Like it says, what is the earliest (mileage wise) known cam failure in the TC 88's . I got about 15 k and you guys got me paranoid, like to wait till next fall to go hydraulic or gear drive. Post your numbers please.

 

I have a '99 Ultra Classic with 34,000 miles I pulled the cam cover to look and they looked fine barely worn, I'm still going to upgrade next fall.

Mike

 

Did you have much trouble checking the inside one? I heard those little dental type mirrors will work.

 

Mine went south at about 13K, the MoCo replaced them free, and then they went to about 75K. I just put in the new Hydraulic Cam tensioner kit back in Nov, and it looks like it's going to work just fine. Would have preferred the gear drive setup, just didn't have the coin right then to pull it off.

 

13k... gulp!

 

My 05 WG threw a cam bearing with about 33k on it. The tensioners were fine though.

 

I've got almost 65K on my '06 EGC. When I checked the cam tensioners at 40K they looked fine. Now that I think about it, I should probably take another look at them this spring.

 

Not that diffficult to take a look. Drop the front pipe and pull the cover . All you need is a cover gasket ($8), exhaust gasket ($6) and cheap dental mirror to inspect them.

 

It is really difficult to inspect the inside tensioners without pulling the cams & cam plate. The issue is not being able to see if the tensioner has chunks of plastic being removed. You can, however, check the outer tensioners, look with the dental mirror at the inner to see if the wear is beyond specification, and cut your oil filter open to see if you have pieces of orange plastic in it. If so, you need to replace your tensioners.

 

I had a little over 40,000 on my 01 when I switched over to gears. The tensioners were worn a little over 1/2 way thru.

Changed the OL's 03 to gears with about 38,000 miles, but hers showed a little more wear.