I stand corrected. I said it didn't sound like a lifter but I've changed my mind. Yesterday I rode all day with a guy on a 2012 Limited. His made that same noise every time he started it after we had stopped somewhere. First time I heard it I had parked next to him and thought the noise was coming from my motor. It would drive me crazy but it doesn't bother him. He's used to it. His bike always did that and he figures it's just lifter leak down and not hurting anything.

 

I've been over everything pretty well, probably check it all over again in case I missed anything. Smashed my finger with a 90 lb transmission pump today at work so I'm off for the next two days with not much to do lol

 

Figure it out yet?

 

S&S standard lifters? They're imported from Mexico, the Premiums are USA made. I find stock Harley C lifters pretty noisy and they're also made in Mexico.

 

Listened to your vid several times. I am in the camp that your 3 seconds of noise is definitely a lifter bleeding down.

 

I just don't buy it that it's lifters when I've got the exact same noise at the exact same time and under the exact same conditions with 2 completely different sets of lifters. I'm certainly not dumping another $300+ labor on yet another set of them just to see. It's got to be something in the valvetrain not getting sufficient oil on hot startups.

 

I feel your pain, along with that of all the other folks who have tried to deal with the various BS issues caused by this twin-cam system.

The only other thing I can think of is something having to do with the cam-chain tensioners, but I've never heard of this being an issue. I had something similar with mine when I installed a set of woods lifters ($300) and had the same valve noise I was trying to eliminate, only much worse! They were returned for refund.

The S&S premiums with the shim installed fixed it, BUT I had to adjust the push rods about 3/4 turn "longer" than the instructions recommended - otherwise even those were noisy.

The twin-cam was a ridiculously over-complicated, totally unnecessary POS design when it first came out and nothing really changed till the MOCO finally gave up and went back to the single cam system that had worked just fine since the '30's. Guess they actually ARE capable of learning from their mistakes after all (who whoda thunk it?). Only took 'em 18 years, too. It's a friggin' miracle!

Good luck,

JP

 

See that's what pisses me off so bad. My 07 Softail was quiet as can be. My buddies with mid-2000's road and street glides.... no noise complaints from them. This 103 has been a chattery, clanky, knocking mess since day 1 and it's infuriating coming from a bike I spent $25k on. Honestly I'd have sold it a long time ago if it wasn't the sand camo color and I didn't have so much money into it in mods.

 

The only other twin-cam bike I've owned was an '03 RK and the motor sounded like a bucket of bolts. It also had several other problems and was sold after about two months with ~2500 miles on it.

Now that I've spent over $500 on my '15 Ultra to silence the valve train (on top of the $27,000 that I spent to buy it, plus several hours of my own labor, o' course), I'm happy with it. Before that, it was noisy as hell on startup and also while riding.

Fortunately, I had assumed that this would be the case from the get-go, since I had already demo'd one for a couple of hours and rented a different one for a day and put 470+ miles on it before I bought mine and both of them were rattle-traps too, so I wasn't really surprised or pissed off too much when the one I bought was the same right out of the box. Also, there were countless posts on this forum and others about the valve noise with the twin-cams spanning well over a decade.

That's the "Harley Lifestyle" in a nutshell, I guess. Total BS, but what are ya gonna do?

Oh well...

 

I'd like to see a picture of that if you're able.