I have an 09 EGC, lately it's been starting a little hard especially when it's hot. I't turns over a little slow, and the starter will disengage before it starts. the bike is about 2.5 years old. Don't know if it's the starter, battery or something else. Any help appreciated

 

It's cheaper in the long run to have a dealership / Indy track down this issue and have it done and over with.

With that said ... have you checked for loose connections beginning with the battery terminals? ... seems to be the number one cause of a large percentage of the electric related issues on Harley's!

 

do you hear any noise when this happens...like a loud bang.....

mine did this and i changed the batt and pulled the starter and went through it....couldnt find anything wrong.....hadda change the compensator sprocket to fix.....no more probs...

 

Check the battery (mfg. date), 3 years is not a bad life for a battery; depending on how often you ride, of course.

 

+1, start with the easy stuff first. Clean up the main connections and ensure they are tight

 

I have been having start up problems for about three weeks. I get the bang from my compensator but I know what that is and it does not bother me. But I was also getting a grind that would chill your spine about every 5th or 6th time I started when hot. I started to install an amp for my stereo today and when I went to un hook the bat the ground screw didn't take much to loosen, then the bolt siezed about 3/4 of the way out. I thought I was going to have to wring it off but it finally came out. The threads were Fkd on the screw and the brand new battery the Stealer had to put in when I bought the bike on June 1st this year because it would not start when I went to pick it up. (Yes I was grinnin hard). I stood there and watched the tech remove the positive terminal first and the whole time he was beating the wrench on the frame with each turn of the nut. I just couldn't stand it after the third or fourth hit and told the guy to un hook the negative first so the terminal would not be hot and I would have to wait a couple more days to fix anything else he burned up. So as it turns out when he put the new battery in and tightened the bolt it bottomed in the whole and buggered up the threads on the bolt and the steel insert that is now cast in the bat terminal as oposed to being loose and sliding into a slot like the other style batteries. Because it bottomed it never tightened up completely. The terminal on the battery had fretting between the terminal and the lug. He also put the thin flimsy ring terminal for the charging pig tail on against the battery post and had it coming off upwards so my seat bent it over 90 degrees and has been crushing it since then. I always put the heavy lug from the frame against the battery lug. So now I have some really buggered up metric threads and no metric bottoming tap. Went to the old drill and tap drawer and got a 1/4-20 heli coil kit, drilled the terminal on the battery all the way through, tapped the new clean hole with the HC tap and put a 1/4-20 helicoil in it. Problem solved but delayed me 1 1/2 hrs to fix. There is no way the tech ever tried to wiggle the terminals after he installed the battery or he would have had this issue to fix. Any way back to this post, rode all day started 5 times and bike sounds like it just rolled off the showroom floor. I am pretty sure that as the torque load from the starter fell off from a bad ground the starter cluch wasn't getting enough load to hold and was slipping and making the horrible grinding noise.

Good Luck with your problem and like the others here said check your grounds they can appear to be good and if not cause multiple strnge events to occur.

 

Man, this sounds exactly like my issue! thanx