Hey guys. My '05 EFI Dyna is about to go in to the shop this week to get a cam upgrade and a gear drive installed. Bike has 27k miles on it and the oil pump has been acting flaky when the bike is cold so i'm fearful that the plastic tensioner for the timing chain is degrading and clogging or wearing out the oil pump. I plan to go the gear drive route so that I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Since it's an EFI bike is a power commander my only simple tuning option? Have the power commanders gotten any better over the years? It seems like I knew a bunch of people who tried them back in 2007 and they had incredible failure rates back then. Most people I know have stopped using them but the shop I plan to take the bike to claims they've improved a lot as the design has been revised about 7 times over the years.

Any advice?

 

I'd look into other options

 

Vic is right, look at better options, I have run both the Fuelpak and a PC III on this bike, sorry I wasted my money.

If you really want to do it right, you need pipes with o2 sensors and an autotuner, like the ThunderMax. Yes it is more expensive, but you will not have to worry about finding the right map, or getting it dyno tuned every time you make a change to the motor.

Absolutely the best investment I have made in this bike.

 

To breakdown your original post...

If it were me, I'd skip the gears and just install the upgraded hydraulic cam plate & oil pump kit. It's a thousand bucks installed at any HD dealer. Add $300 for just about any cam on the market and you'll be good. Since the build tolerances have loosed up from 02' the chains compensate for additional play. But - your bike, your coin. Still a good idea to change out the oil pump for the improved one.

I had 34k on the clock when I recently brought it in for the cam service. The tensioners were still in good shape, but that's where the happy story ends.
An inner cam bearing had failed and chewed up the cam.


For the tuner... I had a FuelPak. What a piece of **** that thing was...
I opted for the PC-V and have nothing but praise for it. Sure, there's a ton of options out there across a wide range of costs.
What I have suits me just fine with zero regrets. Well, other than getting the FuelPak... lol

 

I'm definitely going for the gear drive. I considered simply doing the hydraulic upgrade but I like the performance advantage of gears.

So on the Power Commander, Baeseman has the V and is incredibly happy with it while 8541hog had the III and hated it. Baeseman, how often do you wash your bike? I ask because the bad reputations for the Power Commanders seem to center around water related issues when they get wet via washing or rain.

ANy more opionions on the matter?

 

I second Rich's (8541hog) recommendation on the ThunderMax with Auto Tune (TMax w/ AT or TMAT) ...

I had a piggy back fueler (Dobeck) and never had it Dyno tuned ... I am fairly confident that I helped it run cooler and a little better, but it was in no way optimized ...

The '05 are open loop ... meaning there is no feedback to the EFI controller as to how close the actual is (exhaust measurement) to the ideal (the map) ... when adding the TMAT it is possible to switch over to closed loop (add the feedback loop) ...

Another plus for the TMAT is that it uses wideband O2 sensors vice narrowband used with the MoCo closed loop system ...

It is more pricey ... but, IMO worth the additional expense ....

R/
'Chop

 

 

I would not say I hated the PC III, I actually loved it at first, much better than the FuelPak I had or stock ECM with Stage 1 download, but never quite right, then I got the TMax, all I can say is WOW, it really woke the 88 up, the difference was night and day, and as far as real world difference, my Dakota Digital say's it was 0.3 (4.3 seconds) seconds faster in the 0-60 category over the PC III.

Basically I just wish I had spent the money right the first time on the TMax, instead of trying to save a few bucks on less expensive units.

 

I like the TMax idea and i'm not necessarily opposed to it. It's just quite a big investment right now all at once. The TMax jump for me would add a lot of expense to the project because it isn't just the additional cost involved in the tune, it's pipes too and there goes an additional $600-$700 on top of the additional cost for the tuner. Overall I end up with a bill over $1000 higher.

 

My pipes were less than $100.00 or you can have o2 bungs welded into your existing pipes.