Has the MoCo resolved its crankshaft issues?

[claydbal]

Originally Posted by pittguy

No 09 timken appears to be true.Hd did change something either flywheel wise or l.h case wise by machining but the runout specs of latest update appear to the same.Maybe .001" greater.

thanks, keep on it wouldya?

[Josey Wales]

No there is no Timken bearings for '09 but I will tell you waht they did do!


Left side flywheel – Shallower counter bore

Change to ALL Flywheels
END PLAY SPECIFICATION
.003” - .013”Starting in 09MY the flywheel will be able to
use either the long or short bolt. Long bolts will
be used up in production before the short bolt
becomes common for both. New flywheels will
retrofit.

There you have it, The Great fix.....Increased Runout that should fix it!

[plane]

I think it's sour grapes. 96 Cubic Inches from the get go...oh and don't forget the 6 speed.....SWEET.

[wickedgt]

Knock on wood... 07 Roadking, 40,000 miles, I ride both aggressive one up and tame two up... no problems here. It is a crap shoot no matter what you buy. Whether it is a car, truck, or bike... Asian, German, American... you take your chances. Change the oil, do some mods, put gas in, cross your fingers and GO!

[grandpa Tom]

Originally Posted by muleskinner

Gee after reading this post I guess I'll go sell my 07 Street Glide, as I guess it should be junk by years end. Please, give me a break. What is happening here is typical internet story telling. If you leave the engine alone like Harley designed it, and not try to make it put out big huge HP numbers, it will be just fine. There are lot's of good stock high milage Harleys running around that are later models than 2002. (I own two myself)

With the advent of the Internet, it only takes a small number of folks having a few problems for the story to get all blown out of shape. Now I'm not saying no one has had problems, but to say later models are junk is a huge leap.

Harley V-Twin single crank pin engines were never intended to put out huge HP numbers at high RPM and be survivable. If you want to go fast on a cruiser type motorcycle and make big numbers, get one of the late model metric cruisers. The water cooled, modern designed engines in those bikes will make big HP numbers if you want and not have the problems that an old design, air cooled motor will. But, they are ugly and I would not have one. I don't care what you do to them, they are not a Harley! Give Harley a break and just ride them like they were intended to be ridden. (With a stage one mod of course. And maybe a fueling device)

Mule skinner ;maybe you and I are of the rare breed of HD riders that dont need a motor cycle that flies when we open it.
At 58 yrs all I want is bike that starts when I press the start button and runs till I shut it off, and does this time after time.
This is my first Harley since the early 70's, we used to have to tear them down every fall to get ready for next summer.
That is why I rode goldwings for 15 years. After retiring 2 yrs ago and not riding for 10, I was ready again.
The new 07 Heritage is everything I Hoped for and more. As you, I have stage 1 and the way the wife and I ride, 95 % we like the way it is. Only once in a while I would like more than it has when I ride alone.
The only thing I'm will do is a BOLT- IN cam, I havent made up my mind what to install yet, If any.
I didnt buy it to go fast, the wife and I ride 40-100 miles almost daily mostly in county at 45 mph average. I must say it does what we want and with no problems, we have 12+K on it and it is fit our riding style perfect.
Not had any problems other than regular service and 1 new reat tire.
The wife loves to ride more now, better than any of the bikes I ve had, she has ridden with me about 11.5K of the 12 k.
That is probably more miles for her ridding than all the other bikes (9) together.
Bottom line the 07 FLSTC is a great bike and not planning to much engine work hopping that is last a long time..

Update now going on 17k miles and it still is running great... only thing this summer was oil change and gas... Its about time to winterize as its getting cold here in Ind..

