A freind of mine's 04 RK developed a noise, we have traced to the cam area.
It started to make the noise at 1:00 a.m. a couple of hours from home. He took it easy and road it back.
He changed his oil and drove it to my place, about 5 miles.
I listened and told him he should shut it off before he does some real serious damage.
Today we removed the cam cover and found the primary cam chain tensioner shoe in pieces in the bottom of the cavity. There is also yellow shavings in there.
We have cleaned it out and there isnot got enough pieces to reconstruct the shoe.
We aren't mechanics, but have well out fitted garages and we have decent skills.
I have little mechanical experience with Harley engines.
I really don't know what I'm doing , but, I'm thinking his plan to install my old shoe and ride it for the last couple of rides of the season, isn't a very good idea.
Any help hear would be appreciated.
We have a service manual.

 

Just go buy the replacement shoes and install while it is apart. Not very expensive. The gold looking shavings are the color of the plastic like shoes the tensioner is made of.

 

I know what the shavings are.
It can't be that simple. If it is, we'll use mine for now and replace with better this winter.
Hopefully hotter cams with gear drives.
Common sense suggests to me that the missing plastic may be clogging something up somewhere.

 

You might just do a oil and filter change after you slap your old shoe on her.
inspect the chain very carfully for any obvions link damage and if its ok, let her rip.

 

You didn't mention the condition of the rear cam chain tensioner--chances are it's bad also. Whenthe padmaterialfails, there is often metal shavings from the shoe and/or chainthat will migrate to the oil pump chewing that up as well.

My tensioners required replacement after 40K and the engine never made any unusual noise at all. If your buddy's was bad enough to hear something wrong, I suspect he has more problems than just repacing the tensioners.