....you ad a trailer hitch. Can you believe that? The other day I was asking my dealer if installing a big bore kit would void my warranty. They said it would not, but naturally MoCo would not warrant the big bore parts - especially aftermarket ones. Then they went on to say that the only thing that will totally nullify a warranty is adding a trailer hitch and converting to a trike. Okay, the trike thing I get, but trailer hitch?

 

bikes aren't designed to pull things. makes sense to me

 

A trailer hitch nullifies an extended warranty. The two year factory warranty does not mention it, but your owner's manual recommends against it. Here's the exclusions from the extended warranty. Click on it twice to get it big enough to read.

 

To the best of my knowledge, the factory warranty and extended warranty are administered by two different companies. That's probably why the extended warranty has different exclusions.

 

The Oct issue of American Iron, which just came out, has an article on Harley's warranties, and the effect of the Magnuson-Moss Act, which has often been discussed here on the forums. In short, your dealer would have to prove that the addition of a trailer hitch was the cause of whatever failed on your bike to deny coverage.

 

 

Pulling a trailer v. a sidecar. Same thing...same extra stress on the bike's drivetrain. Was talking about this with a couple of guys up in Sturgis this year actually. Mostly talking about adding a side car (not me, him).

 

Interesting thing about that, is that the extended warranty will cover a side car under the "touring package" section. A side car's going to put a lot more stress on a bike than a trailer. I can roll my Bunkhouse camper around with one finger, and it's set up to have only 20 lbs tongue weight on the hitch.

 

The hitch cannot void the warranty, nor can a big bore kit, or anything else added to the bike, for that matter. Well, sort of. Simply having a part added to the bike cannot void a warranty, in order to do this the dealership has got to be able to prove that the part modifications actually directly caused the failure. Check out the Magnason-Moss act of 1975.

 

This is a pretty knowledgeable, old school dealership here in the Milwaukee area - Suburban Harley. My belief is that they would do their best to back the customer. The way it was presented to me was that it would void the factory warranty. They did not mention an extended warranty. I doubt they are mistaken on this, but could be.

If it is true, I don't have an issue with the provision, as much as I thought it was strange that when I was looking at trailer hitches from various manufacturers, no one mentioned that adding a hitch would void the warranty.

I just figured I would put it out there for folks who have hitches. If something goes wrong with your bike, you might want to take it off before rolling in to the dealership.