May 2002: Over $700 in Service at 10,000 Miles!!!

In February, I took the Sportster-aka-JUNK in to Vic's Custom Cycle of Tarzana, CA (not a dealer) for the 10,000 mile service, and to plug the now-enormous oil leak in the front cylinder. They seemed to think the leak was from the head gasket, which was $70 alone. Thus, a nominally $300ish major service (already outrageously expensive by the standards of my old Toyota Corolla) becomes a kick in the gut exceeding $700. Worse then my worst case expectations. But then hasn't that always been the case with this bike?

But, you guessed it, I am not finished. Some time in the preceding year I started noticing some odd and intermittent behavior. Every few rides, my JUNK became gutless at highway speeds, straining to maintain 50 mph on the level at or near full-throttle. This is not a comfortable feeling on an LA freeway when you are not driving a VW van. I thought it might be a tuning problem, but the 10,000 mile service did not fix it. Anyone know a good exorcist?

As of May this peculiar behavior seemed to be becoming less frequent, so perhaps(?) an exorcism will not be necessary. Since it is more or less driveable at present, I am resisting the impulse to hand my wallet to a Harley mechanic again.

Maybe all of this is just a very long, difficult, and expensive burn-in period, and JUNK will be a model of reliability for the next 300,000 miles. I will not be holding my breath, I need it to curse Harley-Davidson.