Yep, but if you're talking about "gold flakes", any bronze or brass could be the source.

 

Are you sure its bronze or brass or is it the oil making it look like it. Use a magnet and try to grab some of that "brass/bronze".

 

You can buy brass of bronze depending on your application.........

 

If the magnet sticks you only have plated brass or bronze. If the magnet doesn't stick you have solid brass or bronze.

Thats the only way brass/bronze is magnetic........

 

The bushings in the plate look exactly like oil impregnated bronze.

 

I don't even own a sportster, but find this thread fascinating. Last year a group of us were tooling around with our machines in a buddies garage. One of the guys drained his oil out of his Dyna. He had all these tiny flakes in the bottom of the drain pan. I told him they were from his cam tensioners ... another guy got into an argument with me that they were chips from inside his reusable oil filter. I told him he was crazy and that I had seen the same thing in my used oil. Well about 6 months later, the Dyna friends cam tensioner fragged. The guy who did not believe me saw more and bigger chunks and admitted that I was right.
Your problem could be anything I guess, but is there any kind of plastic in there that could be grinding on anything?

 

I saved the oil and am filtering some thru coffee filters now to see if they are magnetic, I doubt they will be. They were very bright Brass or Gold color, not dark gold like Bronze.

What weird's me out is the presents of the flakes in the drain pan, but almost none in the filter??? I also used clean paper towels to check the oil several times in the 1500mi on this oil, always checking after engine shutdown (hot), never a trace of anything on the dipstick except clean oil.

 

Do the rods have inserts in them that the wrist pins go through?

 

With that low mileage sounds like break in material .Maybe it is copper . Here is an oil analysis report I had done on my bike with 37500. Just had another one done at the 50000 mile mark and the results were almost identical . Blackstone labs will send you an oil kit so you can send your oil off to have it tested. In the report I have traces of copper in my oil and they said the engine was fine.

 

No sir, Sporties have a quad cam setup. The only plastic is on the primary chain tensioner.