Mine's been flushed and is not having issues and I'm not making excuses; that said, sanctimonious lectures about risk and maintenance are entirely unhelpful. I have extensive experience repairing and maintaining all types of vehicles and equipment over 30+ years. Of course other vehicles have problems but this issue renders a vital system inoperable, theoretically from failure to follow a fairly arbitrary maintenance schedule that historically most people have ignored with little consequence. You don't manufacture a vehicle that has a catastrophic failure if service intervals aren't followed to the letter; it's just **** poor design and engineering. If ABS gets gunked up and stops working, the brakes should still function as standard brakes or the entire system should never have been put into production.

 

Well said but give the MOCO a break. Nothing is perfect and if the maintenance schedule was followed all would be ok, so in this instance, HD missed the boat and its testing did not reveal that if people ignored the REQUIRED brake fluid flush every two years, the fluid could gel up and POSSIBLY prevent either the front or rear brake to work properly, even though the bikes other set of brakes would still work.

I mean we can engineer every single danger in this world for anything that is not properly maintained and sell bikes for $50,000 instead.
HD learned a lesson and now is fixed, just like any other company learns lessons.

Important to point out, that the bike does not lose its entire braking system.

The front OR rear brake will still work in a failure. (from what others posted in here)

We do need to be reasonable, lessons are learn in technology, no product is perfect and it has since been corrected.

 

Actually, that's exactly what it tends to do. Fail by locking out the master cylinder and leaving you without brakes. That's a major design flaw.

Disagree. I know of no other ABS system that fails like the Harley ABS does, nor any other system as prone to failure as Harley's is. That is a major failure and design flaw. Other bikes costing less than half what a Harley costs have ABS systems that work, reliably.

I see no indication that Harley has "learned a lesson" and in no way, shape, or form is it now fixed.

 

 

Hahahahaha I doubt either one of those statements is true

I wonder how “reasonable” you’d be feeling if it was your bike?

If I owned one of these model years’ I would likely be having the Chinese ABS death-unit replaced no matter what, whether it was warrantee-covered or on my own dime, whether it was malfunctioning or not. Having a malfunction like this waiting to happen, maybe never, maybe next time I rode it, would make me want to never get on the bike again.

It’s like Russian Roulette! Tell me one time when you used your brakes just for fun, not cos you needed them?

FYI this is me being reasonable. If I was in the OP’s shoes I’d be looking at legal options.

 

Nor, apparently, can we fix “failure to grasp the real issue at hand”. NEVER, EVER, should an ABS system fail unsafe. It’s a basic engineering principle. Harley has created a situation where if an owner fails to be Righteous about their brake fluid maintenance schedule, then they may PAY FOR IT WITH THEIR LIFE. Does that sound reasonable to you?

The real issue here is that ABS systems should ALWAYS fail “safe”. This is not debatable!

 

Well, actually, Doug, Harley has NOT "learned it' lesson and fixed the problem:.

I haven' received my recall to replace the module in my bike. THAT... and only that...would fix the problem.

Anybody else get that notice yet?

I thought not.

 

There's been one case where both apparently failed resulting in a dented garage door and even then there are too many variables such as some riders hardly ever use the rear brake at all. If that rider loses the front and goes for the rear that failed a month ago unbeknownst to the rider they would say both failed at the same time.

That said Im not going to wait and see if Harley does a recall on the HCU, Ill just buy one and change it because whether its $300 or $900 for the unit I think my life is worth that. Ill keep the receipt and if theres a recall they can replace it again or refund me. Other manufacturers do that.

 

In that case, you might want to consider taking yours apart and seeing if you can't clean it out. At the worse, you'll fail and simply buy the replacement you're already considering.

I understand you can now buy just the hydraulic portion, which is apparently the ~$300 option.

 

I debated doing that first actually, have a peak inside and post pics. Mine's a 2011 with 15000kms on it, no service history came with the bike but Ive done the fluid once in the year Ive owned it.