On the bright side if you decide later to sell the bike you can add all this stuff up and tell prospective buyers how much money you've got 'invested' in the bike... ;-) <Sarcasm Off>

 

Only "20 to 30 times" original cost? Can I get your mechanic's number?

I'm thinking metal on metal where oil is a lubricant would be better than plastic on metal as long as the oil is present. Afterall, pistons and barrels are "metal on metal" and they survive just fine. Extreme heat, mechanical motion plus chemicals in the oil have to be hard on plastic?

 

I had the original plastic breather gear in my Softail, it broke apart and ruined my engine!
I tell everyone with an EVO... Change to a steel breather gear!
(I've known it to happen to other EVO Harleys!

Harley EVOs are easy to work on, but did you know that the oil gets pumped through the system and then goes through the oil filter?
The Twin cam is the first Harley engine to send oil through the Oil Filter before it goes through the engine?

 

In 9 years they probably got it sorted out...

 

OK here is the fulcrum and the catalyst -
Clue one-
Several vendors offer services to fix the bore where the cheap plastic breather was.
Clue 2-
The bore never had to be fixed for the EXPENSIVE steel breathers.
So there lyeth the answer.
Bean counters and money saved.
The cheap plastic ones or the expensive metal ones?
HD elected to go cheap, again.
I have never taken an Evo part that did not have damage from the plastic POS.
Get rid of it.
The next question is - go with a reed valve rather than a timed unit?
Remember, HD never had issues until they started changing what worked for the last 100 years.
Go spend the big bucks on a real breather and be done.

 

I believe the theory was that if something got in there or the breather itself failed the plastic pieces would do less damage rather than having metal pieces wipe out the the whole cam chest.

 

In actual fact where two parts rub together, such as here, the harder part tends to be the one that wears, as hard particles stick in the soft part, acting as an abrasive. Take plain bearing crankshafts for example, the crankshaft journals wear, despite having soft metal bearing shells.

 

If it's all that much of an issue, get rid of the rotating breather gear and install the S-S reed valve... Problem solved....

Update:... I actually like the idea of the reed valve..... Maybe that's why they went to it in the twinkles....

 

i had a valve spring break on my 85. one of the pieces found its way to the plastic breather and broke it. if it was a steel breather it could have destroyed the right case.

 

Damn, did the resurrecter of this thread think I was still stressing over this issue, 9 years later???