[Josey Wales]

Originally Posted by grandpa Tom

Mule skinner ;maybe you and I are of the rare breed of HD riders that dont need a motor cycle that flies out between our legs when we crack open the right hand.
At 58 yrs all I want is bike that starts when I press the start button and runs till I shut it off, and does this time after time.
This is my first Harley since the early 70's and we used to have to tear them down every fall to get ready for next summer.
That is why I rode goldwings for 15 years. After retiring 2 yrs ago and not riding for 10 I was ready to ride again.
The new 07 Heritage is everything I Hoped for and more. As you stated I have stage 1 and the way the wife and I ride it is 95 % pleasureably the way it is. Only once in a while I would like more than it has and that is when I ride alone.
The only thing I would think of doing is a BOLT- IN cam and I havent made up my mind on what to install yet, If any.
I didnt buy it to race, drag, or run wide open at red line, the wife and I ride 1 1/2 hrs almost daily mostly in country at 45 mph average. I must say it does this easily and with no problems what so ever and we have 12+K on it and that is all we can ask of a bike.
We have not had any problem other than regular service and 1 new reat tire.
I will say that the wife loves to ride now better than any of the goldwings I had, she has ridden with me about 11.5K of the 12 k that I have on the Harley. That is probably miles for her than all the bikes together that I ve had in my life time.
So bottom line is the 07 FLSTC is a great bike and we are happy with it pretty much stock and not planning to built a race rocket out of it and we hope it will last a long time.

I am glad it is working out for you, Just prepare yourself for the rebuild because it will break! It is no different than the 70's (just think AMF) Don't get me wrong I love my Harley but let's face the truth here and admit that they do not build them the way they used to or the way they should!

There is always room for improvement no matter what brand you buy due to plain and simple economics these days! I am marly pointing out that it is insane that tolerances keep increasing and nothing is being done to remedy a bad situation! Take it for what it's worth...I am sure their are plenty of people that will agree!

[route66paul]

Originally Posted by muleskinner

I'm not going to stand up for the MoCo when they are wrong or putting out bad products with poor workman ship, but I also refuse to buy into the hype that any HD bike manufactured after 2002 is junk. I got off of a 2005 Honda ST1300 that makes the 2008 HD motorcycle technoligy look like something from the 40's. But, I wanted the old technoligy look and feel. I wanted a bike I could work on to personalize. If I had wanted a perfect, needs nothing, modern motorcycle I would have stayed with what I had.

So far I like my new street glide. It's a nice bike. So far I've had NO problems with it. My wife's 2005 road king custom is also a nice bike that she has had NO problems with. The people on the street that ride late model, post 2002 Harleys I speak with like thier bikes also. The dealer seems to not have the problems to the extent that some say are out there. So I say the later than 2002 HD bikes are most likely no better or worse than the pre 2002 HD bikes. But that is just an opinion and like ass holes, everyone has one.

Now if a precieved problem with crank shaft run out or shift is going to stop you from buying a new HD bike, then so be it. But in my humble opinion, you are the one that is loosing out. The new bikes are nice and a LOT of folks are buying them. But far be it for me to say you should not just go find a nice clean pre 2002 HD bike and be happy with it.

But, in the mean time, I will be out riding my nice clean, well running, new 2007 HD stage one Street Glide down the road. And most likely like everyone else that rides HD bikes, down the road I will be taking the engine apart and putting high performanc parts into it. So when my crank breaks, I will then build an engine that puts out more HP. That's what we do. That's why the MoCo is making the big bucks. Otherwise we would all be riding modern water cooled metric bikes like the smart folks do. How boring!

There is a big problem here. ever since the Moco gave in to the stockholders and made more bikes than they could sell, they have also made some bad engineering changes based on production costs, only. The Moco had to go with chain drive cams because of noise. The EPA also forced the company to tune the engines and run different cams so that they would burn hot, for complete combustion. The change to FI across the board was also because of govermental regs. The changes to the mounting of the crankshafts, the making then lighter and weaker and the runout problems is a direct result. There are those who have to have 130 or 140 hp engines for their bikes. These guys find out the weak points one by one, this is doubling the hp and squaring the wear items.

