As Beaver documented in THIS THREAD, the water/coolant pumps (part number 26600012) in the Rushmore's are prone to failure, and now have been listed as "obsolete" with no replacement in HDNet as of this writing. Only one place had one near me and it was about $433, but I could not see spending that for an "obsoleted" part that is known to fail. No one knew when a replacement would be made available. There is a Bosch pump that is almost identical, but the endcap is different in that the electrical connection comes out of the end were it would interfere with the engine guard and maybe the frame, the HD one comes off the side.

SO as I mentioned in that thread, on the way to work I saw the amber engine light and red temperature lights come on, I was in a place I could not safely stop, and by the time I got it stopped I saw this on the Power Vision, the coolant was ambient temp at ~60* but the engine was at 266*. Definitely no water flowing, and the fans were blowing cold when forced on by rolling the throttle.



I nursed it home, not allowing the engine to get above 240-250ish. That evening I pulled the cover off, then the plug off the pump, I tested for voltage at the connector, all was good:



I already knew of the limited availability of the pump, so I decide to tear into it...what did I have to loose?





The screws in the endcap are potted, so after digging that out they appeared to be Torx, but smaller than a #10 so that must be some oddball screw. So I decided to make them "slotted" screw with the Dremel tool and a thin cutoff wheel. Nothing to loose right?





When I got the cap off, I looked all around closely and wonder why the hell a water pump need to be this complicated, really? But anyway I saw what appeared to be a set of contacts that was not closed together like the other similar ones were, hmmmm, could it be this simple?






Continued in next post:

 

So I soldered the connection back together, took it up to the bike, and the pump ran! Wow I just save over $400 and could ride again :grin: I took the pump back to the bench and for the heck of it soldered all the similar contacts, just in case!



After I final test, I started reassembly. HD used two of these stupid non-reusable "Crimp Clamps" as they are called in the tech manual between the thermostat and the pump. Luckily I had a small worm clamp in the parts bin to replace it with:






I got everything together, filled and bled the system per the manual:







Then finally went for a 20 mile test ride, all is well! :grin:



I hope this helps someone else! If you have a dead pump that you don't want I'll pay the shipping to get it, or take it apart yourself and see if it's the same failure, I'd love to know!

KennyD

 

Excellent!

 

That's awesome! I hope that if/when mine goes, it'll be that easy of a fix.

Has Harley really obsoleted this pump with no replacement? How can they actually do that and leave potentially thousands of bikes grounded?

 

kennyd4110....great post and very informative..I wonder if you found the reason why they fail..the pics are very helpful

 

Nice! Thanks for posting, really great info. I love DIY fixes.

 

Yes, they have....

Call your dealer and ask for yourself if you don't believe me...

 

I had (2) pumps go out in less than a month and now is shop for leaking thermostat. I took one of my pumps apart and found nothing to fix. All looked good. Then i promptly dropped it, shattering into 100 pieces before I could send to guy in Indiana to repair. next time I will look more closely at area pictured. Thanks for detailed info.

 

if harley has deleted this coolant pump pump ,they should be sued. This would be total bullshit doing this. Talk about running customers off, things like this will do it for sure.

 

.......... wtf !