The Harley shop has been working on my 2000 Sportster for 6 hours and still doesn't have a clue what's wrong.

Here's the details:

A few weeks ago after a light rain, my bike started up fine, but it had _zero_ torque. Whenever I started releasing the clutch and giving it gas, the bike would lose power instead of gaining power, and start dying. The only way I could get the 1/2 mile home was to leave the clutch half-way in and limp home.

I tried fixing it myself first by just spraying some carb cleaner in the carb. Then I put some seafoam in the gas tank. Then I began dissassembling and cleaning the carb. When I found some gas lines that seemed to be disintegrating, I had it towed to the Harley shop to replace all of the fuel lines.

* They cleaned, and replaced parts of, and re-installed the carb.
* They said the gas lines that were going bad were just vent lines and they were fine. They also "trimmed" some gas lines.
* The compression is good.
* The leak down is good.
* The spark plugs are getting clogged but this doesn't seem to be the source of the problem.
* They told me that the cam sensor on these bikes tends to go bad and need to be replaced, but that my problems are not indicative of that issue.

They're completely stumped, and neither they nor me are thrilled with them spinning their wheels for another 10 hours trying to track down this problem.

Any ideas??

 

so......it idles fine?

in neutral, it revs up ok?

They both sound normal?

 

Not having the shop manual in front of me for your year bike, just first guess it could be a ignition timing module bad or even possibly the connection at that module. It's located under the seat.

 

Spark plugs are getting clogged? Fouled?

 

Yeah. This has never been a problem before and new plugs don't solve the main problem.

I suspect this is related to cleaners that I used and will disappear should they dump the tank and give it new fuel.

 

I don't have the bike with me, but if I recall it idles okay if not perfectly.

Oh... I didn't mention this above, but after limping along for a while trying to get it to a garage I could use... I was unable to get it started again.

That's when I started pulling apart the carb.

 

I'm going to be really, really nice here and not mention which Harley shop this was.

They just called back. They found some pin that's a part of the carb sitting there on the work bench that they forgot to install.

They installed it and now it seems to be running just fine.

 

Needle jet. Either sitting on some one's workbench, or rolling on the floor! It's a very elusive little part. Get's em every time.

 

good for you!!

 

Can't believe the shop admitted their mistake, must be an honest shop.