Ride is in the shop for a 25K service, just finished out 2700 mile ride and noticed a upper engine or what seemed upper engine noise increasing by the day for the last of the days out, had service write it up for check over. Primary and compensator just fine, cam chain tensioner looked new even at 25K, pulled down trans cover and found first gear fork bent, rubbing all the time, put metal in the oil and basically wasted the bearings/mainshaft in trans.

Anybody else see or hear of this occurring in the later touring bikes? Why would the fork get bent, I don't horse it and do not rest my foot on the shifters. I did buy the bike used with 6K on it but no noise til the road trip.

 

oh goody....another thing to put on my list to check this winter. this harley is keeping me real busy.

 

+2, speakerfritz

 

'Initial' estimate until trans is out and completely torn down, $1300.00-1500.00, replacement gearbox should the case be bad is well over $3000 new, no idea on used.

 

Quick update, the shop has all but one race and a fork for the parts which should be here today, case is fine all cleaned up and out of traces of filings, they figure to test drive it Monday. $1100 in parts(cut the markup down to cut me a break as I am a 3+ year repeat customer), decided to waive some routine service labor time as they are already in that phase doing the trans and not going to hurt the wrench's paycheck in the process(I asked).

I did find out from a friend that knew the previous owner that he tried to ride it like a crotch rocket, hard on it that I would not have expected, anyway buying used is always buyer beware.

 

Bike is back, short ride out yesterday and all is better than fine. Shifts are much cleaner, less movement to change gears and not much pressure needed so now I do know it was that way when I bought it. The old parts were ugly, large areas ground down, bearing surfaces brinelled badly, lucky it lasted this long. Now that it is repaired a friend said I should have considered installing Baker DD6 to my gear box, missed that chance to have a six speed but the price was high enough.