But as many of us who are familiar with the Harley tax know, there are ways to get the bike back to where it was designed to go. This entails a full flow air cleaner and pipes. for many, this also means head porting and a cam change, and since the compression has to come up, you need pistons, so you might as well go bigger. along with this, you need to tune for it, either with the carb or EFI. This just puts these engines where they run the way they were designed and gives you some decent HP. it does not make it a race bike, just a nice bike that you won't have problems with. This was great until 03, when the crank was set in differently.

many people want to put in gear drive cams and can not do so because the crank is bent. according to the manufacturer, .003 is it, don't do it. Chains work, you just have to check them, ok. With the extra HP you have and the rev limiter raised, now you can spin the crank so fast that using the engine to brake can shift the wheels, which puts the crank out of balance.

That is bad enough, but after 07, the engines went to a stroker and now there is more torque to spin the crank(which is even lighter than it was). so, now, you can't even do the little things that we did do the make the bike more user freindly. On top of that, the tune has the Y-pipe so hot that you can see it glow red hot and cook your passenger's leg. Of course, the tolerences and/or the calibration of the sensors is not tight enough that every engine is too hot, just a good percentage. They also had to gear the engine higher(and go to 6 speeds) so that the optimun RPMs for the EPA can be used fron street to highway speeds. This caused a jerky engine because of the low rpm and the compensator didn't fix it. so the Moco just put a rubber vibration eliminator on the rear wheel, it didn't solve the problem, but it did make it smoother.

The MOCO did fix the problem with the mechanical tensioners by changing out to hydraulic tensioners which seem to be much better.

There is a problem. People buy new bikes and cook the passenger's feet and have a bike that has to tall gears in it. This bike is not comfortable to ride the way it is designed, many owners have troubles. part of this is because of the EPA requirements, but the MOCO has made mistakes here also. These mistakes could be fixed, it is just a matter of returning to the way they built the engines before.

The Harley tax was a problem before, now you can't even depend on it.

[Josey Wales]

Originally Posted by route66paul

There is a big problem here. ever since the Moco gave in to the stockholders and made more bikes than they could sell, they have also made some bad engineering changes based on production costs, only. The Moco had to go with chain drive cams because of noise. The EPA also forced the company to tune the engines and run different cams so that they would burn hot, for complete combustion. The change to FI across the board was also because of govermental regs. The changes to the mounting of the crankshafts, the making then lighter and weaker and the runout problems is a direct result. There are those who have to have 130 or 140 hp engines for their bikes. These guys find out the weak points one by one, this is doubling the hp and squaring the wear items.

But as many of us who are familiar with the Harley tax know, there are ways to get the bike back to where it was designed to go. This entails a full flow air cleaner and pipes. for many, this also means head porting and a cam change, and since the compression has to come up, you need pistons, so you might as well go bigger. along with this, you need to tune for it, either with the carb or EFI. This just puts these engines where they run the way they were designed and gives you some decent HP. it does not make it a race bike, just a nice bike that you won't have problems with. This was great until 03, when the crank was set in differently.

many people want to put in gear drive cams and can not do so because the crank is bent. according to the manufacturer, .003 is it, don't do it. Chains work, you just have to check them, ok. With the extra HP you have and the rev limiter raised, now you can spin the crank so fast that using the engine to brake can shift the wheels, which puts the crank out of balance.

That is bad enough, but after 07, the engines went to a stroker and now there is more torque to spin the crank(which is even lighter than it was). so, now, you can't even do the little things that we did do the make the bike more user freindly. On top of that, the tune has the Y-pipe so hot that you can see it glow red hot and cook your passenger's leg. Of course, the tolerences and/or the calibration of the sensors is not tight enough that every engine is too hot, just a good percentage. They also had to gear the engine higher(and go to 6 speeds) so that the optimun RPMs for the EPA can be used fron street to highway speeds. This caused a jerky engine because of the low rpm and the compensator didn't fix it. so the Moco just put a rubber vibration eliminator on the rear wheel, it didn't solve the problem, but it did make it smoother.

The MOCO did fix the problem with the mechanical tensioners by changing out to hydraulic tensioners which seem to be much better.

