I figured that's probably why I missed it.

Which then begs the question: If this is as urgent a matter as most have suggested here, why would Harley not make the care and maintenance of this item more evident in their documentation...possibly including it in the service schedule?

I'm not questioning you guys and saying that any of you are off. Just wondering with the amount of concern from riders, why this item doesn't stand out more in the service manual. Because honestly, unless one makes it a habit of reading the manual front to back or happens to read on that specific portion of it then such a crucial thing will otherwise go unnoticed. As is the case with me. After all these years, I've had no real reason to read up on that portion of the manual so obviously I had not clue about any sort of maintenance guidelines.

 

Here. This answers your question. Motivation?? Cost of rebuilding engines and upgrading all the spring cam tensioners.


http://blog.jpcycles.com/2012/11/i-l...ust-know-this/


Bones

 

At 11.5k my front looked new. My rear was toast. Changed before failure to the se plate.

 

I get the feeling HD doesn't want to admit there might be defective parts becuse then they would have to issue a recall and cover the costs. I had read somewhere (I'll post if I can find the article) that Harley changed the shoes from a "non-wear" item to a "wear' item somewhere along the line. Meaning that the shoes are like brake pads, tires, etc that will have to be inspected and replaced by the owner and not covered under warranty.

 

By the way, just stopped by my shop to check on my bike.
My guy showed me the old shoes. Outer was slightly worn but the inner was almost comletly gone. He had to pick all the little pieces out of the cam chest.

I'll post pictures when I pick up the bike.

 

I changed out to hydraulic cam plate set up, when i did new cams at 26,000 miles. Could have gone another 10,000...easy.
In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with running the original spring tensioner set up and just replacing the shoes.
That being said, if you are going to pull the cam plate, and replace the shoes....you are going to want to spend the money on push rods, bearings & lifters as well as the shoes.
If you do an N conversion cam set up like I did.......A stock 07-up cam plate, chains, gears, hydraulic tensioners, & SE oil pump are not that great of additional cost.
Its up to you how you want to go about it

 

Well, close to 70k miles and no issues with it. Yet. That's on a 07 softail.

 

From what I have seen, it is highly unlikely that many of you will have a crank within the required runout spec of 0.003" for gear driven cams.

For those of you with '06 and older 88b's, switch to the '07 pressure plate with roller chains on both sides and hydraulic tensioners. Get a cam from Andrews that will work with the roller chain and your inner cam bearing sizes. Change your inner cam bearing to Torrington bearings while you are at it. Use syn3 (or one of many other brands) of oils. If you ride in a parade in very hot weather all the time, get an oil cooler.

This is the ONLY reasonably dependable solution for high mileage riders that is available if your crank doesn't meet runout spec.

If you don't ride that much, change to adjustable push rods, put in new shoes, and make this a simple regular inspection/maintenance task. This solution is ALSO the cheapest.

That's my buck fitty...

C#

 

I'm going to stick my neck out were. Working with engine all of my life, there is new bad parts made but with that said most of the time engine wear is the out come of it's use. If the engine is used for hard acceleration one side of the pads will be worn more then the other and the same goes for hard decelerating the apposed side well have more wear. herky jerky throttle breaks things or promotes excessive wear.

 

Changed mine on my 2001 Springer at 28,000, slight wear on both. Other thing to watch on the twin cam 88's are cam wear....as with pretty much all Harley's, depending on make and model, they have issues....the two defects that Harley overlooks on mine....chain tensioners and cams.