That article I referred to gives a theory that the pitch of the cam gears may be excessive. This damages the chain and causes it to become rough and then it wears on the tensioners. The tensioner design itself may not be the root cause of the problem. It also mentions failures that occur in motors that have been modded for more performance. I have the SE upgrade kit in my bike and I sure hope I don't see any tensioner problems.

 

To see more on this go to Hot Bike Baggers Magazine, June 2010 issue, page 64. They even show a picture of the tensioner they caught right before "Failure". This is on a 2009 bike. It is interesting to note though that when reassembling the motor they installed the same tensioner setup with new tensioners. They did not swap out to a Gear Drive setup.

 

Unless I missed something, I do not believe there is a gear drive set-up for the late model bikes (at least not yet). I am not sure there are a lot of options out there at this time.

 

I just had mine off at 27k, literally looked new, just the slightest hint of contact.

 

I just swapped cams in my bike at about 27K. The tensioners looked like new, no signs of wear at all.

 

From what I see here and in other posts my '05 Ultra Classic with 35K+ miles must be a prime candidate for failure. The previous owner along with the dealer and the indy he went to had no record of it ever being checked out...
I have studied on this and am undecided from doing a gear drive upgrade or the later model hydraulic upgrade.
Either way, should I also go for an oil pump upgrade at the same time?

 

Sorry to hear about your problem What I usually do is check the oil filter for plastic chunks on any bike I work on (including my own) at each service starting at 20k. Takes a little extra time to chop the filter but it beats having the tensioners fail. Sorry to hear about your problem.

edit: I should say "did", Saturday was my last day working at the dealership, although I will keep checking my own bikes.

 

Oh swell. And here I am, bike up on the lift, ready to remove the spring tensioners and put in the SE hydraulic upgrade kit. Looking forward, I see no way around popping off the cam chest cover at least for a baseline inspection with no more than 10K miles on it. If no wear shown, then I'd say it's good for the long haul.

From what I'm seeing in the teardown thus far, the front header pipe needs to be pulled forward, but not completely off to allow access to the cam chest. It's just a couple flange nuts, heat shields and pipe hangers. Not a major PITA.

I agree that the MoCo needs to refine this design, and the hydro or gear kit options should be significantly discounted (or FREE) to those with the older spring tensioner/ticking time bombs in their bikes. Blowing a cam tensioner in the middle of nowhere would NOT help HD publicity if it happened to me.

 

This is only the second report of new-style hydraulic tensioner problems I've heard about. The first was a failed hydraulic mechanism that caused a rapid pad failure, and IIRC didn't cause any other damage. I'm uncertain what might've caused an engine failure in the OP's bike unless the tensioner came loose and fell off, the chain then became so loose it caused the gears to jump some teeth and get the cams out of sync. If that happened a valve could've been tweaked or made contact with the piston. OTOH I'm even sure if that's possible. Or, the if the tensioner came apart the pieces could've destroyed the oil pump.

I'd like to hear the final report of what happened. I did a cam job at 25k and the tensioners looked almost new, certainly good enough to re-use. I've heard of only one other bike having them replaced, and that was at 81k after finding some very small plastic pieces in the oil filter. Upon disassembly one had some minor wear on the primary tensioner pad, none on the secondary, but both were replaced anyway.

To the OP: I would at least attempt to get a "goodwill" warranty adjustment on your bike. I had a tranny bearing go bad in my '07 10 months after the warranty expired, and HD picked up the bill. The problem (a drivetrain whine) was reported prior to warranty expiration which was obviously a factor in this decision. Also, the dealers have budgets from HD for extraordinary repairs like that which are not the fault of the owner. In my case had HD not covered it in warranty the dealer was willing to do the work from their goodwill budget, so I had two levels of extra-warranty possibilities to work with. Check with your dealer's warranty representative if HD doesn't want to fix the bike on their nickle.

 

I'm skeptical too, I'd ask to see the tensioners.