There is a problem. People buy new bikes and cook the passenger's feet and have a bike that has to tall gears in it. This bike is not comfortable to ride the way it is designed, many owners have troubles. part of this is because of the EPA requirements, but the MOCO has made mistakes here also. These mistakes could be fixed, it is just a matter of returning to the way they built the engines before.

The Harley tax was a problem before, now you can't even depend on it.

I have to agree with you to a point! What I don't believe is the EPA excuse, Why you ask.....There are a lot of other manufactures that have air cooled motors running much better with more hp/tq than the moco and we do not hear them complaining of EPA standards, crank problems, etc. I have seen 100"- 124" that are EPA compliant air cooled motors that run stronger and smoother than the moco's Maybe I am way off but I would really like an answer to why that is! I am sure that Harley could easilt go back to building their motors as strong and reliable as they once were with better parts! They can't be saving that much money going with substandard parts and manufacturing unless they calculated the fact that it would probably break after warranty ran out! lol

It is a true shame the direction the moco is headed!

[BWdiver]

I really like my 08 SG, and I had a great running 03 FLSTF, yes the gearing is a little tall in the SG but it runs great! and is smooth as a babies butt, maybe I got a good one and maybe I got a good one when I bought the 03... I thought the power was a little low on the SG so I had a set of Andrews cams put in (26A) WOW!! now I'm really happy!!!

If the crank gives up the ghost I will put the best I can buy in it...thats the great thing about these bikes its an adventure and a Saturday project to keep you young, Yes, MOCO should do it right! we all don't doubt that, but it is what it is, I guess you can go and buy a cookie cutter, great and fantastic Honda or Yamadog.

No thanks, I'll keep my POS Harley, It's the only brand I've owned.

P.S. I wish they would make a bad a** 4 wheeler!!!!

[route66paul]

Originally Posted by Josey Wales

I have to agree with you to a point! What I don't believe is the EPA excuse, Why you ask.....There are a lot of other manufactures that have air cooled motors running much better with more hp/tq than the moco and we do not hear them complaining of EPA standards, crank problems, etc. I have seen 100"- 124" that are EPA compliant air cooled motors that run stronger and smoother than the moco's Maybe I am way off but I would really like an answer to why that is! I am sure that Harley could easilt go back to building their motors as strong and reliable as they once were with better parts! They can't be saving that much money going with substandard parts and manufacturing unless they calculated the fact that it would probably break after warranty ran out! lol

It is a true shame the direction the moco is headed!

Not aircooled engines with pushrods and a 5 piece crank. We all love an engine that is basically 60 year old, if you count the overhead valves. The tolerances could be tighter, but the slop in the pushrods as opposed to overhead cam or cams and the slop in the crank do make problems for the MOCO to meet EPA standards.

[dynadad]

We will never know if they will break or not. Everyone bitch and crying on forum. Cranks will last for ever sitting in the garage.

[emxgarcia]

Originally Posted by muleskinner

Give Harley a break and just ride them like they were intended to be ridden. (With a stage one mod of course. And maybe a fueling device)

Same philosophy here.
EFI Fueler, getting Air Cleaner soon and maybe next year SE-203 cam.

[emxgarcia]

Originally Posted by wickedgt

Knock on wood... 07 Roadking, 40,000 miles, I ride both aggressive one up and tame two up... no problems here. It is a crap shoot no matter what you buy. Whether it is a car, truck, or bike... Asian, German, American... you take your chances. Change the oil, do some mods, put gas in, cross your fingers and GO!

Same riding styles... agree on ur comment too.

[yorgo]

Of those whose cranks have failed what seems to be the average mileage for the new bikes at the point of crank failure? Somewhere I read signs should start around 17-18K miles. Before my warranty expires I will have around 45 - 48K miles. Hopefully my crank will fail before time is up.

[AirGlider]

What I don't understand is why doesn't the MoCo just weld the cranks prior to assembly. They should be able to keep tolerances wit