My bike has hit the magical 40k mark where its time to change the cam shoes. I personally want to upgrade my cams while I'm in there and put in some gear driven cams rather than keeping the chain system. My only concern is if my crank pinion has developed runout, then the chain would help absorb this. I know this is a problem for newer twin cams, but should I be concerned about runout on a 2000 E-glide with plans of chaing to gear driven cams? Is it even worth checking for runout?

 

Still possible to have too much runout on a 2000 crank. I changed my 01 to gear drive at 32000 with .0002 runout

 

Because the 99 - 02 cranks were the best, (hot forged and supported by the Timken Lefty bearing,) I personally have never heard of a bike from those years exceeding .003" runout. Therefor virtually assured that gear drives will work. But why not check it just to know what your runout is?

My gear drives were installed at 82,000 miles January 2011 and the bike just passed 127,000 mikes last week, No problems.

 

I asked my mechanic about crank run out when I did gear drives. He told me not to worry about that but instead worry more about oil pump and etc.

If you are going in that deep I would recommend a new cam plate, oil pump and etc. The cost is just the parts and there are a few kits out there that include everything. Good time to get her set for the next 40k.

With labor ( I had my oil pan removed, floorboard extensions installed, 3 oil changes, and the brakes where bleed) was 3k for 510 Gear Drive, Fueling Cam Plate, Fueling Oil Pump, SS Quick Pushrods and Covers. I lost a cam shoe in and they had to clean it out of the oil pan...

Enjoy

 

They are well-built cranks, although their runout has nothing to do with anything more than tight assembly tolerances. Harley could assemble later cranks to the same tolerances, but there is no need to.

It is worth checking runout, rather than discover that a lovely new gear set won't work!

 

Just did a 103" build when my '06 SG ate the inner cam bearings at 32k. The first crank
from HD had .007 runout - gave it back. The next one had .0005 and used it with
Fuelings oil pump and tensioner setup.

 

Thanks guys! I am just thinking I would be so pissed if I got the gears and then found out I was out of tolerance for running gears, but still in tolerance for chains.... If the run out is too much, then I would have to get another crank making my "cam upgrade" a ton of work.