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OK today I am going down the road. Great day in central Florida. Bike goes into limp mode. If you shift into second you can go a whole 23 miles a hour. Enough to get off the road. Pull over shut off bike wait a few minutes starts up fine. Ride about 2 miles more & it goes into limp mode again. Sanford Harley is about 2 miles away. Get it there and of course it is packed from Bike week in the service dept. First they tell me to let it set for 20 minutes then drive? I said check it out don't want to get down the road & have it happen again. Still waiting to hear from dealer?? Any suggestions? Should the bike show some codes? Would you drive & wait for it to happen again?
Has happened to me twice and both times it was electrical related and did show codes at the dealer. Once was a 6 pin connector that had the wires work loose and the second there was a short in the TBW connections in the handlebars
There are many threads about this problem and yes, there are codes associated with it as BB59 noted. Many times the pins in the connector behind the air cleaner need to be replaced. There should have been a recall with the numerous complaints about this but why do that if they can charge you for the repair. Good luck. Been there - done that.
Mine did that in Moscow, Idaho last summer, unplugged and re pluged the connector behind the air cleaner and off I went, when I got home I put some dielectric grease on the pins and the ecm pins under the seat, never happened again as of yet.
Mine did the limp mode twice several weeks apart last summer. Each time I let it sit about 15 minutes and it cleared and did not happen again that day. Took it to dealer under warranty and they replaced the connector to throttle body and put dielectric grease the connectors. I'm not convinced that fixed the problem but it has not done it again. The problem seems to be the Harley motor vibrates so much that the cheap metal in the connector pins rub rough spots on them and the ECM senses a voltage problem on the TBW circuit and shuts things down to prevent a sudden acceleration safety issue. Mine had many codes each time it happened. Its pretty tough for the dealer to find until the voltage issue gets bad enough to pick it up on their test equipment. From what I read it could be the TBW connection to throttle body, TBW connectors in handle bar, ECM connector or even broken wires somewhere in harness. My opinion is that my service manager just replaced what he thought it might be and added the dielectric grease for good measure.
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