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timing chain adjustment

It's spring loaded (automatic) if you are talking the cam chain and not the primary chain here but check them every 20K or so because they do wear out and when they do , it usually takes out the engine with bits in the oil.
 
Robotune said:
what is the procedure to check? thanks
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Have to pull the cam cover off (nose cone) and the outside tensioner is right there. The inside one is trickier. You can get a small cheap plastic dental mirror and get it behind the plate at the top along with some light to see the condition of the inside tensioner.

TQ
 
From my experience the touring bikes fail a lot earlier than any other. Ihave seen some completely gone @ 20k and some last as long as 40-45k miles. So if you have a touring model with 20k or more miles iwould definatley pop that cam cover and check. I just built the motor on my dyna with 37k- the primary tensioner was about 1/2 gone, but the rear maybe only had a few thousand miles left. I was going to go gear drive but already had cams, and did not want to spend any more $. I did put in a S.E. hybrid billet camplate and pump, that comes with the new hydraulic tensioners and new roller chain and sprockets for the front, but uses the old silent chain on the rear with a hydraulic tensioner. The new tensioners last a lot longer. ( havent had to change any yet and ive seen some bikes with over 80k miles )

Twin cams up to 2006 have spring loaded tensioners except 06 fxd. Anything 07 and later have hydraulic tensioners.
 
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Good advice, as usual, from the forum. When I pulled the cam cover on my '99 Ultra, I was about a stones throw away from total primary tensioner failure. It was that bad. Ended up biting the bullet andf going with the roller chain conversion. The comments about pieces of tensioner floating about are well taken. Couldn't beleive all of the stuff that was in the old cam plate.

There is an extremly well written and documented roller chain conversion article done by TQ. I referred to it several times myself. Check it out....
 
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