Sorry brother, the new starter clutch is in, but I have to true the front wheel before putting it all together, and I just lost a nipple for the wheel so i will update this as soon as I have one!

 

Morning,

I picked up the new front wheel over the weekend so I could put the bike back together.

I put it all back together Saturday, started the bike, there was a weird noise...whining noise almost like if the chain was loose, and it was leaking a little oil.

Sunday morning, took everything apart and noticed the [brand new] starter clutch wont disengage, it would not pull back in...so i figured the noise came from that.

Turns out, whoever assembled the brand new starter clutch put two metal ***** in there instead of one, so therefore the starter clutch could not back out.

The leak was from a small gasket I forgot to put in.


Put everything back together, my battery was a little low because the bike has been parked for 5 weeks and the battery has been off of the bike..so the bike had some trouble starting up, but not the same symptoms as before. Left the bike on the charger over night and have not tried it today yet but I am almost positive the grinding noise is gone.




If i had to make any recommendations to anyone who is following this thread;

The hot start makes the worst noise...feels like metal grinding on metal. From my personal research, this is almost always caused by either the compensator or the starter clutch. So you have two options;

• Spend 80-90 dollars to replace the starter clutch....to do this, you need to battery, battery box, unplug the starter, take the starter out, and maybe another 15 minutes working on the starter to get the clutch in...extremely easy
  
• Spend 350+ dollars to replace the compensator...to do this, you need to take the the outer primary off, take the chains off, clutch off, tensioner off, inner primary off, and replace...and then you have to replace all of the gaskets, which add up to around 60-70 dollars.

The factory compensator and starter clutch are both vulnerable to going bad. I opened mine up because i wanted to see how everything worked, and saw that there were no metal shavings so i decided to replace the starter clutch first and hope for the best.

If you go with compensator, I would strongly advise throwing in the 30t pulley in there while you are that deep into it!

Please let me know if anyone has any questions I can answer.

Here is a picture with the new wheel and the new front suspension!

 

Cool, glad you got it fixed..That whining noise was the sprag clutch letting the starter gear free wheel.

 

I am posting this for others that use this thread for research. I picked up my bike brand new, 2016 FXDLS, and was having the same hot start issue. Even though the bike was new, I put the battery on a tender in case it did not go through a full charge cycle at the dealer. I discovered that the battery measured only at about 50% capacity and let the tender do its job. Since going through a full charge cycle, the starter has been fine. I have put the bike on a tender a couple of times since then and it is maintaining its full cycle charge now, which means the charging system if fine as well. I breathed a sigh of relief, because I would prefer to be riding over having it sit at the dealer getting a warranty issue addressed.

 

I think probably 90 percent of the bang, kick back on 2 cylinder long strokes Harley is weak battery or loose connections. The starter motor with low voltage just does not have the power to drive thru kickbacks. People also leave the battery on maintenance chargers too much and do not realize batteries are worn out.

 

So after doing some reading and thought processing, I was wondering if there is yet another possible situation that could be causing the issue the OP has with the starting and blow back out the AC aside from the possible clutch / compensator theory.


I have had this issue for a while, at first it was just the visual and audio you see and hear in the video, I thought maybe it was a bad programming from an aftermarket tuner flooding the intake with to much fuel at prime, so I changed the tune back to stock and added the Xied's back on, no change so I went back to my aftermarket tune. As time has passed by, I noticed that I get oil build up at the AC and read that its because of the crappy emissions requirements. When I first noticed it I thought it was because I had just cleaned and sprayed my filter and thought maybe I had added to much spray. Having the bags on my bike made it more noticeable because not only was I getting slightly noticeable oil on the battery cover, but it was also on the bag.


IMO, the oil that comes thru the breather bolts and into the intake could be bleeding the hot oil into the throttle body after shutdown and it puddles up in there. That along with the added fuel from the prime at startup could be leading to the situation seen in the video due to to much oil and fuel in the initial start up and why it almost always fires right up if the attempted start up is done before the pump has a chance to prime.


I decided I am going to test this theory with a $100 investment. I am ordering a back plate, support bracket and a breather kit from DK Customs to use with my K&N filter and cover. This should eliminate the oil going into the intake all together. Hopefully the valves and pistons burn off any excess carbon build up they have over time, might run some cleaner thru the system later. One thing at a time, first to see if I notice any startup changes with the mod.

 

It's very interesting you mention this theory. There's a couple things I didn't mention that are very similar to your situation. My breather bolts were leaking oil especially the front one. I did some snooping and found my bolt covers only had one o-ring and had been recalled at one point and replaced with covers with 2 o-rings so I had dealer order me those up. Also.... I had too much oil in the pan. I wouldn't say way too much but it was probably 5 turkey basters too much. Asked around most agree two dots down on jiffy while hot. I was probably three hypothetical dots too high.
Also.... Dealer said my K&N breather was installed wrong. I wasn't there to look but he said there was some sort of backing plate that should have been taken off to install it and it was still there so there was air leak possible.
And last..... I was cleaning the garage and found a bag with the spark plugs I thought I had changed. I went to change them and my front plug had some oil on the threads I also chalked that up to too much oil.

I will say that since I've changed plugs and gotten the oil where it should be it is running much better. I went out for 5 hours or so on Sunday and basically zero popping. It did pop one time when I did a crappy job of downshifting but I remember several times thinking man it would have been backfiring like crazy right now before I changed the plugs and put the breather on right.

Also.... No clunk on start up. That being said I never did a quick hot start. The least amount of time I waited was probably 5 minutes for an ATM trip. Still.... It was probably quicker than a gas tank fill.

Trying to be optimistic at this point. It does start a lot better with the new comp and starter clutch. I can hear quite a difference with this all **** starter clutch. It's also shifting much better for whatever that's worth.

My guess is it I had it on the interstate for 2 hours.... Turned it off and the tried to immediately start it again the Clunk would rear it's ugly head. So I plan to not try that.

I may look in to this K&N plate you yak about. Dealer is still offering a free dyno but since I can't find my super tuner it would cost me about $400 so I'm thinking Ill just leave the tune as is for now.

 

Looking at the stock setup compared to my aftermarket one, the vent tubes on the stock setup go into the filter, where my Ness setup the vent tubes are open inside the filter cavity. Maybe the stock setup would have this same kind of issue if the vent tubes also dumped straight into the open intake.

 

I haven't heard any strange noises like i used to hear allot from the bob since just biting the bullet and switching to an allballs 1.4 kw and upgrading the cables,.
I think half the problem is the weak start and kick back.

 

Well after re-reading the entire thread, it does sound convincing that the starter clutch could be the issue, and since it seems to be the cheapest route to go first, I may give that a try. Probably wont be any time soon, but when I do get it done I will post up what happens.