When the Twin Cools came on the market. It was a nightmare. Not a lot has been said lately. Shame on someone to pay 1500 for someone to pull two hose clamp off and on and a few covers and an electrical connection. No way around the pump price about $300. It's a novel design with 10 cent electrical components and a thru plastic drive of the impeller with a magnet to seal the motor. Harley saw you guys coming.

Keep good quality antifreeze in it. Know how to burp the air.

 

I find issue with having to pay a high repair price for something so simple, on such an expensive vehicle. Like was mentioned, you never hear about Honda's and other brand bikes water pumps giving up on such a relatively new bike. And I know this will come a s shock to some here, but not everyone does, or wants to work on their motorcycle. That's why dealerships make good $$$ from doing just that. Same thing for cars, trucks and boats. Not knowing what your doing is probably the no 1 reason for not working on your bike. Not having a place to do it is probably the no 2 reason. I'd bet there are people on this site that bring their bikes to the dealer for oil changes. Nothing wrong with that if you can afford it. But using unproven parts on big Dollar motorcycles and when they fail prematurely, expect the buyer to pay big money to either buy the "Better" part , or pay big money to have it supposedly fixed right, sucks on so many levels. I wonder, how long would some own a car or truck, if you had to replace a water pump every 40k miles, due to cheap parts and crappy engineering?.,,,

 

This has been HD's MO for years now. So many things like this over the years. How about that shitty little shifter pawl spring in the 5 speed transmission that breaks and takes out the gear set ? Entire trans has to come aprt to fix. Big $$$$$. HD acts like replacing your compensator is no big deal and everyone can afford to just throw away another $500. Crappy wheel bearings is another money maker for them.

I think they set the consumer up with this lousy designed waterpump from the start. Makes a person wonder if they do ANY testing before bringing their products to market.

 

To install the new configuration pump is more involved than just replacing the pump by removing the two hoses and one electrical connector. I don't think it should take more than 3 hours based on me waiting for my friend to have his replaced. So $300 for the pump, $300 to $400 for labor, and new anti freeze. My guess is half the $1500.

 

I know it happens. But how often ? My 2016 had 52,000 when traded never an issue, Crashed my 2017 at 45,000 never an issue. With coolant pumps. I do not know of anyone personally that replaced one. Couple years back when they were claiming on line you could not get a replacement one. Fot the heck of it I called local dealer , They had two in stock. Online world is often misleading.

 

You judge how complicated it is by how long you waited for a dealer? You didn't say how much your friend paid but I would imagine with what they charge, they are not going to give it back to you if it only took an hour.
I did say remove covers. Did I miss one and a few bolts? I agree with your 3 hours however.. The video below, he is replacing hoses. I think the pump itself is just behind center cover. He also said screw hose clamps I think and that is a bad idea with hoses on plastic fittings. Even thin radiation connections need spring clamps.


Part one

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Doing it.

 

Really? So what do you call it when the CRF’s, CBR’s, AND the Goldwings have leaking water pumps go out, leaking water pumps, and O-ring issues?
I’m certain tho the Honda dealer is cheap to do a Goldwing water pump GL1800’s are easy to work on.

 

[QUOTE=RIPSAW;19564327]You judge how complicated it is by how long you waited for a dealer? You didn't say how much your friend paid but I would imagine with what they charge, they are not going to give it back to you if it only took an hour./QUOTE]

I was not trying to judge how complicated the job was, I was trying to justify or not justify how reasonable the $1500 estimate that the OP quoted. From personal experience, from the time we saw them take the bike into the shop until they called to pay the bill, it was a little more than three hours, maybe 3.5hrs, including a test ride.. This was replacing the old style pump with the new style pump KIT, Hence my estimate on time. He had the ESP so he only paid $50 so I don't know what they really charged to have the job done.

Again from personal experience, replacing the old style pump with an old style pump was about an hour, maybe 1.5 hours, if my memory serves me correctly, because they just remove the front cover, disconnect the hoses, unplug the electrical and drop the pump. Install new pump, reconnect hoses/electrical, fill and bleed system. Cost me $50 also as it was still under warranty. This was in 2017 that I had mine done. I could go down and sort through the receipts, but not sure what that would prove as it is not the same job.

[QUOTE=RIPSAW;19564327]I did say remove covers. Did I miss one and a few bolts? I agree with your 3 hours however.. The video below, he is replacing hoses. I think the pump itself is just behind center cover. He also said screw hose clamps I think and that is a bad idea with hoses on plastic fittings. Even thin radiation connections need spring clamps./QUOTE]

Yes you did say to remove covers, but I thought you meant the cover over the water pump and the one to fill the coolant tank. The video clearly shows that a lot more needs to be disassembled to get the job done. My point was that I thought $1500 was excessive, especially for an experience HD mechanic.

 

water pumps can fail on ANYTHING, my tow truck had one to go out last year and it is an 05.
i have owned water cooled honda's and NEVER an issue. for that matter, it also had an electric fuel pump and it never had issues. i kept it 7 years.
the statement made was absurd, why would anyone put up with 5 year service life, i sure would not, buy something else.
now if you do not maintain, who's fault. battery, yes, water pump, no.

 

Do we even know if/ever changed his coolant? If the bike went past 30k mi and the coolant was never changed he got what he had coming. States right in the manual the maintenance interval.