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I GOT DUPED BY MYSELF!! --- H-D MOTORCYCLE REPAIR
- Thread starter chief38
- Start date
Yes this is a repeat.
Heck the Harley shop probably would have not found the lose wire either and charged you for all the labor TIME.
Men vs. Women: How to Change Oil 1
WOMEN:
1. Pull up to Jiffy Lube or Valvoline Instant Oil Change when the mileage reaches 3,000 miles since the last oil change.
2. Drink a cup of coffee while they change the oil.
3. 15 minutes later, write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.
Cost: $29.99 oil change, $2.00 coffee. Total $32.00
MEN:
1. Wait until Saturday, drive to the auto parts store. Buy a case of oil, oil filter, kitty litter, hand cleaner (don't forget a little tree air freshener). Write a check to the auto parts store for approximately $50.
2. Stop by 7/11 on the way home, buy a case of beer. Write a check for $20.00.
3. Drive home with oil and beer.
4. Open beer, enjoy it.
5. Spend 30 minutes looking for the jack stands.
6. Find the jack stands (finally) under the kid's pedal car, jack the car up.
7. Open another beer, drink it.
8. Place drain pan under engine.
9. Look for 9/16" box end wrench for drain plug
10. Give up looking ten minutes later, find crescent wrench.
11. Unscrew drain plug.
12. Drop drain plug into pan of hot oil. Splash hot oil onto your hands and face in the process. Cuss and swear.
13. Crawl out from under car, wipe hot oil from hands and face. Throw some kitty litter on the spilled oil.
14. Open another beer while watching the last drops of oil drain.
15. Spend 30 minutes looking for the oil filter wrench.
16. Give up looking for oil filter wrench, crawl under car and hammer a flat-head screwdriver through the oil filter and twist it off.
17. Crawl out from under car, splashing hot oil everywhere from newly made holes in oil filter.
18. Cleverly hide used oil filter in trash to avoid those pesky environmental penalties. Open another beer.
19. Install new oil filter, making sure to apply a thin coat of oil to the gasket.
MEN (STILL GOING!): 20. Pour the first quart of new oil into engine.
21. Oops! Now remember the drain plug (removed in step 11). It's still swimming in the now-warm oil in the drain pan.
22. Throw more kitty litter on the quart-sized oil puddle on the floor.
23. Open another beer and drink it.
24. Find drain plug with a minimum of spillage, hand-tighten in drain plug socket. Drink beer.
25. Crawl under car (getting oily kitty litter embedded in neck and arms). Tighten drain plug with crescent wrench, but this time, it's slippery. Bang your knuckles on the frame while tightening drain plug.
26. Throw crescent wrench across the garage in anger. Throw a fit because crescent wrench hits bowling trophy (which wife wouldn't let stay in the house).
27. Open another beer and drink it.
28. Clean hands, bandaging where needed to stop blood flow.
29. Pour in five quarts of fresh oil.
30. Lower car from jack stands. Smile at your handiwork. Open another beer and drink it.
31. Move car back to discover oil puddles you missed; apply more kitty litter to missed areas.
32. Test drive car to make sure oil doesn't leak.
33. Get pulled over a block from the house by local police, get arrested for DUI.
34. Call loving wife and bail bondsman.
35. Next day, get car out of impound yard.
Cost: $50 parts, $20 beer, Impound fee $75, Bail $1500, DUI $2500 minimum.
Total: $4145 (but you know the job was done right!)
Heck the Harley shop probably would have not found the lose wire either and charged you for all the labor TIME.
Men vs. Women: How to Change Oil 1
WOMEN:
1. Pull up to Jiffy Lube or Valvoline Instant Oil Change when the mileage reaches 3,000 miles since the last oil change.
2. Drink a cup of coffee while they change the oil.
3. 15 minutes later, write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.
Cost: $29.99 oil change, $2.00 coffee. Total $32.00
MEN:
1. Wait until Saturday, drive to the auto parts store. Buy a case of oil, oil filter, kitty litter, hand cleaner (don't forget a little tree air freshener). Write a check to the auto parts store for approximately $50.
2. Stop by 7/11 on the way home, buy a case of beer. Write a check for $20.00.
3. Drive home with oil and beer.
4. Open beer, enjoy it.
5. Spend 30 minutes looking for the jack stands.
6. Find the jack stands (finally) under the kid's pedal car, jack the car up.
7. Open another beer, drink it.
8. Place drain pan under engine.
9. Look for 9/16" box end wrench for drain plug
10. Give up looking ten minutes later, find crescent wrench.
11. Unscrew drain plug.
12. Drop drain plug into pan of hot oil. Splash hot oil onto your hands and face in the process. Cuss and swear.
13. Crawl out from under car, wipe hot oil from hands and face. Throw some kitty litter on the spilled oil.
14. Open another beer while watching the last drops of oil drain.
15. Spend 30 minutes looking for the oil filter wrench.
16. Give up looking for oil filter wrench, crawl under car and hammer a flat-head screwdriver through the oil filter and twist it off.
