Not so much rocking and a whole lot of rolling….

So, I realized I never followed up after my bit about the odd vibrations Sonja was suffering from. It turns out that there was nothing wrong with the ignition/fuel mapping. The torque curve was sweet, the HP curve was nice and linear, and the AFR was damn near spot on.

The issue was a change that the MoFo MoCo made in the compensator sprocket setup. A change that introduced a gap in an area that takes a ton of abuse. Harley’s fix: a shim that sits between the bearing and the sprocket. Relatively quick and painless fix.

The end result? I’m finally riding on a big twin again (vs. the epileptic with tourettes that I’d been riding for quite some time now).

At any rate, here’s Sonja…

My little lady

Here goes nothing…

So, I have figured out a couple of things regarding the horrific vibrations from the bike.

It’s definitely ignition related. When I got the bike with the better flowing air cleaner and the better flowing mufflers, there was the possibility that the map download wouldn’t be exactly right. I’d just gotten used to the way she’d been running since I never had a big-twin point of reference to know what was normal and what was not normal. After riding the rental for 3-ish weeks, I became very used to the smoother running engine. So when I got mine back, the fact that there were ignition issues became painfully obvious to me.

So, what does that mean? I have 2 options. One, take her back to stock (AIN’T HAPPENING!!!). Two, programmable ignition and a Dyno-Tune.

*GRUMBLE* *SNORT*

So, I got to spend just shy of 3 weeks without the bike. I was comp’ed a rental, since it was warranty work. They covered the rental, but I had to cover the damage waiver costs (35/day). When I went in to pick up my bike, the paperwork wasn’t ready at the rental turn in counter. It annoyed me just a little. HOWEVER, because they kind of screwed up the paperwork, I was only in for 3 days of the damage waiver. So a rental where the total bill was over $1600, only cost me $100 and change. So, from a fiscally-bent-over standpoint, I was quite happy that I wasn’t bent over at all.

However, riding a bike that didn’t have the idling problems that mine had, has soured me about my bike a bit. I’ve done some research on the issue and it might not really be a big deal. I’ll try a couple fixes this weekend and see what shakes out. It’s entirely possible that I’ll need to get the programmable ignition module (and a Dyno Tuning) to correct the problem. Which, I’d be okay with. I just want the bike to run as smoothly as I know a Road King can run.