And for what its worth: just bought this 12 flhtk. A day later i learned there was a recall on the 12 voltage regulator. Brought it in for that and low and behold the voltage regulator they put on was bad. Had to bring back again. Did this problem start when you had this work done?

 

i took off the derby cover fluid is ok not burnt i allso tryed new plugs and 10 millameter wires thant didn't help i needed to do them anyway but i hoped that might be it lol im running out of things to changed

 

John, what happens if you disconnect the ground wire from where it's attached?

 

My thoughts are you've got a problem with the radio itself.....maybe a short internally....??? just thinking out loud.....Should be a Radio Sound unit if it hasn't been changed out...

 

My radio is a stock radio with the tape deck. I found a thread with the same problem as mine same speakers. The year bike i have and same roadglide. He tried all the same stuff i have but he also did the coil and replaced the radio. It was still there the problem. He didn't change the plugs and wires but some one said try so i did . It needed it but he never posted what happened

 

I have someone giving me a good coil im going to try it plus im going to change the regulator again with a good one and ohm out the speakers if all that fails to fix the problem it has to be the radio I would think if its the radio it would do it all the time but who knows

 

I have a similar issue with my 04 ultra. But it only happens when it gets hot outside (80+). Weird. Following this thread to see if you finally figure it out.

 

i have a question maybe you can answer i have a 8 ohm system if you have 8 ohm speakers it should ohm out at 7.25 anything less they are no good. i have hog tune speakers model 914.2 they are sutiable for 4-8 ohms nominal at 5.75 they ohm out at 5.6 how can they work for a 8 ohm system when they ohm out at 5.6 and any thing i read says if its lower that 7.2 you need new speakers

 

I had a stereo guy tell me to unhook the antenna and try that with only the ground I put on and he also said take the radio out of the bike but leave it hooked up to see if it will still do it he said the antenna might be grounding out to the frame he also said to try a new battery the old one might be bad and not filtering the current from the voltage regulator all things to check I will do them one at a time when I can will try my friends battery first will let you know what happens

 

You cannot measure the "impedance" value of a speaker with an ohm meter. The measurement you are taking is a resistive check. The only thing you can do is check for an open, or fried voice coil which would indicate as an open circuit, or by measuring the resistive value to know the voice coil is not burned out.

A damaged speaker will change the impedance and could be causing a short on the units output amplifier. It'll play for a while and heat up to the point it will distort and become static. Also the wrong impedance speaker can overload the amplifier and cause this same issue. Like aftermarket speakers not matched to the units impedance requirement.

Odds are the radio has been shaken enough that some slightly poor solder joint or connection has now become intermittent. After a period of use that (bad connection) heats up because of a bad speaker or connection, or solder joint.

Also Harley has some filter network to clean up the power supplied to the radio that filters off any fluctuation, like A/C. On my '86 that device had to be removed to put in an aftermarket radio and make it work.

Did you discover whether or not your radio has a face plate that is attached to the main part of the unit using slip together multiple contact connector? If so take it apart and clean the contacts and then reassemble with some dielectric grease. At first I had corrosion issues breaking some of the contacts. But after a while the operations of the whole face of the radio became intermittent do to mashed and corroded connectors.

And the interaction with the throttle is because you have the circuit that turns the volume up and down by throttle position. All you really were experiencing is that at low volume there is less, or no distortion. This is true of many detrimental conditions with an amplifier. High volume is more susceptible to hearing the noise than at low volume. And low volume may not overload the amp as bad as full power seems to.

Can you try another radio?