I brought my bike in to a Harley dealer because I heard a whirring noise at 7500 miles. They told me I needed an IPB and did the work. Being that his dealer is 50 miles away, I picked up the bike the next week. Soon as I started it I heard the noise. Service Manager agreed and said he wanted to replace all the tranny bearings. He did the work all under warranty and I picked the bike up next week and still heard the same noise. Now I was told that the noise was normal. SAME NOISE that was a problem 2 weeks ago! Problem is that I can hear this bearing noise from a block away. It goes away the minute I pop the bike into gear. Now at 12,500 miles the bike still makes a noise like I’ve never heard before on ANY other Harley. I am nervous because my warranty ends on 10/06/09. So last week I brought it to another Harley dealer in my area (22 miles away). The Service Writer had no idea what I was talking about. The tech that looked at the bike acknowledges the noise but said it was normal… so he let me listen to another bike. I heard no noise. He said the both sounded the same. Guys… the noise was so obvious that it scared me that this dimwit said he heard no difference. The noise is a high pitch whirring sound on my left side. It is so loud it embarrasses me. So now I go to my 3rd local dealer (25 miles in another direction) and I can’t get a tech outside to listen to it. Lemme tell you… I’m pretty nervous about my ride going out of warranty. But the bike runs perfectly performance wise. By the way had my 1K service done at one of the dealers, the 5K at another and the 10K at yet another. None of them have a clue compared to the people at this forum. In fact I told all of them about my steering head clunk and all of them re-torqued the existing bolt and washer. I STILL have the CLUNK! I recently ordered the part and am doing the recall myself… none of them even heard of it!!! They were shocked when I produced it (from this forum of course). Ugh! The incompetence is rampant! My Indy that does my in between oil changes say he does not like the noise. Lemme tell you... I'm lost!

So my question is…
How do you know when your IPB is bad? Am I missing something? Is there any performance symptoms? What does the noise sound like?
What would you do? WWMD? (What would Mud do?)
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Top
in the HD Dealer Devils Triangle

 

i would let a couple of good indys listen to it and offer there opinions then go back to the harly dealer and demand attention to it... if they dont want to cooperate call the moco...
good luck

 

Just a thought -- you say it's a high-pitched noise. Perhaps mechanics that have been working on Harleys for years can't hear it. My kids (late teens/early twenties) can hear high pitched sounds that I can't (too much turbine aircraft time in the 70's.)

 

Not that high... I mean it doesn't attract bats.

 

Hmm.. thats not good man. There's been a lot of talk lately about this Baker IPB that's supposed to be really good. Perhaps order the part and tell your dealer to replace it with that if they will? I don't know what to tell you man.. maybe you should let me ride your scoot to see if I can hear it?

 

I wish you luck my friend. Mine is doing the same thing but I have no warranty and for $30 on the baker bearing I'm not screwing with the MoCo and bone head dealers.

 

I have a question Topspin, the noise goes away after in gear or when clutch is engaged?

I don't have the inner primary bearing issue myself, but a friend did and he could hear the noise in neutral and not when the clutch lever was pulled in, even if it was still in neutral. The new bearing cured it.

 

That is true , The noise will go away when the clutch is pulled in

 

With the bike idling in neutral, you'll hear a whirring noise; mine sounded like spinning a metal rollerskate wheel, or a metal rollerskate wheel on a concrete sidewalk. If you're too young to remember metal rollerskate wheels, it also sounds the same as a bad throwout bearing in a [manual shift] car. Ask an old-timer to listen to it and see if he says it sounds like a car's throwout bearing.

Pull in the clutch and listen for the whirring noise to roll to a stop. If you kick it into gear, the noise will stop immediately. Tap it back into neutral. Roll on a few hundred RPM above idle (not needed if it's really bad/noisy), and dump the clutch. If the noise spins back up, your IPB is toast. My second failure wasn't near as loud as the first time, but a tear-down by the shop still showed metal transfer between bearing/race, and heat discoloration.

If your noise is that loud, roll the dice and tell 'em you want it torn down and inspected; you pay the labor if it checks out good, they pay and FIX IT RIGHT under warranty if it's bad. That's what I had to do the second time...Tech said same thing, "All Dynas sound like that"...Bull-shevik! You know your bike! Most shops are IGNORANT of this issue. Educate them. Point them to my thread "Finally, Good News..." Good luck, and keep us informed. Call Milwaukee Customer Service FIRST to establish a "Reference Number" that your shop can use to deal with Milwaukee.

 

From how you describe it, I hear the same noise on Japanese bikes all the time. With them, it is normal, and is attributed to some clutch baskets (inner bearing) being noisier than others. The 'noisy' ones don't wear out any faster, and there's no difference in performance of the clutch.
In any event, I'm assuming you described it to the dealer the way you did on here...did they check the clutch basket? If it's dependent on the clutch being engaged or disengaged, I have a problem with it being anything other than the clutch.
From how I understand your description of it , anyway..
BTW- since they apparently did all these unwarranted repairs, did you get your money back?