Hope this is the correct place for this post.....

I have a '03 Road King Classic with 48,000 miles.....So far I've had absolutely no mechanical trouble with it. A friend of mine was telling me that it might be a good idea to replace the cam tensioners as preventive maint due to the mileage ......I'm no mechanic and have no mechanical skills/aptitude, so here I am asking the masses for feedback. What are you thoughts, concerns, experiences, and etc concerning the cam tensioners?

 

Discussed many times here. I got 50K on my 05' and they have never been checked. I could do it my self, the check, but am worried about the actual replacement if needed. Damn, I'm always so broke. Still got the original front tire too......

 

At the very least get them inspected. While the shop is in there, put new shoes in even if there is still wear left. Best idea is to do the cam plate, tensioners, oil pump upgrade. 50k is about max on 90* of '03 tensioners. Opened mine up @ 50k because of a weird noise and the chain was running on metal, no shoe. Do it yourself and you'll be into it (kit,specialty tools, gaskets, oil) about $500. You'll be about $250 more at the shop.

 

Checked mine on my 06 SG at around 34,000 kms, they are half worn. Will be upgrading to new style hydraulic tensioners, changing out cams at the same time. New style hydraulic tensioners requires a higher flow oil pump too. Figured the upgrade (for me to do it me self) would be around $1200.00 plus or minus. Looked at SE, but found that Herko offered the most bang for the buck. Complete kit with the new cams, tools and gaskets. Lots of posts highly recommend this kit, also spoke to them on the phone, gave me all the info I needed to help make my choice. Just waiting to gather up some $$$, then placing my order.
Don't let the tensioners wear out to the point that yer scraping the metal pin, cause all that nylon tensioner stuff is going to end up in the lower end of your engine, not a good thing.
Cheers mate.

 

just finished changing mine on my '05 ultra, have 36000 miles the front foot was worn about 1/2 way down, the rear one, which you can't see without pulling the cover was almost gone, dealer wanted $600 to replace with stock tensioners, to upgrade to hydraulic would be $1600, did the work myself and saved $600, got the kit from Fuel-Moto with adj. pushrods which saved pulling the tank and rocker covers off, worst part of the job is the exhaust, you have to remove the whole thing, but the cams and cam plate with oil pump is fairly easy to do, if I had not done the change now I would have had a total failure at some point next year and could have left me and wife stranded on the road somewhere

 

+1 on 1plumr1's comments. An ounce of prevention man! Call your local dealer, get the part numbers for the SE upgrades, then shop around. You can buy these parts at 20% off from Surdyke HD www.surdyke.com as well as a couple of others ( i think Latus HD is another) If those tensioners fail, you're FUBAR.

This is not a difficult project so if you try to tackle this project yourself, do not attempt to do so without the service manual for your particular bike. It has all the torque specs as well as illustrated layouts and step by step instructions.

On a side note, I rode my 06 road king for 66,000 miles with no problems whatsoever. At that point I decided to put in gear drive cams and when I went into the cam chest, the tensioners were still in great shape. Then literally rode it another 10 days or so before a cager cost me that bike. :-( Never got to enjoy that upgrade.

 

AWESOME!! I sure appreciate the help and the feedback. Looks like it's about time I have these little jewels checked out........Don't want to get stranded because of something I could have prevented. Thanks again for your help!!