Since my engine build I have gone through two rotors and I know I will need a third. With winter here I wanted to try and get the issues I have had with my primary sorted out. Can anyone make some recommendations on what I can do to strengthen my primary set up. I tried once using a heavy duty rotor with encapsulated magnets and that did not hold up it was thicker then the stock Harley rotor. The compensator nut has a tendency to come loose and then the spline on the crank shaft start to gnaw away at the rotor. At one point this caused me to have to replace the stator as well. My wrench is tightening the compensating sprocket with an impact and is using red locktight. The last time we opened the primary was in September because it was making noise. The compensator sprocket was loose again and the crank shaft spline had started to damage the rotor. Everything was cleaned red locktighted and reassembled. When we adjusted the chain my mechanic saw that it would get loose and tighter as we rotated it. He said to an extent this is normal but my appeared worse than normal. I basically wanted to start fresh with a new chain rotor and compensator sprocket. I was wondering if I should upgrade to a self adjusting chain tensionor as well. I don't mind spending the money on upgrading to something better I just want it to hold up. The bike makes a little over 110/110. I do ride it hard but not like a teenager. He tells me I ride it too hard but I'm not sure if this is the case but if it is are there components I can use that will hold up with the amount of power and how I ride? Any advice would really be helpful I would like to get this squared away. Thanks in advance!

 

You should tighten your compensator with a torque wrench NOT an impact. 150 to 165 Ft. Lbs. of torque. The manual says just a couple drops of red locktite but I coat the whole inside of the nut when doinf them.

 

excessive variation of primary chain tension can be a sign of an out of true crank
while this is not quite the issue that it can be with later cranks, it still could be and
can lead to a wide range of symptoms
auto tensioners are both good and bad
it may well self tighten in the slack area, and run tight all the time

 

Definitely not the issue. The crank was balanced and welded last summer. I still haven't come up with a game plan. I am focused on my 95 build for the Electra right now.

 

it was balanced last summer....... is this when the rotor breaking commenced?

 

We were seeing comp nuts coming loose a lot, what we started doing was to run a tap into the nut to clean ALL the old loctite out, clean the threads of the crank realy good with solvent and a brush and like harleytuner said, coat the threads with red loctite, but we torque them to 200 ft lbs. We built motors with 140-150 Hp that did not come loose anymore with that proceedure!

 

OK, I think i'm reading this right. I would remove the rotor, check the splines for wear. Is the rotor itself floating,if so, you may not have the rotor shimmed properly and it is not being held securely when torqued to spec. I would also check the front and rear sprockets to make sure you have proper chain alignment, possibly a shim is missing from behind the basket causing misalignment. All chains are going to have their tight spots, that is why you adjust it at it's tightest point. As mentioned before torque to spec. you should not have to use loctite. I believe you need to add a shim behind the rotor. Harley sells various thickness shims for just this reason. Good luck