Blood, sweat, tears & beers . . .

Why, and give him another chance to f&*% it up? I don't trust him to fix it right - it should have been right to start with. I think this was intentional. How could it be otherwise? My mechanic went into it today and tells me that the shifters under the cover were assembled wrong. Now it shifts, but not smoothly, and it makes clicking, grinding sounds. He is very concerned about the oil plug. It appears to be a water pipe plumbing plug with JB weld mashed into the end. It won't come out - it has to be drilled out & then new threads tapped in. Has anyone ever heard of such bull$^#$?
My mechanic has to go into the thing anyway and find out why it's grinding when he tries to shift it. When this is all over, I'm sending all the receipts to the guy who sold it to me and try to get him to reimburse me for the repairs. I'm not holding my breath.

I agree with HRK's last 2 posts....don't do anything to it...it is possible the wrong tranny was shipped....call the guy and talk to him about it first. I wouldn't communicate about a problem like this through emails.

He told me today that he bought the tranny and it was said to have been rebuilt already. I know he had to have inspected it, but he still sent it to me. The chrome on it was in very bad shape & the the drain plug wasn't right. Also, there was no top filler plug when I got it. He say's that he is still willing to have me ship it back to him for a rebuild. Problem is, it's not an authentic Harley tranny, but an aftermarket one in terrible shape. He wants me to pay the shipping to send the defective one back. I told him I'm not spending another nickle on it. I told him he had to pay shipping both ways, and that I wanted a Harley tranny to be sent back. That's what I paid for. He's in the business of selling "used Harley parts", not the piece of junk he sent me. Look, I know he purposefully f*&#ed me, there's no getting around that. He's just trying to save face now. And he's trying to use the no returns after "30 days" policy that he has. It has been 30 days, but that's because I was waiting for him to send me the tranny plate so I could put it in the frame. I didn't do anything to it, it just sat in my shop about 2 weeks. Finally when I put it in the frame, that's when I began to discover all that was wrong with it. I'm waiting to see what he'll say now . . .

I did nothing to piss him off. All I did was spend 9000 of my hard earned dollars on his stuff over the last 18 months. He's a 7 hour drive away, or I would have been up there by now. But why should I spend $160 driving up there and back? I don't have money to waste on stuff like that.

Josh Bob - Let us know who this guy is - I'm sorry you got screwed over but I think if you make it known that you have a lot of friends who will put the word out on the net he will think twice about giving the you the shaft. Word of mouth is a powerful factor in dealing with these guys and if he's at least half smart he'll realize that in the long run he's going to lose a lot more money than the cost of a good used tranny is worth. It could even put him out of the game.
JMOO - If I can't hold it before or there is no written paper on terms when buying it then it don't get bought.
Hope ya get it straighten out soon.

Still no answer back, but I picked up the tranny from my mechanic. He felt so bad about everything he only charged me $10 to look it over. All he did was take the top cover off and found that it was somehow jammed in neutral. It still is. He buttoned it back up and told me that he would talk to the seller if I wanted him to so he could tell him how messed up it really is. Oh, and when he put a little oil in it in an attempt to get it to shift, it leaked oil out of the front two case studs.
I told the guy I would accept nothing less than for him to pay shipping both ways and to send me a rebuilt Harley 4-speed ratchet top - what I paid for in the first place.
Sarge, If I don't get the result I want, I'm going to do as you say, plus take him to small claims court and report him to the BBB in his state.

He e-mailed me yesterday and said he would rebuild it and pay the shipping both ways. I will also get a 6 month warranty. I must have said something to him that resonated. He also said that he didn't have another 4-speed in the shop to exchange. I wrote back and said I would compromise on the case (I wanted an authentic Harley transmission) since he doesn't have another 4-speed. Or so he says.
I wrote another e-mail just now (2:30am) that my mechanic is going to go thru it when I get it back and that it had better be done right and with quality parts. I still don't trust this guy, but maybe I'll be riding this summer if all goes well.
I've been trying to get more pictures on the forum but my computer will not download them. The pictures clearly show the messed up oil drain and chrome. I know he must have at least seen these things but he sent it to me anyway. Like I wouldn't notice?
I'm not happy about the tranny case, but I think it'll be okay. It's just not a Harley, you know? I'm waiting for him to send me a UPS call tag.

Pics showing the bungled oil hole and bad chrome. Okay, just the bad chrome. Computer won't accept the newest pics. Since this pic was taken, I sanded, ground & filed the cover until all blemishes were minimized, then painted it with black engine paint. Looks much better now. The pic on the right shows a few of the gouges & peeling chrome before I removed them.

I'm going to ask the computer teacher at the school where I work if she can figure out why my PC won't accept any more new pictures.
I'm sending the tranny back today via UPS. He swears that he doesn't have another tranny, (do I believe him?) but will rebuild the one I'm sending back. If I wouldn't have gone this route, I think he would have dicked me around till doomsday. I want to be riding this summer. My mechanic will check the thing out when I get it back. If it's not right, I'll send it back and demand my money back. As it is, this sets me back time wise and it may be that I might have to postpone my trip to Ohio till next year. Haven't seen my brothers or their families since the early 70's.

JoshBob, I commend you for your patience with this guy. If that were me and I had to go round and round like you did, I would be done with him so fast. I do think you did the right thing by giving him the opportunity to correct it, even though it took extreme teeth pulling. In my situation I made sure that everyone knew that the guy was a hack. One lady at work told me that she brings her bike to him and I just groaned with disgust. She asked why and I told her that I wouldn't let the dude work on my pedal bike. Wait a minute, I don't have a pedal bike. I am so happy with the guy that does my stuff now that it isn't even funny. He gets a lot of props from me to whoever will listen...

I hope that this has a happy ending despite the frustration. it will be worth it in the end. AHHHH..... the wind in the face.

He said he didn't have a rebuilt 70's 4-speed kicker and so I compromised with him. I hope that turns out not to be yet another mistake. Yesterday I looked a little deeper into his website and found several Harley 70's 4-speed trannies for sale. I suppose it's possible these have been already sold but they had phone numbers and prices on them. Given what I've been thru with this guy, well, I have my doubts that he told me the truth. I sent him an e-mail telling him the tranny was on the way back and why couldn't I have been given one of the ones on his web site. This whole business has just got me plain heartsick. I paid for a rebuilt 70's tranny and now, if I want to be riding soon, I have to take an aftermarket tranny with a messed up case. I know in the overall scheme of things, this problem I'm having is nothing; a drop in the bucket. But it took 5 months of scrimping and saving, anticipating the day when I could drop a matching tranny in my bike and be on the road. This is holding everything up.

Yep, this is how I felt when i was going through the issues that I was last summer because the guy that I was referred to didn't know his head from his arse, because of that in large part I spent the first half of my very first riding season chasing problems that could have been eliminated right away if he knew what he was doing. Which is more frustrating? Being able to ride your bike but not trust it, or, getting all of your ducks in a row making sure that everything is correct so you can have many years of hopefully relatively trouble free riding?? Just think of how much sweeter it will be for you when you get that first ride in.

I remember mine!!

Ahh...that first ride. When I picked up my StreetGlide, the dealer said "For break-in--keep it under 3,000 rpm". On the highway riding home, I learned that @ 3,000 in sixth gear, I'm going 80 mph. What a rush!