Honda has rolled out a recall for the 2018-2021 GL1800 Gold Wing. The primary gear bolt on the crankshaft can potentially break, causing the pulsator motor to fall off and the ignition signal to fail. If this happens, the engine may not start or may stall and stall unexpectedly.
The Gold Wing is known as extremely reliable, but Big Red has now made a mistake. During the development of the previous generation 2018-2021, the engineers did not take certain driving conditions into account. regarding on/off throttle situations.
The on/off throttle situations can place a heavy counter-rotating force on the crankshaft, leading to compressive bending moments and increased stress on the primary gear bolt, which in turn results in fatigue failure of the bolt.
Honda received the first claims in the period March 2020 to January 2021, after which an investigation was launched by the quality department. Although it has not yet found a cause or potential situations that could cause this, Honda decided to use a stronger bolt after an initial analysis.
However, several claims continued to be received, and the investigation was intensified and the focus was placed on possible situations that would cause more tension in the block. All in all, that investigation took almost three years. In total, Honda received 51 claims, of which in one situation the motorcyclist crashed and was injured.
The bolt will be replaced at the Honda dealer with a stronger one that is more resistant to fatigue. In the United States alone, there are now 18,196 Gold Wings that can be returned to the dealer, of which approximately 1% are expected to have the defect.
– Thanks for information from Motorfreaks.