Blind faith in any engineering dept is misdirected sentiment. Engineers can and do err in their work and this is the reason QA departments exist. They also miss problems which are then likely to be caught in the market place. Hence recalls and service bulletins. But what the heck do I know, a retired Sr Engineer who is also cynical about big corporations like Honda - a corporation rooted in the socialist Japanese culture, which believes the whole of society is precedent over the individual, so don't make waves, bub, go with the good of the group (corporation). Have you noticed how Honda, and Toyota (and all the Nipponese rest) are unresponsive to the requests, demands, queries, feedback and so on, of their customers? They engineer the heck out of something, then don't want to be bothered with their customers. You must get your support from your local dealer, who is caught between a rock and a hard place, with American customers, whose paradigm is focused on the individual, and get their support from a corporation who doesn't want to hear from them. Damned if I would be a Honda dealer and be stuck in that position.
I think it is a disservice to new riders, to claim concerns about hydrolock are fear mongering. Hydrolock has happened to a significant number of owners, and the repair is quite expensive, while the problem is both preventable and the prevention can be inexpensive. To report that "it hasn't happened to me" as an argument that it also won't happen to you, is just flawed logic. One case is ALWAYS statistically meaningless.
I bought my Valk new in '97. It now has about 100k miles on it, as I've reduced my use as I want it to last as long as I do. I put more miles on my Wing now. In any case, I burn quality gas - mostly Phillips/Conoco, and periodically run Seafoam through the system. I do not winterize the bike, as I ride year round. No one can claim I do not maintain my equipment properly. As for gas quality - petroleum people report that all gas brands come from the same refineries. There can be differences in handling after it leaves the refinery, which might account for some discrepancies found. In any case, my statistically meaningless case is, I have had several failures of my Honda OEM petcock, and had to replace it once under warranty. Oops, this isn't ONE case, it's happened several times. I almost always turn it off when parked for the day (always now, took awhile to get into the habit). Failures consist of the reserve leaking down when reserve is not selected, and leaking gas when it's shut off and parked - with and without the petcock manually shut off - so the vacuum shutoff fails too. I have come to not trust reserve. All failures I have seen, when I could see the cause, were caused by impurities in the stream - always sand. Gets past the inlet screen, and blocks the shutoffs open. If my evidence was the smell of evaporating gas leaking out of the carbs, or of NOT running out of gas when I should have with MAIN selected, or WORSE switching to reserve and finding it's already gone - the problem usually self-corrected. I suspect the blocking sand moved out of position and flowed downstream, then the shutoff or fuel selector worked properly again. Several times I had to dissassemble the petcock and clean it out. You know if sand is in the stream, it doesn't stop at the petcock. The next place a tiny sand speck will cause a problem is in the float valves - and there are 6 of them, increasing the likelyhood of failure. It only takes one blocked open, and the engine to stop with that same cylinder's intake valve open - a 1 in 4 chance - and gravity to take over - a likely happening, gravity is pretty reliable - to cause hydrolock. This is no coincidence - it's the same problem, propagated through the fuel system. To deny it's likely to happen is just ignorant.
I am not interested in the expensive Pingel solutions - just because it's not made to work with the OEM on/off lever extension. Though I hear it eliminates the problem of a leaking petcock. Installing a fuel filter is one solution - though not certain, as that assumes the only reason for hydrolock is from fuel contamination. Doesn't allow for leaks coming from valve wear for example. To me the best solution for this problem is to install the Dan-Marc valve. Which is what I did. Now for hydrolock to occur, the Dan-Marc also has to fail. Which I suppose is possible - maybe a piece of sand could block it open as well. But I think unlikely as any particles that get into it are going to be very small, and it is electromechanically actuated - not by the weak force of a needle being moved by a float.
To argue that there's enough fuel in the carb floats to hydrolock, so these are not solutions - sounds like a good argument, EXCEPT: The fuel isn't going to flow uphill out of the carb bowls to the carb atomizer nozzle and down the intake runner without something pushing on it - that is, fuel upstream. So if the fuel is truly shut off upstream, there's no possibility of leakage and hydrolock from the carb bowl contents alone.
My soln was install a Dan-Marc downstream of the petcock. It was inexpensive - about $29 plus a few fuel fittings. I did it while I was doing the de-smog, so it wasn't much extra work. And now that it's done - I'm pretty sure you won't hear me complaining about an expensive hydrolock fix. I hope we don't hear that happening to Taz or the other Honda faithful - but I'm not as confidant about that.
I wrote up my Dan-Marc install here:
http://www.horseapple.com/Valkyrie/Tech_Tips/Fuel_Shutoff/fuel_shutoff.html
