| Author | Message | ||
     Bruceclay |
Man I flail mine all the time! 17K and no problems. I don't even burn any oil. Congrats on the little one!! Bruce | ||
| Typeone |
man, still no bike for me... i was told to call back Monday now. Two weeks in the shop. grrrr. I had 'em just do the 5K service while its in. Gonna be snowing by the time I see her again  | ||
| Dago |
Ride south once you get her back. It won't be snowing here.  | ||
| Norcalbuell |
I talked to the service manager yesterday and he says they need to tear apart motor more to find out whats going on and he says it doesnt look good, and should know more today.....will keep you posted....firebolt withdrawls  | ||
| Norcalbuell |
looks like a rebuild, will know the details monday...  | ||
| Typeone |
man, that sucks Norcal! | ||
| Dago |
warranty rebuild??? <....i hope.> | ||
| Glitch |
<....i hope.> Me too! | ||
| Norcalbuell |
yes thank god | ||
| Glitch |
 | ||
| Typeone |
welp, i got the beastie back and she's good to go. with the idle set to 900RPM as always (damn Harley techs) I could hear a tick i never had but once up at 1050RPM all was smooth. good ride home too. fingers x'd she can take some more abuse. soooo glad i have another year of warranty left 'cause I have no idea if I damaged anything with that loose crank nut. (they still wrote 'compensator nut' on the service sheet. there is no compensator nut, right?) the pulley situation was interesting too, guess the main nut came loose and caused the 'sprocket' to wiggle a little which busted a tooth. great! this bike will be a lifetime of keeping it from shaking itself to death.... but i still love her so happy to be back on the road! good luck, Norcal. keep us posted. | ||
| Eurotwins |
Hey guys, I have just noticed at knocking or rattle at idle when I first start my 12R and am letting it warm up. Is this the same noise or something normal,not real loud...John | ||
| Typeone |
my 'knock' was LOUD. sounded awful. I don't think you could hear the noises my engine was making and wonder if it was normal 'cause no engine should sound like that. if its sounding a little different than usual its always worth getting it checked out at the dealer. (hoping you have a decent one) as soon as i trailered my bike in and started it the tech was like, 'turn it off'. he knew something was up. | ||
| Cataract2 |
Mine makes the normal tick tick tick tick tick since day 1. Figure it's the lifters doing their thing. Like I said, been that way from day 1 and it's for 20K on the clock now. | ||
| Typeone |
good to hear, Cataract. i'm not gonna sweat the 'tick, tick, tick'. if it blows up, it blows up. i'm just happy to have her back without the 'knock, knock, knock' hahaaa! too funny describing noises with text | ||
| Eurotwins |
This is not a knock,knock,knock but more of a bolt rattling around in a coffee can though it is very faint and only on first startup. I may be more sensative due to the pinging I've had...John (Message edited by eurotwins on November 15, 2005) | ||
| Norcalbuell |
Thats what mine started as EuroTwins!!! almost like something loose and rattling, a metallic rattle? Get it in soon.....Still waitin on the word with mine....Thought i would give them another day until my phonecalls start coming in.... | ||
| Norcalbuell |
Defective Crank.......thats all i got today from the service manager.....I ask to talk to the tech and was told he was to busy....They said they need to order parts and will be a couple of weeks for the work to be done. Would that constitute a complete rebuild top and bottom end? Why not just drop a brand new motor in from factory?  Wishful thinking, right?  | ||
| Glitch |
Why not just drop a brand new motor in from factory? They're probably just going with whatever comes out to be the least amount of $$. | ||
| Youngwerth |
Ok, now I'm a bit nervous about my CityX. I bought my CityX last summer for clutch development. At less than 100 miles I went to pull out the primary. The primary sprocket nut took a huge amount of force just to break loose and then started coming off "crunchy". I immediately called my dealer and they said to bring it in to see what they can do. The threads on the crank nut were torn up pretty good. After 6 weeks of waiting, Buell offered to pay for parts but not labor (est. at $1500+). The shop recommended we clean up the threads and loctite a new nut on. It sounds like others are having problems with the crank nut. Has anybody had a crank nut tear up the threads as it came off? Thanks. | ||
| Eurotwins |
I just made an appointment for this sat. with dealer to check...John | ||
| Eurotwins |
Went in today to dealer to have compensator nut tightened. All was OK and they increased torque to 260 lbs and adjusted primary chain. Maybe its my imagination but after riding 30 miles home I heard no noise not even my pinging at 4,000 rpm. All went well,thanks to Chuck K. at Buell again...John | ||
