

This is my first Harley, and it didn't happen every time so I thought it may have been part of the "experience".

Now that I am just out of warranty, I had a guy look at it and he told me the compensator was bad. Apparently this is a VERY common defect on the Street Glide and the fix is to put a SE compensator on it.

That's just great, but this problem happened within the first year and at at 6,500 miles. It seems like Harley would do a recall to address this problem.

Is there any way Harley would compensate me for this compensator malfunction? Does anyone have a phone number or address so I can write a letter?

I heard that they completely redesigned the compensator this year since they KNOW it's a problem.

 

Owning a Harley is the only beta tester job where you pay them. You can try your dealer for a 'good faith' warranty but you should have had this taken care of under warranty. .or at least brought it up with your dealer on record before it expired.

 

I really should have. I had done a Stage 1 on it and was told they would say my warranty wasn't valid because of it.

Should have put the original parts back on and took it in.

Still....it's a known problem and a good company would fix it.

 

That's BS!!

They need to prove that your stage 1 caused your compensator failure.
The moco knows lot of folks who have comp issues are not in a stock setting.
They're screwing ya!!

 

Notorious so called aesthetic noise problems with the compensator/transmission began with the 96 tc rollout in 2007. That first year the design was plagued with problems attributed to reflected energy from the rear pulley being felt back through the transmission to the compensator. Some blamed the comp and replaced it with a SE which did fix it. Others fixes included going to a Baker or replacing the rear pulley with an energy absorbing model designed specifically for the 2007 (only). MoCo was on it and although not admitting a design flaw (necessitating a recall) they did begin addressing the non-existent, aesthetic noise problem. In 2008 the introduced the cush drive as standard, the comp was improved and in 2010, 5th gear (spur cut) was replaced with a helical gear set.

Harley's are notoriously noisey. Although you suspect the compensator, from what you have stated it has not been confirmed? That said, replacing the compensator is not a big job.

 

I already had it fixed. It was the compensator. It looked like the plastic washer was completely gone.

 

He never brought it to their attention while under warranty. They didn't do anything wrong.

 

Did you read this? what HD said?

 

harley knew they had a problem...solution was to do nothing...as not all failed during warranty. replaced the ones they had to under warranty and up-graded the compensators on the new models. they are still having problems with them--my '12 EGC had the compensator replaced at 25k.

 

ha! MoCo never ADMITTED to a problem and as it wasn't a safety issue it wasn't a crisis necessitating recall. MoCo did address the (non-existent) problem in a typical MoCo fashion. As stated, kits were offered for those owners that desired a quieter ride and slowly improvements were introduced. I think it is important to understand that an improvement is not a correction in Harley-eze!