Personally, I'm very happy with my $7 "dumb" siren from Radio Shack (Piezo). It's not as "smart" as the HD one but it costs $90 less. Why is mine "dumb"? Because it's powered by the bike battery and not self-powered, therefore if a thief cuts the power wires, the siren won't blast. Is it worth $90 more? Not for me. I figured a thief won't 1) take the left saddlebag off, 2) take the left cover off, snip the wires of the siren and 3) roll off.... Wait a minute, he won't be able to start the bike anyway cause he won't have the fob.

Oh and you all hould replace the crappy shifter rod ends by heim joints. I had the stock one break at 9,000 miles last summer and I looked like an idiot in the middle of the road. Luckily, I could use a $0.10 plastic tie to reattach the shifter and ride back home.

 

totally disagree
there is a large number of aftermarket companies that build better componants than h-d . S&S, Baker, STD, Paughco, OHLINS, Buchanon wheels ...
if I had the finds I could put together FXR style bike for about the same $$ as it would to buy a new harley and improve it to same level of performance

 

I have to say that some of the comments on here I have to chuckle at.

"some of us can build a better bike in our garage with our own hands and our own tools than you can buy at a dealer." Absolutely true. Now build half a million of them in a year, and have them sell, and have them be competitively priced. Simple fact is everything in this world is a compromise of sorts. For some, they don't have the knowledge or experiance to built a bike so they buy one from the dealer. Others don't want to take the time or deal with the headaches that come with building and then maintaining their self-built bike. As soon as you go with a mass produced machine, you give up the hand crafted quality features of something you build yourself.

I'll be the first to say that Harley Davidson believes their parts to be laced with gold when you look at the prices they charge.

However, when you talk about "fixing" known issues many people overlook the big picture and don't see the "problem" from a manufacturer's standpoint. I don't work for the MoCo but I have worked for a fairly good sized manufacturing company that dealt with these kinds of issues. So let's see how a "Problem" looks from their end (we'll use the linkage joint issue as an example just because it was brought up...)

A customer has a rod end break. They are fairly upset about it because of the issue its untimely failure caused...and rightly so. They search online and find 50 other people that had this issue by searching for "rod end failure" or a variation of that. It's obvious to them there is a problem. They see new HDs still coming off the assembly line with the same "poorly designed" part and feel that HD isn't addressing "Known" issues.

HD sees that they have had about 1000 failures of this part over the course of 10 years...roughly 100 per year...out of a total number of bikes sold at around 40,000 per year (not actual numbers just something kind of close). That gives this part a failure rate of 0.25%. Normally failure rates as high as 2% are considered acceptable and this is far below that number. Thus to HD, there isn't a real problem that HAS to be addressed. For this to be even seen as a potential problem the MoCo would need to see something like 800 bikes PER YEAR have this issue...or about 8000 complaints over the course of 10 years.

So let's say they spend the extra $3 per joint to switch to Heim joints anyway. And again some of them fail but maybe for a different reason or lead to a different problem. Now people complain that HD didn't use the RIGHT Heim joint or that another part of the bike is "inferior" and that "problem"...which is still an issue that has less than a 2% failure rate...needs to be addressed.

The issue isn't that it would only cost HD $3 to upgrade the existing rod ends to Heim Joints...the issue is that if Harley starts trying to chase down ever problem...to try and persue making the "perfect" bike that NEVER has any flaws, that the cost, time, and ultimately the futility of such a persuit would bankrupt the company. Major manufacturers have to live with the idea that their products will never be 100% perfect all the time and have to draw a line with each type of failure as to what is acceptable and what isn't.

The fact that HD called the OP over a fairly insignifigant oversight is a good thing. Is it earth shattering? No. But the policy and effort is in the right direction.

That's because those companies do the R&D on their products for you. Yes, you can build your own but when you total up the total cost of the build, don't forget to charge at least $10 for every hour of labor you put into the build be it actual wrenching, comparing options online, ordering parts, part of your monthly internet bill and phone bill if you use them to do your research or make calls to place part orders, a small portion of how much all the tools you use cost, part of your rent/mortgage payment for wherever the you build the bike, etc. After all, the MoCo has to take these into account when building and pricing their bikes thus you should too if you want to do an accurate price comparison. Most of the time people just focus on parts costs and forget to factor in everything else they "spend" to build their own bike.

After all, the lastest reincarnation of Indian Motorcycles has followed this exact approach and look at where their pricing is compared to HD. There's a reason for that.

 

that's way too cheap. i would say to add at least $30.00 per hour. after all, you are not just paying the guy on the assemblyline.


i actually did a series of pics detailing the change and the relative complexity (cough, cough... ) thereof....

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/touri...nkage-mod.html

 

It's a ball & socket arrangement. Eventually the socket becomes enlarged and it won't stay together. A heim joint with a bolt through the eyelet would take care of it.

If, as suggested above, it's not statistically feasible to replace shitty pieces with ones that work, the MOFOCO certainly has a sales channel in place to sell you, at extra cost, the parts they should have included in the first place. Like they way they sell you a $700 tourpack with a hole in the lid, and you have to buy the lock extra. That's obviously because research shows that plenty of touring bike owners don't care about locking it.

 

That's just it though, the pieces they use work for 99.75% or so of their users.

Now, don't get me started on Harley's aftermarket sales stratigies...I'm mearly talking about production issues on their bikes.

 

Great post Robotech.

I will never know if my shifter linkage would have failed. I replaced the stock zinc one with a polished stainless one.

 

I got an opinion on that too and I vote with my wallet. I've shopped at a dealer twice in about 15 years for a total of about $140 or so ....

 

It's good that they called. It shows they care about their customers and quality. And like stated, you can't fix a problem that is fairly minuscule to the amount of bikes being put out.

 

Why do you insist that I don't know how to check the oil? Is there something wrong with the procedure in the owner's manual? That's how I've always checked it. Do you really believe that MOCO is incapable of producing a defective product?

...And why do you think I hate my bike? I don't remember ever saying, or even implying anything of the sort. On the contrary, I love my Harley, it is my most prized possession as I have stated in previous threads. What I don't like is how MOCO has a tendency to give its loyal customers the "brush off" when they have a problem. I suppose all big manufacturers do that and I am not going to hold that against the bike itself.

Do yourself a favor and keep your ignorant comments to yourself!

P.S. RUBs shouldn't accuse others of being posers. Those who live in glass mansions....