| Dago |
That's great news, John! I'll hopefully be able to pick mine up today. | ||
| Dago |
Well, I got it back. They theorize that the bike was starved for oil at too high of rpm's for too long while on my local counter-clockwise track. The fins on the oil pump drive gear were shaved so thin in places that they became like a knife edge. So much metal went through the system that it ruined the whole lower end as well as the pistons (I'll post my receipt tomorrow for a detailed parts list). As a matter of fact, the mechanic said it was one of the worst he'd ever seen. If it was an oil starvation problem, I purchased the high performance oil pup drive gear just in case. Is there anything else I can do? I'm not really sure what to take away from all of this other than Buell backed their product and the guys at American Eagle HD/Buell are a great bunch of guys to deal with. It's anyone's guess what caused what. I'm just glad she's back home and running like new again. BTW: They mentioned that XB12's are not the sole heirs of this problem. 9ers beware. | ||
| Jandj_davis |
Dago - Did they tell you what could have caused the top-end oil starvation? Did they think it was that fact that your track is counter-clockwise? So, constant turning t the right starves the motor for oil. That seems like something that should be figured out in pre-manufacture testing. | ||
| Dago |
They said more than once they felt the starvation was caused by the constant left lean. They feel the oil pump couldn't get enough oil and perhaps this is why they released a new high performance oil pump drive gear (which I had them install). Again, they didn't make an definite claims and were merely speculating. Tripp, the mechanic, said he's seen a dozen or so XB's with the exact same problem (as well as a bunch of Sportsters through the years). Mine was the worst he'd seen. I asked if I could take the oil pump gear, but all parts are being boxed up and shipped to Buell for examination. Tripp took a keen interest in all of this and will be following back up with me in a couple weeks to let me know what Buell found. | ||
| Jandj_davis |
Duh, counter-clockwise = left turn. Anyway, that is really interesting. Keep us all informed. Thanks for all the updates so far. Glad you had such a great experience. Seems to me other dealerships would not have been so helpful. | ||
| Blake |
"They said more than once they felt the starvation was caused by the constant left lean." I can't see that. Mainly because when you lean a bike over in a turn, the resultant force of gravity plus cornering is along the vertical axis of the bike, no different than if it were upright going straight down the road. I'd be much more concerned about the effect of acceleration and/or braking forces on top-end oiling. Seems awfully strange that one mechanic has seen a dozen XBs with this issue, but this is the very first we've heard of it here on BadWeB. I mean if that mechanic has seen a dozen such cases with XBs, it would seem that would represent a significant percentage of all the Buells sold at that dealership. With the thousands of XBers here on BadWeB, we would have heard more about this I think if it were such a prevalent issue. Don't you agree? | ||
| Dago |
Well I don't see any motivation on his part to lie about it. He knows I'm posting here and is very familiar with this resource. I'm reminded of a friend of mine. When talking about stats, weights, and measures, I always either cut what he reports in half or multiply it by two as the case permits. So maybe Kipp is just like my buddy. If so, then he's seen about 6.  You also need to remember that they are one of the only Buell service dealerships left around us. Perhaps they could be picking up the slack left by the HD dealers who dropped Buell? I know the dealership I bought mine from dropped them shortly after. Perhaps you're right about the lean not causing the problem. But the forces in play while cornering a motorcycle are not so linear that you can claim the resulting force will be no different than if the bike were upright. Centrifugal force will push the oil outward especially if the rider is hanging off the bike. I'm not even going to attempt to defend the mechanic. I don't even know enough about how the oil is fed to speak intelligently about it. But something did go wrong. And there is a reason for it. It certainly would be nice to know. So far the two theories that make the most sense to me are: 1. Loose compensator nut that enabled metal to grind thus creating metal shavings that in turn created more metal shavings to eventually destruct the whole damned engine. 2. The bike was starved for oil which made the oil pump gear turn without lube which ground it down to create metal shavings that created more metal shavings... | ||
| Fdl3 |
...or all of the above. |
