Well I had an interesting evening.....after a short ride around town I parked my bike in my garage. I just took my helmet off and I saw quite a bit of smoke coming from under my oil tank, I went to take a closer look when a little smoke turned into flames. I quickly grabbed a fire extinguisher, the flames were around 3 feet high....a few blasts and the fire was out.
Here is what happened, the cover on the positive battery cable had rubbed on the sharp edge of the oil tank, it must have been wearing for a while and today it decided to wear through and touch the bare metal of the tank.....I have stainless braided oil lines which touch the trans in one area and rest against the frame in another area, the braided lines arced against the trans which would light up the stainless lines in the same manner as a toaster......when I first saw the smoke I saw a 2" section of the oil line glowing red, once the inner core was melted the flames would have come from the oil. All three of my oil lines are toasted, my paint blistered a little on the tank, the total bike is covered in green powder from the extinguisher......I will start the cleanup in the morning. I can just imagine if this happened on the road, it would be a hard fire to smoother.....my bike would have burned to the ground.
Lesson learned, the battery cables run up through the bottom of the oil tank, I am going to get longer cables and run them behind the tank to avoid any sharp edges....

 

WHOA! That sounds like a close call for sure. Glad to hear that if it was destined to happen that it happened the way it did. Good luck with the cleanup and re-routing of the cables.

 

Your about the third guy i have heard of with this problem.........The Design of this setup sucks!

 

WOW!! Thank god you were at home. That definetly could have been alot worse.

 

WOW!
It's a good thing you were still in the garage when it started to burn. Think how bad it could have been if you had already gone into the house before it started.

Good luck getting it fixed. [sm=smiley20.gif]

 

The 07 softails have a recall on this problem. I am wondering if the Dyna's have the same problem?

 

For sure the bike and my garage would have burned to the ground....once the oil started to burn the flames were 3 feet high and of course the main part of the flames were hitting the underside of my gas tank. There is no doubt at all the bike would have been doomed in less than one or two minutes tops!
I was a little worried about all my chrome parts, they were singed pretty good, today I used some Spray Nine and some chrome polish and the chrome cleaned up good. The hardest part was getting the green powder off EVERYTHING....I fixed the wiring and I will make up so new oil lines on Monday, I ordered another seat online today......thats a pain in the a$$ because I now have to cut the seat to fit the bike and get it recovered. It makes me sick when I walk into the garage...you can still smell the burnt oil, wires,paint and seat.