17. Crawl out from under car, splashing hot oil everywhere from newly made holes in oil filter.
18. Cleverly hide used oil filter in trash to avoid those pesky environmental penalties. Open another beer.
19. Install new oil filter, making sure to apply a thin coat of oil to the gasket.
MEN (STILL GOING!): 20. Pour the first quart of new oil into engine.
21. Oops! Now remember the drain plug (removed in step 11). It's still swimming in the now-warm oil in the drain pan.
22. Throw more kitty litter on the quart-sized oil puddle on the floor.
23. Open another beer and drink it.
24. Find drain plug with a minimum of spillage, hand-tighten in drain plug socket. Drink beer.
25. Crawl under car (getting oily kitty litter embedded in neck and arms). Tighten drain plug with crescent wrench, but this time, it's slippery. Bang your knuckles on the frame while tightening drain plug.
26. Throw crescent wrench across the garage in anger. Throw a fit because crescent wrench hits bowling trophy (which wife wouldn't let stay in the house).
27. Open another beer and drink it.
28. Clean hands, bandaging where needed to stop blood flow.
29. Pour in five quarts of fresh oil.
30. Lower car from jack stands. Smile at your handiwork. Open another beer and drink it.
31. Move car back to discover oil puddles you missed; apply more kitty litter to missed areas.
32. Test drive car to make sure oil doesn't leak.
33. Get pulled over a block from the house by local police, get arrested for DUI.
34. Call loving wife and bail bondsman.
35. Next day, get car out of impound yard.
Cost: $50 parts, $20 beer, Impound fee $75, Bail $1500, DUI $2500 minimum.
Total: $4145 (but you know the job was done right!)
OP
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Actually pretty simple. I will link the part number for you below.
All you need to do is buy the gauge, (forget the H-D instruction sheet that comes with it)! Buy a simple Brass reducer ($1.79) and connect the gauge directly into the spare Allen Screw plug in the Oil Pan next to the Drain Plug. It is there for manufacturing purposes but makes an excellent way to connect the gauge WITHOUT cutting any oil lines as per the instruction sheet. I guess they did not know there was to be an extra plug in the pan when they wrote the instruction sheet.
The electrical connections are only a few wires and getting the Outer Faring off is only 4 Torx screws and 3 minutes work. The entire job takes a few hours and can be done without a lift, BUT it is much easier if you do have one. If you don't, at least the Allen screw in the pan is close to the front of the bike
. If you are serious about doing this and run into any problems, PM me and I can help walk you through it. The only tools you will need are a #27 Torx driver (to remove Faring), an adjustable or dedicated size wrench for the Brass pipe fitting, and an Allen key to remove the extra plug in the Oil Pan (sorry - can't remember the size as I did this 8 years ago). A few solderless crimp connectors make the wire connections neat and easy, and a Nut Driver or socket to remove the nuts on the Air temp Gauge.
This gauge works like a charm and proofed that the combo of Amsoil and the V&H Tuner DOES lower engine temperatures. My normal cruising temp at speed use to be about 220 and now is 200. Aside from verification by the gauge, my thighs can tell the difference too! Since it is an official H-D part it fits perfectly and is a much more useful gauge than an air temp gauge. If you shop around online you can save 20%
Fairing Mount Oil Temperature Gauge - Fahrenheit | Oil & Transmission Gauges | Official Harley-Davidson Online Store
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OP
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KevinJ,
As long as you have the Faring off, you might want to also buy a H-D rubber booted momentary contact switch (just like the one that operates the Odometer) and hang an extra garage door opener clicker inside the Faring. All you need to do is to open up the garage door clicker, find the place where their momentary contact switch is soldered to on the board, and solder in your new one. Drill a hole in the dash and now when you get near your garage door just push the water proof button. Mine has been there for years and I LOVE IT!!! I chose to mount mine inconspicuously on the right side of the Faring but you can mount it anywhere since it actually looks like Factory if you use the OEM switch. Look just to the right of the handle bar. NOTE: pic #2 is NOT the correct direction and I forgot to rotate it 180º so it's upside down.
As long as you have the Faring off, you might want to also buy a H-D rubber booted momentary contact switch (just like the one that operates the Odometer) and hang an extra garage door opener clicker inside the Faring. All you need to do is to open up the garage door clicker, find the place where their momentary contact switch is soldered to on the board, and solder in your new one. Drill a hole in the dash and now when you get near your garage door just push the water proof button. Mine has been there for years and I LOVE IT!!! I chose to mount mine inconspicuously on the right side of the Faring but you can mount it anywhere since it actually looks like Factory if you use the OEM switch. Look just to the right of the handle bar. NOTE: pic #2 is NOT the correct direction and I forgot to rotate it 180º so it's upside down.
