| Author | Message | ||
     Rd3501 |
Ridrx, Blake seems to be struggling, lately. He emailed me and told me he email you too..Ridrx, dont feel left out Blake couldnt even get my name correct when he was emailing me. But sure knows all the answers when it comes to Buells and the companies great service it seems, cough,cough. I wonder if he is on their payroll??? He contacted me and told me to stop my bitch/complaining all over the boards about my views on my bike. I than explained to him all the problems with the Buell XBs over the years and what I thought was the real reason they were failing the headlights. Just changing parts every year and not doing anymore recalls. Just like the side stand, which is on its 4th design so far or the 4th design on the oil lines... Just leaving the consumer to pony up the money if they want the fix.. Told me to cool it if I didnt have anything nice to say. Wanted some solutions...Not sure what else to do Blake??..Buell has some bad headlights on bikes that they built that are dangerous, Buell knows about the problem(I have talked to many in the customers service department about it), put in some complaints to NHTSA. Started a thread about who has bad headlights. Whats the point in having a website about Buells if you cant talk about there good and bad problems. Anyways..I guess we will see if Buell does anything about the headlights in the next year......like the last 5 years hasnt been enough...lol But hey glass is still half full. | ||
| Ducxl |
I got the E-mail too.We're becoming too vocal a segment,as owners of Buells' with defective equipment.I'm thankful for this forum educating me to this defect.But i guess we've no right to seethe waiting for a factory solution. | ||
| Court |
I think you have every right to express you dissatisfaction. I think where we part ways is when folks say dishonest and inaccurate things about Buell. It puts some of us in a tough spot. There are things some of us know and can not discuss publicly. What I do, having owned Buell longer than anybody on this (or any other internet forum), is that Buell has the best track record in the industry for standing behind their product. The idea that Buell is sweeping anything under the carpet, hiding something or doing nothing is pure unadulterated bullshit. I am, for the record, also opposed to folks being told, behind the scenes, what to say and not to say on an "opinion forum". It deprives the venue of any value. I'd hate to think of a forum censored by Buell. No one here has been around long enough to remember but we had one once and it lasted about 25 days. Court | ||
| Saintly |
What I do, having owned Buell longer than anybody on this (or any other internet forum), is that Buell has the best track record in the industry for standing behind their product. Court, that sentence doesn't make sense to me. It seems like the first half and the second half (separated by the comma) don't belong together. Regardless, in regards to the second half, there are some buell owners here such as myself, who have only owned buells for a few short years (4). Unfortunately, in my 4 years of buell ownership, the company's track record is deplorable! With the exception of a kickstand recall, I got screwed royally on my 03 firebolt. 1. I got the first design belt which failed THREE times and that got stuck up my ass the last two times. 2. I had "black" wheel bearings fail on me and nearly cause me to wreck. But its not a recall only a TSB! so no help on that one, I had to eat it again! 3. Finally the headlight issue. I don't think I have to tell you what happened there. And after all this, I bought another buell! Now my new 07 bolt has a few issues and its like pulling teeth to get stuff resolved. Even with a warranty I'm getting nowhere. So you see, there may be some perks to being erik's friend. I think your having a better ownership experience that some of us. And Your track record is not relevant to ours! | ||
| Court |
I removed the post . . . I get too emotional about this stuff and say things I perhaps should not. (Message edited by court on June 03, 2007) | ||
| Leeaw |
I have been riding Buell for 8 years. Had some problems still love them. | ||
| Ridrx |
}I think you have every right to express you dissatisfaction As was conveyed in the demand for me to STFU. }I think where we part ways is when folks say dishonest and inaccurate things about Buell Just because YOU or anyone else already knows what's going on( There are things some of us know and can not discuss publicly})and nobody else does ,doesn't give you the right to call me a liar. You continually want me to PROVE every word I type on the subject, yet I haven't seen one bit of FACT ya'll love so much disproving a single word I've said. Where's the proof ? Not just someone on a net forum telling everyone "it's being handled, but it takes time", but real proof. If I'm a liar ...PROVE IT!, otherwise I'd appreciate you not making ill informed assumptions about my character. I have NEVER attacked anyone here personally(it's in the rules remember?), yet I'm called a liar...? I challenge anyone on this board to produce a single shred of PROOF that this issue is anything different than what's been posted here by the "vocal segment". You can't. | ||
