I will tell you the dealers do know about this. However, there is nothing in the owners manual nor the dealers manual. When you take it to the dealer, and they hear it run, yep that is the cam chain tensioner. Cost me little over 1600 bucks to have them fix it. I wrote to every board member twice, same answer both times your warranty expired nothing we can or will do. In other words, pay and get it fixed or go some place else. Now isn't that wonderful customer relations. I now have a box full of cams bearing oil pump, worn out cam chain tensions, whats left, cam chain, and not ounce sympathy from Harley. Not even Willie, who I found out is an empty suit. I wonder if a class action suite is in order? Keep watching.... Tom1169

 

Hmm. Not the 2006s ?

 

Sounds like he got lucky. I opened mine up at 25K, and the outer was 2x worn as the inner. Checked that my my crank run-out was in spec(< .003), and ordered/installed 26G gear drive cams. Wont be thinking about cams/tensioners anymore.

 

I think only the 06 Dynas had the new setup. The rest of the BTs followed in 07. At least thats with the Electra Glides.

 

Unfortunatley, **** happens. Know why there hasn't been a class action suit brought for this? Because no lawyer is dumb enough to invest the time and money into a case they know they'll never win. Parts wear out, and it's not illegal for companies to use cheap parts if they so choose.

Does it suck? Sure does, but your choices are simple; suck it up and pay for the repair or sell the scoot and buy a different one

 

There's a phrase for that: "Planned Obsolecense" Parts are designed to take a **** right after your warranty expires lol.

But who cares? Upgrading to the new hydraulic design (which doesn't have any problems, contrary to what some would tell you) is the best idea, and only costs a few hundred dollars if you do it yourself. I HAD to do that on my 2000 Heritage, my crank runout was a little too high to use gear drives,a nd I didn't want all that noise anyway. Also, I've replaced more of those TC88 tensioners than i can count for customer bikes, The key is synthetic oil. I've seen bikes that have run synthetic since day one, not wear out the shoes untill 50,000 miles. It's always the ones that run conventional oil that have issues early on, my theory being that the shoes, made of plastic, which is made of petroleum, has an adverse reaction to petrouleum based oil.

 

I guess I'm a little confused. I keep reading on this forum about guys "going in and checking the cam chain tensioners". How do you check the inner tensioner without pulling the cam plate? Which requires removing push rods and lifters. Not a cheap job. And if you do do this I would think it would be cheaper to go to hydraulic or even gear drive (if your crank runout will allow it) As opposed to putting the junk spring tensioners back in and have to worry and redo them in a few thousand miles. Or am I missing something

 

Nope your not missing nothing. You can use a flashlight and dental mirror to check the inner shoe.



cheers

 

Don't you still have to do all the above to get to cam plate out far enough to peek behind it??

 

You have to do what it takes to remove the cam cover.



cheers