Hey guys, Jordon Reed here. I'm working on a 2003 Super Glide FXD, carbureted, and I seem to have got my self in a bind. I've searched the forums but have found an exact answer to what I'm looking for. When I changed my cam chain tensioners, I got the bike out of time. All the research I've done said you just have to line up the dots. I did so and it's not firing correctly on the front cylinder. So here's the loaded question, does the bike have to be in TDC to complete the timing process? If not any advice?

The bike idles slightly rough, put it in gear and it boggs down and start misfiring when I get to the shifting point. I've been told it was off a tooth. But I had a friend help me line everything up as I turned the wheel and I double checked before putting it back together and they were in line. So I'm at a loss.

 

You aligned the cam marks, cam to cam correct? Then when you put the cam drive gear and crank gear on you aligned the marks across the gears correct?

 

​​​Lined up the marks in the rear side of the cam, also lined up the cam gear dot with the line on the cam chest, the Lined up the dot on the crank gear. Put it all back together and it won't fire correctly.

 

Well Jordon, if the cams and then the gears were aligned like the pics below, it really can't be out of time.

 

See my cams don't have those dots on the front. They had lines on the back. And tester day I went back into it to make sure those dots were lined up and iIwad off a tooth, but I fixed that and they lined up but front cylinder still doesn't fire right. But everything ran fine until I changed the tensioner so it had to be timing, huh?

 

Mine are also stock cams if that makes a difference

 

If you are sure you are timed correctly now and you still have issues I wonder if you bent a valve when you were out of time? Maybe compression test time.

 

If I bent a vlve wouldn't there be valve noise such as air sucking or tapping/ ticking?

 

I just feel like I'm missing something. Do I have to find TDC after lining everything up? If the rear chain was out of time would it still fire up?

 

Adjustable pushrods?....correctly adjusted?