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Cam Bearing Failure?

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flh canuck

Active Member
Just a question regarding inner camshaft bearings on the Twincam engine.

I have seen a lot of posts suggesting replacement of the inner cam bearings with stronger B-168 torrington bearings when swapping out cams.

I have never heard of a stock cam bearing failure in one of these engines so am I missing something here or are people simply replacing these bearings out of an abundance of caution?
 
flh canuck said:
Just a question regarding inner camshaft bearings on the Twincam engine.

I have seen a lot of posts suggesting replacement of the inner cam bearings with stronger B-168 torrington bearings when swapping out cams.

I have never heard of a stock cam bearing failure in one of these engines so am I missing something here or are people simply replacing these bearings out of an abundance of caution?
Click to expand...

Early Twin Cam Bearing Problem Identification - Harley Davidson Community here is a good read on early TC failures, The MOCO has gone cheap on some bearings in the past
 
flh canuck said:
Just a question regarding inner camshaft bearings on the Twincam engine.

I have seen a lot of posts suggesting replacement of the inner cam bearings with stronger B-168 torrington bearings when swapping out cams.

I have never heard of a stock cam bearing failure in one of these engines so am I missing something here or are people simply replacing these bearings out of an abundance of caution?
Click to expand...

I agree. I have read Early Twin Cam Bearing Problem Identification - Harley Davidson Community and still hear about people with tc motors that do not fall into the bad years of the berrings and still replace them.
 
I agree with the two previous posts. If you see the physical difference between the two bearings you can begin to understand why the MOCO changed. For me, it wasn't a decision that I had to ponder for any length of time. When I did my tensioner upgrade, I did the inner bearings too. My thoughts were not so much the likelyhood of a failure, but the damage that would result if such a failure occurred....
 
The4opps1 said:
I agree with the two previous posts. If you see the physical difference between the two bearings you can begin to understand why the MOCO changed. For me, it wasn't a decision that I had to ponder for any length of time. When I did my tensioner upgrade, I did the inner bearings too. My thoughts were not so much the likelyhood of a failure, but the damage that would result if such a failure occurred....
Click to expand...

That pretty much sums up why I replaced mine while changing the cams.
 
I have seen the results of cam bearing failure. I disassembled the motor on a 2000 FLH that the bearing failed. The rollers on the front bearing came out of the cage and ended up on the crankcase. The bearing spun and and ruined the bearing bore. It totally ruined an engine with 30 k on it. My friend ended up buying a surplus used engine that we went thru and upgraded the bearings before we installed it.
 
I went with the Timken bearings, mine still had the INA's & what a difference in the needle size. The stock INA needles were about half the length of the Timkens. I also had 50,000 miles on it before I changed them & they were still in good shape. Wish I could find the pics that I took.

Toby
 
I changed mine when I did the 95" conversion and I changed them again when I did the 104" conversion. I figured they weren't much money, I have the right tools for changing them easily and its's cheap insurance as I was in there anyways changing the cams for the upgrade. My two cents.:D
 
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