Asking HD Service at the Factory about parts

[David Jackson]

I had an interesting experience the other day. I telephoned the factory to find out what combination of SE parts the factory technical experts might think would work best on my HD motorcycle. I am using basically all SE parts.

No one would talk to me about it!! The lady I talked to in Customer Service was nice enough; she would put me on hold and try to get some answers; we went through that dance about three times but no technical people would talk to me. "Look in the book" was all they would tell her to tell me. They meant the charts in the race catalog. "Well", I said, "I have 113" cylinders and there is nothing in the charts. What should I use?" No answer.

I was a little surprised; I did somehow get through to a technical person about a year and a half ago; but that must have been a fluke. I even tried asking her to enquire "Why did you make such and such a part?" No answer! It seems almost as though someone walked over to a cam grinding machine one day and zip! out came a few different grinds. What are they for? Well no one really seems to know; or at least fess up. I do understand that there is the EPA and all that but still ... if the factory is going to make and sell these perfomance bits a little of their expertise would help the person (me) who is a loyal fan enough to cough up the bucks to buy the parts!

All the aftermarket folks will talk my ear off; but they only agree on one thing, of course; all the stuff they make is the best thing since sliced bread and far superior to the stuff HD sells. Well I don't buy all of that but HD does not want to be much help. In a way its funny, really. You, Mike, are the most help of about anyone, especially with SE parts. Did the factory guys come up with all these SE parts by accident, with no research and no plan? Well I don't think so; but they sure are playing their cards pretty close to the vest.

Maybe I should have told them I am planning to abandon my street license plates and race my FXDXT in motocross (ha ha)!

Regards;

David jackson

[Mike]

Lets try Baja!! Yes, the factory does not really have a performance help line. Normally they refer you to your dealer. One of the (many) reasons I'm with a dealeship is that in my shop (12 years independant) I was selling/recommeding more and more S.E. parts. The pricing was good and the performance satisfied many applications. The approach we take is to determine the goal, then see if H-D parts satisfy that goal. If not, then aftermarket parts. If we have multiple options, we look at pricing. During our makeover sales we lean to H-D parts because we give a 20% discount vs 10% for after. This allows us to be aware of, experiance and experiment with the world outside H-D and thus have that much more to offer our customers. I realize this sounds like sales propaganda and others say similar things, but we really do spend a lot of time considering what we tell/sell customers and it is a very big part of why I enjoy working at this dealership. This web site is an example. We cannot be experts at everything but we sure endeavor to be at least the best we can.
Regards, Mike

[David Jackson]

Yes Baja sounds good! (Didn't Lincoln win the Carrerra Panamericana a few times in the early 1950s?)

What you say may be propagand but its pretty good propaganda! Makes me sorry I don't live closer to you.

Regards;


David Jackson