A dealer told me that the cam chain tensioners in my 2007 RKC should be checked at 20,000 miles because they will probably need replacement between 20,000 and 30,000 miles. I thought the hydraulic tensioners on the 2007 and later bikes cured that problem. Is the dealer right?

 

What cams are you running?? More agressive cams than stock will mean you should be looking at those tensioners about now.

 

Never hurts to inspect them but I haven't heard of any needing replaced that soon.

 

I've got a buddy that has 60k miles on an '06 Ultra. He said his showed minimal wear.

 

The 2007's have the upgraded version. A friend has 33k on his and inspected them about 30k. No wear at all. As said above it can't hurt to check, who knows. With the older version I would say definitely check them, but the new ones...questionable if they even need to be checked yet. Haven't heard of catastrophic failures with the new design yet.

 

I believe 2007 (TC96) is the first year of the newer upgraded hydraulic chain tensioners, which are said to be much improved over the spring loaded tensioners in the 2006 and earlier TC88.


That's good to hear. All too often, all we hear are the horror stories, causing us to paint a distorted picture of the whole scheme of things. From what I hear, on the spring loaded TC88, the inner shoe wears about twice as fast as the outer. Did he check the inner too, or just the outer shoe on his TC88?

JR

 

My Dealer says 05 and 06 are good for 50k miles, 04 and earlier TCs 30k.

 

My inner hydraulic unit/tensioner shoe(one part #)needed replacing at 16,000 but it was a defective part from the factory. Wasn't holding enough pressure on chain causing shoe to be gouged by the chain slapping at lower oil pressure. Found it when i changed cams. Other one looked brand new. It's pretty rare for the later ones to fail.

 

He had both primary and secondary tensioners checked. But it is definitely worth mentioning.

 

I have a 07 Ultra. At 30,000 miles I changed cams. the cam chain tensioners looked almost new. I now have 37,000 miles and will check them again at 50,000 miles.

In God we Trust

dd