Hey all,
I started another post about tearing into my 06 streetbob, to investigte the rotor/stator and IPB. As the other post said, my rotor was 8 bolt design but all but one bolt was tight, and the IPB looked okay too except on the back side the seal was kind of rusting out a little so I opted to change the IPB and seal since I had the inner primary cover off.
SOOOOO, I head down to my local dealer, talk to service advisor, told him I needed him to press out old bearing and seal and install new bearing and seal. About then a mechanic comes up and listens to my story, spins the bearing, and says there is nothing wrong with that bearing. I told him about this thing called the internet and how several dyna 06 owners have had to failures of IPB's for a couple years now, anyway he tells me first he has ever heard of it, but what would he know he just works on harleys for a living. (Whatever dude), any way another tech takes my Inner Primary cover back to the shop area and presses out the old and installs the new seal, bearing and c clip I just bought. While he is doing this, I ask the service advisor, "This guys is seasoned pro right, he'll know to make sure and verify the position of the c clip, if he doesn't have it clocked right, he'll starve the bearing of oil", he says, "oh yea, he's a master tech, he's done this stuff for many years", so I said cool, thanks.
Well I get my primary cover back and looks all good from what I can tell, so I head back home over 35 miles to the house. So I'm beginning to put cover back on and something tells me, you need to verify that clip, so I pull the cover back off an get my flash light out, can't really tell. So I get my inspection mirror out and start going around the inside and BAAAAAAAAM, what do you know the gap in the c clip is not lined up with the oil passage.
I am livid, I drive another 35 miles back to dealer and storm into service managers office, and said we got a problem. I showed him and told him what had happened, of course he couldn't see the clip without the mirror and light, I told him, I will pay you one hour labor and a new seal cost if you pop that thing open and I'm wrong, but if I'm right, you are paying for a new seal, realigning the clip, the cost of the bearing and seal from earlier today since I now have 140 miles round trip 2 times to come back here for your mistake. He says, kind of okay I'll have to see. Sure enough he goes back and pops it open with tech and they get new seal, and bring it back to me, an says you were right, but you got a new seal in there and it's where it should be now.
I told him fine, I want my money back and further more I want a gift card for my gas money, inconvenience and your mistake. I proceeded to tell him that, this MASTER TECH's mistake could of cost me or the dealer ship a lot of money in about a thousand miles when that bearing had starved of oil and my primary would of been toast. I got a 16000 dollar bike at home, and a stupid error like that could of cost a lot of money or possibly my butt going down the highway.
I'm a mechanic too, not a Harley mechanic but if I made the error this guy made today, 138 people could possibly lose their lives because of it.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, some of you guys that have taken your bike in because of inner primary bearing issues, I wonder if from the get go, was the clip in the right position? When you had the bearing changed, did the tech put the clip in the right position? Lot of folks have had no problems, lots of folks have had bearing failures, so do yourselves a favor if you are gonna have he dealer do it who knows everything, see if you can visually verify the clip position or know the mechanic very well to trust he knows what he is doing.
I know that I will never have San Jacinto Harley in Houston service my lawn mower, let alone my dyna, ever again......

 

I understand your frustration with trusting dealers to do it right. That's why I do my own work as well. However , there was an alignment issue with the inner primary on these models that needed to be addressed before the ipb would last. Even with clip aligned, failures happened. Since I have a softail and didn't dig too deeply into the issue, but it had something to do with the dowels being off, and misaligning the bearing giving it poor running fit.
Ron