another dealer issue

[ekap1200]

Well here is another blow to an already open wound. When you hear the salesman say factory trained mechanics, Don't believe it. I had chased down a Voyager right after returning from the rally just to say hello and intro myself and the AVA to this fellow 1200 owner. Nice man with a used 1200 , loaded with extra lights and LED's and this and that , that the PO had crudely installed and wired. We exchanged info and talked on the side of the road for about 20 min. He had just picked this bike up and it is his first season of owning it. Living down by the Jersey shore near a dealer he brings it in for what he thought was a drain on his newly installed battery and a quick enough oil and filter change. Well he goes to pick up the bike and it is a 6 hour labor charge. Reluctant to pay such a large bill, and being a former owner of a Kaw dealer in NJ, he gets the bill down to 2 hours labor. To his surprise, a few days later the same dead battery issue appears. So I get the call ,and after he charges the battery, attempts the ride up to my shop. So I get the battery out removing the 6 extra wires off the negative terminal and the extra 6 wires off the pos term. and place it on the charger. In the time we were waiting I looked over the bike's general condition. Nice bike but nothing was properly wired when it came to the add-on's . And the oil and filter was not done. So twenty minutes goes by and I check the battery's condition....
2 cells at 100% 2 cells at 25% and the other 2 cells 0.0%. There is the problem. 5 min to use a hydrometer and find a battery that is shot. Looking close at the new battery there was a spot on it that shown to me the battery had been dropped at some point of its short life . New battery , filled and properly charged, problem solved. Got a call several weeks and several hundred miles later thanking me and happy to be riding worry free . And a date set to re-wire items that were added on.
The moral to this little story is for all the newbies to read the forums and learn what you can , to be better with dealing with any repairs. This forum has the best info on the 1200's and a great many of us here are happy to help. So before you consider any repairs, read up on what is here in the forum. And research your mechanic before having work done.
Gene K.

[Lucasind]

....Interesting reading there Gene, 6 hours to change out battery ,oil and filter ?
How could they even keep a straight face or look the customer in the eye when presenting a bill like that ? Most shops are $65.00 per hour and UP.......OUCH !!

Sad thing is ...this happens all too often !...................tony
Like ya said ... best off to study up ,and do all ya can yourself.

[voyager55]

I'd post that dealers name so nobody else gets taken by them

[Mr Jensee]

I suppose I told everyone of the story of my 2000 ZRX1100 I brought to a Kawasaki dealership with certified mechanics some years back. I had bought the bike from a different dealership used with 9800 miles on the clock in the spring of 2002. It had actually been owned by a competent Kawasaki mechanic at that dealership whom I met before I drove it home. The bike was pretty much perfect and I loved it. When the bike turned 18,000 miles on it I decided it was time to get the valves checked and see if they needed shimming. Not ever having owned a water cooled bike before this one I decided to let the local dealership take care of it. I was told it would cost less than $200 for them to do the work plus the cost of any shims that might need replacing. Cool. Long story short, they kept the bike a month, charged me 10 hrs, yes 10 at $70 an hour and the valves so said did NOT need any adjustment. I balked, went to the owner and we negotiated it down to 4 hrs labor plus the cost of a new valve cover gasket. I drove home still pretty mad and noticed my horn didn't work and the shifting was hard and jamming. When I got home I inspected the bike, found a 1/4" ratchet extension lodged in my shift linkage and both horns disconnected. Needless to say I have not used that dealership since other than buying helmets.

[ekap1200]

Its a shame and seems to be not just at bike dealers, I was busy one weekend and the wife took her car to get it serviced instead of waiting for me to get to it. Two weeks later she says there is something making noise under the hood. Well when I looked they had neglected to secure the air cleaner cover back on the filter box, Who needs an air filter anyway And they broke one of the clasps that retain it in place. I could go on, even the local harley dealership has issues. I just repaired a fubar from a dealer installed Power Commander , instead of using a razor knife to remove a plastic tab so the ECM, would now fit with the extended back-shell , they jammed it in place (sort of ) and tied the harness to the frame, right where the seat pads rest on the frame. Well a couple of hundred miles later it just about destroyed the harness, chaffed a brake line to the anti-lock unit, and when putting a wire connector together bent a pin over. Oh and the battery terms were not all that secure either. It seems these shops have no-one that checks the work of their mechanics. I guess it is so they don't hurt any-one's feeling. Guess I'm just old school, or just old , or just lucky to have worked for really great mechanics when I was a young man. Gene K.

[the2knights]

When I first bought the xii I own now I asked dealer how much to clean and synch carbs. Carl Leo was still in TN then. Was cheaper for me to ride there, rent a car for a week and come back. He not only cleaned and synched carbs, went thru clutch and replaced spider spring, had the cruise control adjusted, got a missing logo replaced, got one of Genes stainless mirrors in the back box, I brought a tire that came with bike, and Carl got one more and had both mounted. All that for $75.00 less than the dealer wanted for just the carbs.