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I committed a face-palmer Saturday.
45 minutes out from home, my BMW moto threw a code. 27 30, with the 30 blinking. I spent 10 minutes in a rural church parking lot reading the owners manual trying to figure out what it meant. Nothing.
No smoke, fire, steam . . . bike seems to be running okay, so I turned around and rode to the dealership. Asst service manager kindly took it in immediately. Told me to get some lunch - they serve free food Saturday afternoons. Food was late. I chatted with my saleman, the owner, the caterers, some other bikers. Finally got some lunch there. After almost two hours, I went back to the ASM. He reported they couldn't find a code. WHAT !?!?
So he got the key and we went out to the bike. Key in - on - there's the code, though 26 29 now. He looks at it, looks at me, looks at it, looks at me. And says, "That is your tire pressure monitoring system."
Gamecock shrank to 1 foot tall.
Gotta hand it to the ASM, he was polite as could be, never stuck the barb in for what an idiot I was. I guess he's seen many a customer done in by the new electronics on bikes.
45 minutes out from home, my BMW moto threw a code. 27 30, with the 30 blinking. I spent 10 minutes in a rural church parking lot reading the owners manual trying to figure out what it meant. Nothing.
No smoke, fire, steam . . . bike seems to be running okay, so I turned around and rode to the dealership. Asst service manager kindly took it in immediately. Told me to get some lunch - they serve free food Saturday afternoons. Food was late. I chatted with my saleman, the owner, the caterers, some other bikers. Finally got some lunch there. After almost two hours, I went back to the ASM. He reported they couldn't find a code. WHAT !?!?
So he got the key and we went out to the bike. Key in - on - there's the code, though 26 29 now. He looks at it, looks at me, looks at it, looks at me. And says, "That is your tire pressure monitoring system."
Gamecock shrank to 1 foot tall.
Gotta hand it to the ASM, he was polite as could be, never stuck the barb in for what an idiot I was. I guess he's seen many a customer done in by the new electronics on bikes.
Faulkner
Member
My background is in electronics. I always remembered one of my college instructors troubleshooting tips: Just because you hear hoofbeats does not mean you automatically start looking for zebras.
KevinJ,
As long as you have the Faring off, you might want to also buy a H-D rubber booted momentary contact switch (just like the one that operates the Odometer) and hang an extra garage door opener clicker inside the Faring. All you need to do is to open up the garage door clicker, find the place where their momentary contact switch is soldered to on the board, and solder in your new one. Drill a hole in the dash and now when you get near your garage door just push the water proof button. Mine has been there for years and I LOVE IT!!! I chose to mount mine inconspicuously on the right side of the Faring but you can mount it anywhere since it actually looks like Factory if you use the OEM switch. Look just to the right of the handle bar. NOTE: pic #2 is NOT the correct direction and I forgot to rotate it 180º so it's upside down.
That is genius. THANKS
Also thanks for the walk through Chief.
Who would have thought that I would get the best bike advice here instead of the biker forums.
Chief, before beating yourself up too bad, here's a few thoughts to consider:
A) You learned from your experience. Education often isn't cheap.
B) You're intelligent enough to follow things through until you reached the solution. Even an experienced mechanic made the wrong diagnosis, and without your knowledge of the change you had made previously, may still be scratching his head.
C) The parts may not be returnable (but I would ask anyway - you never know!) but that doesn't mean you can't sell them to recoup some of your expense.
In 1990, I bought a new Chevrolet 1/2 ton pick up. It was a manual shift work truck, and had the weird property that when stopped at a light, if the truck rolled forward or backward, the speedometer needle would jump as high as 60mph. This didn't impact the actual working of the speedometer but since it was a new truck, I wanted it fixed. If you are familiar with the old cable driven units, sometimes the cables would bind, causing the needle to jump around, and that's the explanation I gave the dealer to describe what was happening, though I knew the new units (at the time) were electronic with no mechanical parts other than the speedo itself. Here's the point of my story: it took the dealer 8 (yes eight) tries to get it fixed. These are GM trained mechanics! Part of the issue was the factory sending the wrong sensors - in fact one they sent caused the truck to read over double the actual speed! So the moral to this side excursion is even people trained in repair work can have problems, so as I said, it's nothing to beat yourself up over.
A) You learned from your experience. Education often isn't cheap.
B) You're intelligent enough to follow things through until you reached the solution. Even an experienced mechanic made the wrong diagnosis, and without your knowledge of the change you had made previously, may still be scratching his head.
C) The parts may not be returnable (but I would ask anyway - you never know!) but that doesn't mean you can't sell them to recoup some of your expense.
