Yeah, kinda what I was thinking.

 

No sir, I've just rode normal these past 3 days, rolled up a lot of miles but did not hammer fist it like I did when it sumped. That day in question I hit red line 1st through 5th so I pounded it! Today I cracked it open just a couple of times coming from a stop but only through one gear.

 

so starting from the beginning:

"Got hit by the sump fairy this evening. 2019 cvo, cam put in on May 31 and outstanding til this evening. On a back road I decided to run through the gears hard from a stop, ran it up to 5th and then just cruised, about 2 miles later pulled from a stop sign and it was very sluggish, not much power, I pulled over and checked the oil, just showed a little on the tip of the stick"

and you drained 60 ounces out..10 times more oil than the acceptable amount in a banshee run through the gears..and now things have returned to normal when riding 'normal'

Steve, how in the heck can that much oil get in the cc that quickly? I mean it had to just be gushing in all of a sudden because of...??...crazy

 

That is also the question in my head, how that much could have transferred in a 0-110 mph run. All I know is in approx 500ish miles since it sumped I have checked the oil religiously and it has not moved one drop from the mark I set it back to after sumping. Crazy as hell but I will gladly take it til the seal gets put in.

 

i know, this is crazy trying to wrap my head around..that single rev limiter run opened the floodgate/s..what floodgate/s exist in the entire system that could do that....$1MM question

 

The problem cause that starts it is unknown for sure but, once whatever starts it, then the pump just stops picking up oil is our best guess. I think that it starts foaming from the flywheels and the counter balancer whipping it up just like a blender does to egg whites, the longer you run it the more it whips it up and continues to fill. Once you stop the engine turning the foam starts breaking down again. This is what I believe is burning the crap out of the oil and the bearings. The engines we have fixed the pickup area in, all, no longer have had an issue, so while I feel good about the fix, I would feel better if I could identify the root cause. I believe it to be the same issue that caused the TwinCam engine release to be delayed, so that is why I did the fix that stopped it (TC), from doing it and it seems to be working. This is why I tell everyone if your feel it happening pull over ASAP and let it sit and idle while you keep the bike upright, not on the jiffy stand! If it doesn't clear up after a few minutes of idling then shut it down and tow it home or drain the oil from the crankcase. Then refill the oil level and go about where you were going.

 

With all this talk about sumping, I decided to take advantage of our local dealers factory demo days and run a bit of an experiment. I wanted to see if I could make one of the factory's bikes sump while out on a demo ride. The demo loop used here is 7 or 8 miles long and consists of pretty much flat ground. The rides are tightly controlled with HOG members acting as lead and trail riders. In addition, the speeds are pretty low, no more than a brief 50 mph max with typical speeds in the 40 mph range. On the day of the test the weather was clear with temps in the mid 70's and no wind to speak of. OK, given all of that, I decided to pick a bike that I thought would be a likely candidate to sump. In this case, I picked a Tri Glide Ultra Classic just 'cause it's heavy. My plan was to keep the tach (yep the trike had a tach) between 4500 and 5000 rpm. At the speeds we were going that meant the trike was kept in low gear. And I'd say that the route didn't permit me to do the "testing" until I was into the second or third mile of the loop. Of course subjecting this abuse to the bike, even a factory bike, made me cringe. But I figured this testing opportunity would be valuable and provide a good data point for all of us and the relatively brief period of flogging would be tolerated by the bike. Fingers crossed, off I went.

Things seemed normal until about the sixth mile of the loop (about five minutes into the test) where I noticed that I was having to give the engine more and more throttle until, finally, I was at full throttle. The tach kept dropping and I was dropping back from the pack (I was at the rear to begin with). So when the tach dropped down to 3000 rpm I halted the test, shifted to a higher gear and finished the ride. When I got back to the H-D semi at the dealer, I could tell the bike was quite hot, as would be expected. But it seemed to have survived the test and it soldiered on for the next demo ride without problem.

To me, this seemed like a classic example of a what others have called a sumping event. And I can sure see how someone out on the interstate with their cruise control on wouldn't have a clue bad things were going on. The engine starts laboring, loses a bit of power, the cruise control compensates and down the rabbit hole the poor engine goes. The thing that amazes me is that it took no more than five or six minutes to put the engine in distress. Yes, it was spinning at the upper end of its rpm band. But it wasn't under any load at all as the trike was in low gear going about 40 mph. Sheesh. Didn't H-D test these things by making them put out rated power for extended periods of time? I seem to recall the now defunct Vrod engine passed a brutal 500 hour durability test known as the "Dusseldorf Test". Sadly, this particular trike's engine, and numerous other owners engines would fail that test. And that is too bad. Sigh.

 

5K RPMs in 6th is right at 125 mph, yeah I bet a lot of people do that.

 

thanks, makes you wonder if the HD engineers know what the cause is after a few years now but it's too daunting to resolve in the engines's current design, so they throw some stuff at it in hopes of mitigating it to buy more time to figure out what they are going to do..even if that plate seal is a 'fix' it even seems like a bandaid solution to what's really causing the issue to have the opportunity to become the problem it has..who knows, I'm just curious like everyone even though it hasn't reared it's ugly head to us...then there's the whole why has my trans fluid transfer ceased as the miles have piled up without having done anything..been a perplexing new engine, runs better than any I've had but major issues taking them forever to resolve...maybe that's not so unusual for them though, from their history of growing pains

 

Honestly when I think of HD it's never been HP or quality. I'm sure most people buying them would never consider buying one with 80,000 miles on it ,in the car world they say that's low miles now.
At best all your bike is ever gonna be is a toy for enjoyment. If you want HP and high compression pull the motor and have it built for that,the hole motor not just some bolt on HD kit.