Do most of the work myself now, including tires. Dealer here just got a new owner, but kept the service manager, so not holding out any hope for a nice change there.

[chevyman1]

I only trust one person working on my Voyager, Me!
That way I know whats done and it's done right.

[Tonyvdb]

You guys are so blessed to have a guy like Carl so close to you. Im still very green at fixing stuff on my xii and things like adjusting the carbs seems like something Im not sure I want to mess with.
Reading these posts about poor customer service at a shop really have my leery.

[trikebldr]

While in the military in Hawaii I bought a brand new Yamaha 350 for $650. Took it in for it's 600 mile checkup and was charged $250. Didn't take me long to figure out that for less than three checkups I could buy a whole new bike, so I took the money that would have been spent on the next checkup and bought the manual and a bunch of metric tools. And, like Chevyman says, sort of, nobody touches my stuff but ME now! Haven't looked back since then. Oh, they did a really good job on the checkup, and I really did like the dealer. With a complete spec list and some exploded drawings, it's easy to repair and maintain a bike. Now, the day they go nuclear,.....!

[Ditto]

Here's my experience: took the bike to the local Kawasaki dealer to have a few minor things done, and among them was to change the fork oil. When we got the bike back, there was oil all over everything on the front of the bike. I suppose they didn't release the air from the suspension before they started. OK, anybody can make a mistake. For probably the next year and a half, every time we washed the bike, there was an oil slick coming out of the front, mainly around the radiator. We kept thinking that the oil would have to stop eventually. We were annoyed, but like I said, anybody can make a mistake. We finally took the bike apart and cleaned EVERYTHING, and the oil slick stopped. Problem solved, until the bike went back to the shop for a brake fluid change. When we picked up the bike that time, there was a mechanic wiping the dash. We didn't notice it at first (probably because it had just happened), but they had somehow spilled brake fluid down the right side of the dash - from the top of the speaker in a winding trail all the way down to underneath the bottom vent. Of course, they never said, 'oh, by the way, we spilled brake fluid on your bike'. By the time I got the bike home, that area of the dash was the brightest white I had ever seen! My wife and I said right then and there that we would NEVER take our bike back to that dealer to have anything done. That was many years ago, and we haven't. We have done nearly everything ourselves, including switching engines in 2008. (The original engine developed a noise that I didn't like, and when I found myself blessed with a wrecked 2001 VXII whose previous owner was a guy who I knew took extra good care of his vehicles, I thought I'd hit the jackpot.) Some of our friends and family also own VXIIs, and we have worked on theirs too. We have farmed out a few things to others, including shipping sets of carbs (ours and a friend's) to Carl Leo for a complete going-over. And the white dash? My wife got out there and cleaned up the mess while I was at work the next day, and it still looks just fine. That was at least fifteen years ago, and just like trikebldr, we haven't looked back. Tonyvdb, don't be intimidated by the thought of working on your Voyager. If we can do it, you can too.

[voyager55]

It's sad reading these stories. Imagine buying a new bike for 20-30 grand and having to deal with poor mechanics. It's a gamble

[trikebldr]

The old saying, "If ya want it done right, ya gotta do it yerself!", is more true today than ever!

Only one mechanic in the shop has to be factory trained to earn the dealer that designation, but chances are he won't be the one working on your bike! Neither will he be watching who does work on it! I've only run across one shop, ever, that had all of their mechanics (well, only 3, actually!) factory trained. That was Jerry's 4-cycle Shop, where I bought my 650 Yamaha back in 1971. Best shop I've ever dealt with! Hit a deer at 80mph with only 120 miles on the new bike. He replaced the speedo and tach free since they were on a no-questions-asked warrantee notice. I had to pay for turn signals, levers, pegs and one muffler.

[Bill O]

Over the past 15 or so years, I have been reading all the horror stories about mechanics working on the Voyager 1200's. (I have a few myself.) One thing I can say for sure, there were very, very few mechanics who really knew the Voyagers, in the day. To find one now who really knows the Voyagers is rare.

With that in mind, everyone who has a Voyager, and knows their way around basic tools, needs to get a copy of the manuals, and undertake performing their own routine maintenance. With the help of the other folks on this site, there isn't much you can't accomplish yourself. Even higher levels of maintenance can be performed with the help and expertise of some of the more advanced riders we have in our mist.

I personally wouldn't trust any Kawasaki Shop to work on my Voyager, anymore. They just don't know what we, the collective, here at the AVA, have learned over the years due to necessity.

We need more folks to do tutorials on maintenance, repairs, and modification they have performed (w/pics) and get them permanently posted on this site. We also need to better publicize the Tech Sections and guide the new folks there when they have questions and calls for assistance.

Just remember, we always have Carl to fall back on.

Bill O

[Mr Jensee]

While in the military in Hawaii I bought a brand new Yamaha 350 for $650. !

Yamaha 350 was one of those bikes I wanted so much when I first started riding. I especially loved the street scrambler version.