After you change your tensioners, do theyhave the same problemsas the originals, or are they more reliable? I just changed them out this winter at 40,000. They looked ok, had a few mm of wear. The inside one had some small chunks out of it though.

I also replaced the drive and slave chains. So, are the replacements any better, or should you check them every 20,000 also?

Thanks.

By the way this was on an '01' Heritage. Just for those of you's worried about the tensioners.

 

I think it would have maybe been a good idea to re-use the original chains. The thinking behind this is, whatever roughness there may have been on the surface of the chain will have been polished down now after 40,000 miles of wear and will cause less wear on the surface of the new tensioner shoe. One of the fixes suggested for tensioner wear is to polish the surface of the chain.

If there was any additional slack in the chain because of it's age it would be compensated for by the tensioner, that's their job.

 

My cam chains must really be polished good now! I actually got 95,000 miles before they failed & I had to replace them.[sm=biker2.gif]

 

Us older TC owners seem to be a bit more lucky than the newer owners. The original tensioner shoes were better quality than the "new and improved" ones that HD came out with in the 02-06 era.

I think they've pretty much solved the off-quality shoe material problem now. And assuming that you got new stock, you should fare as well with the replacements as with the originals. Replacing the cam chain though, was probably a waste of money. You original was probably perfectly fine - or actually better, being polished good, than the new one.

 

I pulled the timing cover off my '01 Dyna last week. The outside cam shoe looked to have only a few mm of wear, it was hard to see the inside shoe, but it looked OK as well. I have 48,000 miles. Guess I'm good for awhile. I started using Mobil 1 20W-50 v-twin oil at 10,000 miles and no problems. Could be the oil or maybe I'm just lucky so far...