| Firebolteric_ma |
Five  's For Mr.Saintly!!!! | ||
| Court |
>>>You can't. Actually, that's inaccurate but most the folks who gave a shit have now left the discussion. Good luck . . . keep up the battle . . . you'll do dandy. | ||
| Ridrx |
Actually, that's inaccurate but most the folks who gave a shit have now left the discussion) You always tell me I'm inaccurate,but you have yet to show me. I understood that you were a fact oriented person...but since the beginning of this you have produced ZERO facts to back up your accusations of my inaccuracy. At this point your words are just as much opinion as mine. Ignore my posts...fine, I don't care Tell me what I can and cannot say ...fine, if it makes ya'll feel better Call me names...fine, I'm a big boy ..I can take it Doesn't change my opinion or likely many others with the same issue. Perhaps you would like to take a poll(get some of those facts we keep talking about) of the Bolt owners in question to determine the general opinion they hold at this point? Have a nice day. | ||
| Blake |
Ridrx, I confused "Ridrx" with "Ducxl." You are correct in stating that I did not send you an email. You were incorrect when you stated that "...BMC insists there is NO problem, and continues to ignore the fact that EVERY person who actually looks inside their lights has this problem." Rd3501, I am struggling. I am struggling to find anything of value in the above rantings by a few self-righteous "seething" indignant types. The comments, especially the personal ones, that some see fit to make here are unfortunate. They are much more telling about the character of their author(s) than the subject(s) of attack. I don't expect to see the type of malicious gossip, outright lies really, on BadWeB that some have seen fit to invent and share publicly here. We do not and cannot support such miserable behavior. When was the very first report of this issue posted on BadWeB? Anyone? When was the very first report of this issue filed with the NHTSA? Anyone? Who here if anyone has submitted a written complaint to Buell Motorcycle Corporation about this issue? We do understand very well the emotion and disappointment and frustration some feel concerning this issue. However, we expect that cooler heads must prevail, and when inaccuracies are pointed out, we expect the author of such inaccuracies to be man or woman enough to retract them. Being vocal in support of constructive goals is good. Being vocal and alarmist in order to malign others and spread falsehoods is miserable. Here are my emails to Ducxl and Rd3501 (Phillip aka "Matt"  so that folks can assess whether they fit the characterizations assigned to them by their recipients.
(Message edited by blake on June 03, 2007) | ||
| Blake |
Do my emails above really fit the characterization assigned to them by their recipients, specifically...
Rd3501, I suggested that you and Ducxl conduct a serious survey here on BadWeB.
Ducxl, I'm really having to bite my lip here. LOL. BTW, are you also "seething" about your keyboard? It seems to exhibit an intermittent defect in the left side shift key and in the space bar. Seriously guys, if you let this kind of stuff really get to you, well, life is bound to be sucky, yes? | ||
| Ducxl |
It's alright Blake.When i say "seethe",i mean wait on the sidelines expecting a solution.....for a long time.I'm seething waiting for a solution.And have few funds to be making modifications to my Buell.I'll try customer service and my dealer. Remind me to tell you the story sometime of my Ducati's flaking rocker arms | ||
| Unibear12r |
Sorry Guys here's a XB12R owner who disagrees. I've had fourty years of experience with Suzy, Kawi, Honda, Triumph and Buell. I've had my share of troubles with them all and friends with far worse. It's obvious to me that Buell cares more and does more for it's customers. 10,000 miles and my reflectors are just fine. Agreed the lights could have been brighter to begin with. But with all the Rs sold and so few complaints (and if it's just ten that's nothing!) over the years that puts this problem squarely as a Q/A problem and not a design problem. Even if most of us feel the lights were not bright enough to begin with they met national standards. If Buell moves on this at all it puts them miles ahead of the others. I once made a single wisecrack on one post on this board about a problem I had and BMC made a move to help that was astounding. I hadn't even called customer service and nobody at BMC knows me from Jack Squat. You Guys were heard on the first page of this thread. Sense then you've made yourselves look like a bunch of old women running around the edge of a round room looking for a corner to squat in. The ceiling is tall but there's a door in the middle of it with a ladder, why don't you help yourselves out..... | ||
| Old_man |
If Buell believes in it's head light design, and the problems only affect a small percentage of the lights, it indicates a manufacturing defect in those affected lights. These defective units should be replaced by Buell at no cost to the bike's owner. I hope Buell doesn't think that this is acceptable as normal "wear and tear". If they believe this affects a very small number of units, there should be no problem doing the right thing. Unless they think it is a problem with a high percentage of their bikes??? | ||
