im new to this site but have been riding and wrenching all my adult life. my problem is engine oil leaking down into primary case on my 76 iron head. i have already replaced check ball and spring in oil pump with no luck, so i pulled motor and replaced the whole dang oil pump against my better judgement and lo and behold that did not do anything (i kinda had that feeling) old pump looked fine to me. someone mentioned oil transfer valve. just looks like a screen to me. how do i go about getting it out to check. looks like it has been peened over. maybe at factory to prevent it from coming out or something. i have genuine harley manual but it says nothing about it. thanks for any insight.

 

Post this question down in the ironhead forum. You will get a response there. There are several very knowledgeable guys there who will help.

I've never had that problem on my 75 but I think I've just been lucky so far. I doubt the transfer valve was peened over by the factory. Sounds like the PO did it.

 

yes, the factory does peen the transfer valve as well as other componets. this it to thread lock it so it will not back out. the transfer valve is not your problem as its only function is to allow engine oil to exchange between the c/c and primary side. it is like a wafer disk valve. you did not say if you used an after market replacement or another hd pump. i had this problem also and tried a new ball that was peened in the hole to try to shape the seat but it did not work either. i finally use a teflon ball instead of the steel and after time, it conformed to the seat and stopped the leakage. there is a seal also in the pump that can leak if bad but you covered that base with the replacement. one point to consider also is the return line. the feed pump has a check but the scavenge pump does not. oil flows into the scavenge pump through a screened hole in the cam chest and is pumped through the cam case to the oil bag and chain oiler. if your tank level is kept high enough to go over the return pipe in the tank, it can concieveable back flow to the cam chest providing gravity can do its job. this is a common problem with the old iron

 

A lot of people remove the transfer and plug the hole. The problem with it is, once the engine oil goes thru it, it won't go back, so your primary becomes overfilled. Later Ironheads don't have a transfer (the engine and primary/transmission oil supplies are completely separate) and do fine.