Well, were do I begin!

I initially purchased a new 1998 Road King Classic with the infamous "Evolution" engine. Harley in the mid 1990s decided to offer fuel injected versions, I suspect due to EPA requirements. After less than five hundred miles of service the bike would not start and I had to bum start it to take it to the dealer. They thought that I had a malfunctioning battery and they replaced it with a new one. Once I returned home I noticed that there were brown stains all over my shiny white walled tire on the rear. I took it back and was told that it was battery acid and that they would replace the tire, rear rotor and any other parts that were acid stained. They thought that they had fixed the problem but wanted to wait to make certain prior to replacing the tire and other acid stained items. They finally had to call the factory for help and found that one of the wires was reversed right from the factory. That was the beginning of a nightmare for me. I ended up having five (5) upper ends, three stators, two motor mounts, one rear master brake cylinder failure, and at 39,990 miles Harley-Davidson decided to replace the bike with a 2000 year model Road King to avoid a law suite that I had intended to file against them.

The new bike arrived in December of 1999, and I was soon to learn that it had the cam bearing problems since it was built in 10/99 and all motors prior to 12/99 were considered to be problematic. I contacted Harley and told them that they gave me this bike and that I wanted the cam bearings replaced since they had a tendency of blowing up the motor whenever they let go. Harley said "if it is not broken we will not fix it"! I could hardly believe that response after having gone through all that I did with my 1999 HD Road King Classic. Eventually as I suspect most of you know, Harley sent out letters to those that had suspect cam bearings and offered them all a five (5) year warranty due to cam bearing failure. That's nice of them to do but I had a seven (&) year extended warranty and I was more interested in reliability and not rotationally hand grenadine my motor.

At approximately 11,000 miles I decided to replace the bearings and the dealer had convinced me to upgrade the motor to a 95 inch, with 303 cams and adjustable pushrods, which after a great deal of discussions, I agree to go ahead and let the dealer build the motor. Initially I was not interested in "screwing" with the motor due to all of the problems that I had with my "Evolution" motor that continually ended up burning a great deal of oil. That motor lasted 8, 318 miles before it too was rebuilt due to a bad wrist in the front cylinder and poor leak down results in the rear cylinder.

The motor (upper-end) was rebuilt and that motor lasted 17,700 miles before the front "O" ring let go and the back cylinder had some carbon stuck which prevented the valve from closing properly. The motor was now completely rebuilt at 48,300 miles, new bottom end, new oil pump, new forged high compression piston's, new screaming eagle heads with compression release valves, new 211 cam set and off I went to break in my 9th motor. I also went through three stators, one motor mount and at 66,000 miles fourth and fifth gear in my transmission broke and the transmission had to be completely rebuilt. When I went to pick up the bike at the dealer, I started the bike, pulled out onto the street and the bike stalled. I restarted the bike, pulled it back into the dealer and told them that it was running on one cylinder, the front one! Initially they thought that a plug might-have gone bad however after replacing the plugs they saw white smoke come out of the right exhaust, I run true duals so the rear cylinder was completely dead. When they broke down the motor the following week, they found that the front cylinder can tensioner had virtually broken completely apart and hand-grenade the motor. I have spent some time on the WEB and found that I am not alone with experiencing failed cam tensioners. It appears that they are the weak link in the Twin Cam motors. I am in the process of having the dealer install an S&S Gear Drive with 510 cams along with a Super Fueling Oil Pump, I hope that these items make the motor more reliable than it has proven to be in the past. Needless to say, I have had many other problems with this bike, such as having ten clutch cables installed before the dealer found a hair line crack in the plastic cam sensor that allowed oil to splash all over my transmission. I have been told that the dealer has never heard of anyone having as many mechanical problems as I have had with both of my Harley-David motorcycles.

I might add that when I experienced all of the many problems that I did with my 1998 Road King Classic, I decided to sell the bike based on all of the problems that I had with it, up until Harley-Davidson agreed to replace it with a 2000 Road King Classic. In the interim I purchased a brand new BMW 1200 LT and it now has 41,000 miles on it and have I had any mechanical problems with it, yes, an ABS sensor went out on it and the rear rotor was replaced under warranty due to brake squeak. I might add when the ABS sensor went out the brakes still functioned but not in the ABS mode. So for those of you out there that "Love to Ride" as Harley promotes, I might suggest that you purchase a bike that spends most of its life on the open road, verses most of its life in Harley-Davidson Dealership being put together, over and over and over again. I honestly believe that Harley-Davidson best that most of the people that buy their bikes do not ride a great deal since if they did, they would soon be out of business, mainly due to the poor mechanical design of their products.