| Unibear12r |
Old man  | ||
| Boostjunkie |
Suzuki, Kawasaki, Honda, Yamaha > Buell. This XB9R is my 1st Buell and im VERY VERY dissappointed with it, I will never own another one. This bike is far less reliable then ALL 8 of the Japanese sport bikes ive owned over the previous 10 years put together. Everytime I ride it something malfunctions, breaks, or needs replaced. How much R&D could have possibly been done on these bikes??? Not nearly enough. | ||
| Kedo |
Riding motorcycles is really fun, isn't it?!!! I love my Buell. Man, after reading most of the stuff above, some of you might think that is weird. I have put on 1000 of the funnest miles in the last two weekends and I get to do a track day next Saturday. Man this is LIVING!!!   | ||
| Doerman |
For any non-Buell vehicle I have owned, support for issues have stopped abruptly as soon as the warranty limits (time/milage) has been reached. For instance, the belt driving the alternator on my BMW (bike) failed at 26K in my 39th month of ownership. It cost me dearly in towing and over $250 in repair. No if, ands or butts... it came out of my pocket. In my long tenure of owning Buells,many issues have been taken care of by BMC and the local dealer long after the warranty expired. Not once, but on several occasions. Help has been given freely after a courteous discussion of the issue with BMC (it is often not productive to argue the issue with dealer). I remember being stuck in Santa Fe with a broken foot peg. Dealer (after a brief call to customer service) was instructed to take a footpeg assembly off a bike on the floor to get me back on the road. After the engine on my 97 S3 "imploded" after 23K miles, the dealer was instructed to give me fair trade in on my S3 (with a bad engine) on a new bike. The list goes on over the 11 years I have owned Buells. I am not affected with the headlight deterioration on my XB as I stated in the "Poll thread". I am sure, however, that working the issue with customer service will resolve the issue for those that have a problem. In my experience, Buell stands out in market place working out issues with their customers. They do more, go the extra yard, and derive passion from the fact that I spent my hard earned $ buying several Buells over the years. We often discuss what the facts are or are not. My facts are as I have reported. Furthermore, my facts are that I truly enjoy my Buell ownership and when I have had the need to deal with Buell CS it has resulted in positive and equitable results. I am sad to say that that is NOT a fact as far as dealing with many of the Buell retail outlets. For those of you that are having problems with the headlights, I have this to say: Of any of the manufacturer out there, Buell is the one that has the best motivation to resolve this in an equitable and fair way. After owning my XB9R since Aug 2002 and if the reflectors starts to go dim(er) now after 5 years, I would not be upset to deal with it out of my own pocket. It would be nice though, if BMC would make a replacement kit available sometime soon. Best regards, Asbjorn | ||
| Bueller007 |
Any and all bikes have their pluses and minuses. I have owned very many bikes of many makes and vintages. Buells, by using the antiquated Harley power plant, seem to suffer more than most. A rush to produce a bike cheaply, as in the ongoing headlight problem, seems to compound their problems and undesirability. This site should be an honest, democratic, information site for owners, but it seems more to be a biased, single focused promotional tool for Buell. If you disagree, you are ostracized, or booted. | ||
| Court |
Congratulations for your consistency in providing entirely inaccurate information. Most folks struggle to get some facts wrong, you've succeed in getting every fact skewed. Although the focus here is Buell, most of us own a number of bikes. Until I cleaned house several months ago, my basement included a couple Buells, a Yamaha, a Kawasaki and this frickin' Cushman I won't part with. I've owned, and would again a number of Hondas and KTM's. The very family nature of this site, in concert with the passion and emotion Buells evoke certainly allow otherwise meaningless tiffs to lure grown ups to vigorously dig in their heels. Really to get booted you have to be a naughty person and violate the behavioral standards . . . not the opinion standards. But in the real world there are even days when Blake's passion snakes up and bikes him in the ass . . . totally forgivable, he's doing about 23 things too while totally diggin' his Buell. No one is going to turn you into an Ostrich cause you don't agree. By the way, I'm interested to learn how you reconcile compounding problems and undesirability with increasing sales and profits. The Buells are generally hailed as top drawer stuff. They've damn sure got their quirks, but that seems to provide a stage for Buell to show off their long proven "above and beyond" way of doing business. I was personally involved in seeing nearly $20,000 worth of crud distributed to lots of folks last years whose bikes were out of warranty years ago . . . Antiquated, eh? . . . hmmmmm. . . how come folks are lined up buying those darn Harley's. . . you must have bought a different class of stock than I did. Court | ||
