What is the actual percentage of failure at 25,000 miles?
Does any one have a real clue?

If your your cam chain has failed or you have replaced, post the year and mileage.

Also state if the change was needed or just precaution.

Concerned about my 2003 Heritage Springer. 23,000 miles

 

I changed mine at 18,000 as precaution. Went to the hydraulic set up.
I have not really seen too many, in here anyway, that have failed prematurely.

 

I think the recommended interval is 30k miles - can't remember.

I changed mine in my RK early because I installed new cams. Then after another 15k or 20k miles, I changed to another set of cams and changed them again.

If you change the cams or not, you should check them every 20k miles. The first time might take you longer but after that, it won't take long. Just consider it part of winter maintenance every other year or so.

 

On my '03 springer, I pulled them at 20,000 to upgrade the camp late and tensioners. The back shoe was 90% gone. Glad I changed them over when I did!

 

There appears to be four variables that make this unpredictable. For my 2006 the shop manual recommends that the interval for checking them is 25k.

The type of oil being used (syn3 seems to do better)

The amount of heat (where you spend your time riding both in climate and traffic)

The proper maintenance of the oil system.

A variation in the quality of the plastic used to make the shoes.

The variations that I have seen stated (not guaranteeing this as a real statistic) are from 18K to 35K. Some have gone longer but probably shouldn't have (up to around 50k). Of course if you are a bar hopper then you can gamble on taking them to a longer extreme... and, you probably never get enough miles on the bike to cause an issue in the first place. The latter fact is why HD figured they could gamble on this... half of their owners never put on enough miles for it to be an issue. If everyone rode 15k a year, there would have been a class action lawsuit I think.

I believe the primary problem is the type of chain. A link chain never stops eating them. A roller chain pretty much stops eating them when it digs in enough to be the depth of the link beyond the roller diameter. A roller chain and hydraulic tensioners is the proper configuration unless you want to make sure that the tolerance in the crank is better, which costs HD a lot of money. If you have better tolerances you can use gear driven cams.

C#

 

all what cwsharp said and from what I have seen the highway riding kills them faster
I replaced mine at 36k and they would have went 10-15k more

 

My friend replaced his at 80k miles on an 04 se deuce. Replaced with oem tensioners. I ride with different groups with all models of hd's and no one has ever said having tensioner issues. Check every ~30k.

 

What is it about highway riding that kills the chain/tensioner faster? I would think that a steady speed with only moderate torque on the chain, and steady oil pressure would make it last longer. What am I missing here?

 

I'm actually taking mine to get replaced today. Sticking with the shoes but upgrading cams, lifters and new pushrods. I have 34k on my '03 Deuce. Outside pad is fine. Inside one is 90% gone. I can actually see little orange flakes from the shoe inside the cam chest. If you're concerned check them out. Not hard to do. If they look ok keep riding, otherwise it would be a good idea to get them replaced.

 

What are the actual symptoms, if any, that they need replaced?