I haven't found any threads with this subject, so I may as well post my experience. Hopefully it will save someone some major problems if they find this early. I'll try to keep it brief. Yea Right!

My wife and I were riding our bikes from Albuquerque to Aztec, NM. It's about a 180 mile trip through some really remote Navajo/deasert land. My wife's 06 Road King trike had been purring along just fine. We had stopped about 35 miles back for gas in the town of Cuba, NM and everything seemed fine with both bikes. It's pretty darned dry out there and as we were passing a (really) small Navajo gas station at Councelors Point, my wife signaled that she wanted to pull over for a quick swig of water.


As she starts to slow to a stop and downshifts, her foot slipped off the shifter, which never seemed to be a problem before. When she pulled up next to me the bike smelled like burining oil. We both looked down and discovered that her boots and chaps were covered in oil, along with the entire lower part of the bike. From right behind the front of the engine everythng was just dripping with some very expensive Mobil 1 V-twin oil. Holy s---!

It took me a while to troubleshoot the oily mess, but the source of the problem was a small crack that had formed in the oil filter housing. That crack was caused by the oil filter rubbing on the generator voltage regulator, which is just below and in front of the oil filter. The filter was rubbing on the filter housing because the front of the engine had dropped about 1/2 inch. The reason it dropped that far was because the front engine mount blew out and let the front of the engine drop.

We were damn lucky that my wife was thirsty because I would have continued riding for another hour to our place in Aztec. We had lost a little over 1.5 quarts of oil and could have lasted a little longer, but I doubt that my wife would have noticed the oil on her feet while cruising. Along with the bright sunshine I doubt that she would have noticed when the oil light come on either. I'm pretty sure we cam damn close to smoking that engine.

Anyone else out there had this problem?

My word to the wise... If you notice your oil filter on your rubber mounted engine (Road King, Street Glide, Ultra Glide, etc.) is any less than say 1/2 to 3/8 inch from the fins on your voltage regulator, you better have someone check out your front engine mount. If you have trouble finding room to slip on a strap wrench on your filter element for some reason, you better check it out.

I only had 6000 miles on this trike when it happened. I have since learned on this site that these engine mounts have had a long history of problems.

We finally had a friend pick me up some oil, a new filter and drove out from Farmington with his tools to get us the heck out of there. The next day I put in the new and "improved" front engine mount on. Made a big difference in the clearance.

Another interesting side note. The following day I was at the Durango HD shop and looked at a few bikes that were in the shop waiting area. Sure enough, one really nice looking Ultra Classic had the oil filter slammed right down on top of the voltage regulator. I pointed it out to the the shop guys just to make sure they knew about it. Not only were they not aware of it, but it turned out to be the Dealership owner's bike. Hope they fixed it....?

 

Whew you were lucky

 

Thanks for the heads up. Sorry you had a problem but looks like you handled it just fine. I'll be looking at my filter alot more from now on.

 

Man, you were lucky. You could have easily been stranded in the middle of nowhere. At least you were able to notice it before blowing the engine. Good tip. Thanks.

 

Lucky you, I have changed 2 motor mounts on my bike in the last 2 years.

 

Great info ... thanks for posting! Another thing to check on my pre-flights.

 

what year is your bike? Is this the old or new style mount you had to replace?

 

I have had two friends find loose front motor mounts on their bikes. Check your mounts.

 

Thanks for the heads up, I now have something else to regularly check.

 

Very good tip - thanks a lot!