| Ridrx |
Bueller 007, If you disagree, you are ostracized, or booted I don't truly believe those e-mails were sent because of our difference of opinion as much as the fact that a few of us (mostly me) have become quite vocal about our problem(apparently some are annoyed). I absolutely without doubt LOVE my Buell! I have never referred to the entire bike as anything less than a hoot to ride. I have issue with ONE aspect of it , no more. To anyone who feels my ranting/flaming/whatever is malicious or designed to repel people from the brand, this is NOT my intent. I only want (as I've said many,many times before)to have ALL parts of the bike meet the same quality/performance as the rest of it. I'm completely happy with EVERY other aspect(excluding dealers)of my Buell. Court, "Buells are generally hailed as top drawer stuff" Hard as this may be for you to believe, I won't argue that point. IMHO it is STILL a cutting edge motorcycle, even if it is 5 years old, to me that just means it was that much more ahead of it's time. | ||
| Ducxl |
+1 Brother......+1 | ||
| Ridrx |
Blake, http://www.badweatherbikers.com/cgibin/discus/show .cgi?tpc=32777&post=345621#POST345621 The man claims he told ERIK himself, Sat. Nov 13 2004...anyone else wanna call anyone else a liar? Court, What have you to say now? -2{(Message edited by RidrX on June 04, 2007)} (Message edited by RidrX on June 04, 2007) | ||
| Reepicheep |
This has come up before. If you are coming in here to pee all over the living room floor to try and force some action, the people that live in the living room may treat like you are coming in and peeing all over the living room floor... especially when they aren't the ones that could do anything. That issue is completely unrelated to the question of if there is a legitimate reason for an individual to be upset in the first place, there generally is. Not accusing anyone of anything, or saying anybody necessarily fits in either category. Just pointing out some historical situations where people felt personally attacked after being vocal (over and over in any and all topics and any and all sites) on some particular beef. | ||
| Boostjunkie |
This XB9R has some positives, but the negatives far outweigh the positives. | ||
| Ducxl |
WOW..the archives document reports to about Nov.10-2004 stating reflector degradation.And yes,Sparky(whatever happened to him?) reports actually speaking to Erik about it.And Erik said he's look into it.. | ||
| Blake |
Thank you Court and others. Unfortunately we are most likely the victims of yet another trolling attack by a very miserable jerk. Please note that Boostjunkie and Bueller007 are each recent registrants to BadWeB who curiously share the same IP address. They also share their IP address with a longtime miserable Buell-hating troll/jerk whose numerous accounts have been suspended for repeatedly and blatantly violating our very reasonable terms of use, in short repeatedly posting hateful personal attacks, posting explicit pornography and repeatedly reregistering and masquerading under a number of, over a dozen, pseudonymns in order to perpetrate the same miserable trolling. We cannot ban the IP since it belongs to an AOL proxy, and doing so would affect other BadWeBrs using AOL. The MO is easy enough to recognize, attack BadWeB and Buell while offering up numerous other makes of motorcycle owned/owns as evidence of credibility. He is a liar and a man without integrity who has zero credibility. If I am wrong about either Boostjunkie or Bueller007 being this same miserable troll, they are each free to contact me and set me straight. I'll need a full name, phone number and address that I can verify. Otherwise, those two accounts will also be suspended and added to the list for presentation to AOL. Posting on BadWeB is a privilege, not a right, and BadWeB is no democracy. I'd say that it is a custodial republic.  | ||
| Blake |
Ducxl, So as far as we know, the first casual mention of the issue was 2-1/2 years ago. That's a good data point. Sparky is very much present and constructively active on BadWeB. He's a thoughtful and helpful man who has exhibited much integrity here over the years. I respect him immensely. He's also a very nice guy who has a wonderful wife. Back on topic... When was the first report submitted to the NHTSA? And--I think I am now asking this question for the third or fourth time-- have you ever reported the issue in writing to Buell Motorcycle Corporation? How long was it from the first ever incident of a Ford Pinto exploding into fire due to rear-end collision until Ford issued the applicable recall? What about for the Firestone tires on Ford Exploders? How long did it take from first incident to recall for that? (Message edited by blake on June 04, 2007) | ||
| Ridrx |
"What about for the Firestone tires on Ford Exploders? How long did it take from first incident to recall for that? Unfortunately, it took someones death to get a recall. Please tell me that you do NOT consider that situation a "standard" by which to measure ANYTHING. I'm going to replace them myself( before I get killed), I'll say no more except Buell dropped the ball on thisIMO |