In 1990, I bought a new Chevrolet 1/2 ton pick up. It was a manual shift work truck, and had the weird property that when stopped at a light, if the truck rolled forward or backward, the speedometer needle would jump as high as 60mph. This didn't impact the actual working of the speedometer but since it was a new truck, I wanted it fixed. If you are familiar with the old cable driven units, sometimes the cables would bind, causing the needle to jump around, and that's the explanation I gave the dealer to describe what was happening, though I knew the new units (at the time) were electronic with no mechanical parts other than the speedo itself. Here's the point of my story: it took the dealer 8 (yes eight) tries to get it fixed. These are GM trained mechanics! Part of the issue was the factory sending the wrong sensors - in fact one they sent caused the truck to read over double the actual speed! So the moral to this side excursion is even people trained in repair work can have problems, so as I said, it's nothing to beat yourself up over.
OP
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Tom,
I did ask about returning the parts and they said they would have bent the rule if I had not installed them. Now they are "used" and they won't take back used electronic parts. Actually i am NOT mad at them for this policy because when I buy a new part from H-D I truly want a NEW part. As far as the speed sensor goes, that's used too but even IF they would take it back, the hassle of taking the Bike apart again is not worth the $60 bucks.
I would say I had a "renewal" of this lesson as I DID know to check the obvious first but what I am mad at myself about is that I DO know better and "plucked up" anyway. I've gotten over it now and am just glad the problem is fixed. We are planning a M/C trip soon and I do use the Cruise Control on the highway. I WON'T forget next time and I suppose that's the important thing! Thanks for the positive response!
Regards,
Chief38
I did ask about returning the parts and they said they would have bent the rule if I had not installed them. Now they are "used" and they won't take back used electronic parts. Actually i am NOT mad at them for this policy because when I buy a new part from H-D I truly want a NEW part. As far as the speed sensor goes, that's used too but even IF they would take it back, the hassle of taking the Bike apart again is not worth the $60 bucks.
I would say I had a "renewal" of this lesson as I DID know to check the obvious first but what I am mad at myself about is that I DO know better and "plucked up" anyway. I've gotten over it now and am just glad the problem is fixed. We are planning a M/C trip soon and I do use the Cruise Control on the highway. I WON'T forget next time and I suppose that's the important thing! Thanks for the positive response!
Regards,
Chief38
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JohnHL
Member
40 years of being an H-D and "metric" motorcycle mechanic has taught me that 99% of "electrical" problems are mechanical problems, i.e. a loose connection, a broken wire, dirty contacts, etc.
A failed component usually wasn't the problem.
Glad you found it.
John
A failed component usually wasn't the problem.
Glad you found it.
John
JohnHL
Member
KevinJ,
As long as you have the Faring off, you might want to also buy a H-D rubber booted momentary contact switch (just like the one that operates the Odometer) and hang an extra garage door opener clicker inside the Faring. All you need to do is to open up the garage door clicker, find the place where their momentary contact switch is soldered to on the board, and solder in your new one. Drill a hole in the dash and now when you get near your garage door just push the water proof button. Mine has been there for years and I LOVE IT!!! I chose to mount mine inconspicuously on the right side of the Faring but you can mount it anywhere since it actually looks like Factory if you use the OEM switch. Look just to the right of the handle bar. NOTE: pic #2 is NOT the correct direction and I forgot to rotate it 180º so it's upside down.
I've been retired from the M/C business for about 10 years now, but I seem to recall an H-D accessory Concealed Garage Door Opener Transmitter that connected in to the stock wire harness and allowed you to toggle the high-beam switch to open your garage door.
John
CAJUNLAWYER
Member
Old Mariner's trick that I use. Keep a repair log. Anytime you do ANYTHING to your boat (or motorcycle) write it in the log. sketch schematics when you re-wire something-write down the bold and nut sizes of things like battery terminal nuts, various screws on sail tracks. Lug screw sizes on the trailer-etc. Makes for an invaluable reference source and helps shortcut what happened to you. Believe me-if you had taken it to the Mechanic he would have been just as lost as you. Go buy one of those little diaries and a ball point and leave it under the seat.
We still read my father in law's old logs and it is amazing the knowledge that old salt had in there! Bearings from points to points, compass variances, what type oil the old Atomic 4 liked the best. Hell he even charted beer and cigarette consumption of the various crew members on the long distance races
We still read my father in law's old logs and it is amazing the knowledge that old salt had in there! Bearings from points to points, compass variances, what type oil the old Atomic 4 liked the best. Hell he even charted beer and cigarette consumption of the various crew members on the long distance races
OP
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Yes they do, however almost everyone has a spare clicker already and you can now buy them online for about $20 bucks. The Harley one is over $100 if memory serves. Today, automobiles have a universal set of 3 buttons that almost everyone programs so the garage door clickers become a kitchen draw item. Might as well put it to use
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