Mike ask me to come in a comment about the tensioners and maintenance.
Anytime there is a discussion about tensioners the thread gets very confusing because people jump in and tell of problems and do not identify which type of tensioner they have.
There is a huge difference between the spring loaded tensioner on the 99-06 and the hydraulic 07- present.
It gets even more confusing when you start talking about the “Hybrid” kit that upgrades the PRE 07 to hydraulic.
The problem with the spring loaded tensioners are that they are so unpredictable. Some wear out in twenty thousand miles, mine lasted to 60 thousand and still had wear when I changed them.
The fault is the chain and how rough it is, while one chain will cut the another will just slide over it.
One note outer chain wear is not a good indicator of inner chain tensioner wear.
It is a pretty common practice to polish the chains it is also very important to not change the direction that the chain runs.
Why it is so scary is how the tensioners fail the shoe wears out and large chunks are left inside the oil compartment, then the chain starts to ride on the metal of the tensioners arm, tearing large chunks of metal out of that.
All this happens within inches of the oil pump and where the oil is being scavenged out of the motor.
You can imagine the headache when a case hardened steel part tries to pass through case hardened gears in you oil pump.
The new hydraulic tensioners are said to have better wearing material but the improvement is in the design.
First there is no arm holding the tensioner on, oil pressure pushes it into the chain.
But the big improvement is the chain, instead of the silent chains with a bunch of links side by side, the new hydraulic tensioners use a roller chain. The chain has links on the sides but inside connecting them are tubes that roll on the tensioner instead of sliding.
So the tensioner wears down until the rollers hit it then the wear is minimal.
But the important part is how the tensioner fails, instead of disintegrating it wears down until the small piston inside the tensioner is exposed then the shoe slides down on the piston and stops working and you start getting a considerable amount of valve train noise, enough that you know that you have a major problem.
Now lets talk about the hybrid kit, this kit upgrades the hydraulic tensioners to the pre 07.
They call it a hybrid because the 07+ cams and cam plate does not fit in the pre 07s, the inside bearing is larger so the old cams wont fit. Also the 07 and later do not use bearings in the cam plate for the cam, it uses “Parent material” this means that there is no bearing.
So the upgrade kit, is made so that the cam plate has a bearing for the old cams.
Now the problem gets interesting, bare with me. The old cams use the silent chain on the inside, so with the hybrid kit, you have hydraulic tensioners both inside and out, but on the chains you have a roller on the outside, and a old silent chain on the inside.
This is the kit that I have.
The jury is still out on this kit, there are just not enough miles to tell if it works with the silent chain.
I have not been having good luck with this I have wore out two tensioners both with fifteen k miles, but found out that my problem was with the chain itself.
After all the years and one hundred and fifty k of wearing out and chunking tensioners the chain was full of plastic and got stiff, this stiff chain was chattering the chain to death.
I only have about five thousand miles on the new on so it will be interesting to see if that fixes the problem.
No one else is having this problem.
There are several other fixes for the pre 07 tensioners from gears to using the 07 cam plate with 07 cams that have the inside bearing ground down to fit the pre 07s.
These are called the b cams.
If I had it to do over this is the way that I would have gone.
Not going into all that as I am not a expert on that.
Ok now that we know the difference lets talk about maintenance.
The pre 07 should be inspected at 20-25k to get an idea of how they are wearing.
This is a pretty easy inspection, you need to take off the front exhaust, and sometime the cover needs a little tap.
You will need a small dentist style mirror, and you just pull the shoe back with a screw driver to look at it.
This is really no big deal, I have some photos somewhere if anyone is interested.
In all honesty the pre 07 are not that bad for the average rider that plans on low mileage.
If you are doing 15k a year and plan on keeping the bike ten years then I would suggest either the gears, or the b cam hydraulic kit.
Also use the adjustable push rods they will save more than their cost in time saved on the next time into the cam chest.
On the 07+ these tensioners are supposed to go 70+ plus. I am not even sure if you can inspect the inner shoe.
And like I said above outer is no indication of inner wear.

I know that on my hybrid kit the cam plate completely covers the inner shoe area.
In all honesty the 07+ I would not worry about them just run em.
They will start talking to you when you have a problem.
I will make a few other suggestions when I have more time.

 

Well at fifty k, I am assuming you have replaced tires, brakes?
Do you have a manual? Are you doing the tires, brakes, oil yourself?
Have you checked the fall away or had someone check it?
Have you lubed your cables, clutch, carb?
Have you adjusted your clutch?
Changed brake fluid?
Changed front end oil?
Adjusted your primary changed oil, changed trans oil?
Changed your spark plugs, wires?
Cleaned or replaced your air cleaner?
Lubricated your controls?
Replaced your fuel filter on efi or cleaned your gas screen on carb?

 

thx for the info on the tensioners exactly what i was thinking, the bike still runs like brand new with no problems so ima run it for now especially since low on cash i dont have funds to change just in case

Ya ima do everything i can myself if possible i have been in the past

had it serviced a few times at the shop
fork oil was changed at 20 and 40k
keep all 3 oils changed at 5k, both new tires
ive never personall lubed cables, clutch, carb or adjusted clutch. also never lubricated controls. Maybe they did at the shop i can call and find out i suppose.

how do i know if mine is fuel injected or not?

 

Its 06 or newer so is injected.

 

sweet deal ty

 

Is it normal for dyna with 50k miles to have what looks like metal flakes or something in oil. I've always had it serviced at a shop so this is my first change myself. It's like really fine glitter looks gold and it's not a lot but wondering if others have this or am I screwed.

It was serviced at Harley in october or so of 2012 just broke it out recently to ride. They didn't mention anything.

 

My magnet always has a small bit of fine shavings and I've got 50k on my '07 Wide Glide. But I've never seen what appear to be gold shavings.

I've read there are a number of bronze bushings that can cause what look to be "gold" flakes in used oil.

 

Well I'm partially color blind so it could be bronze I'm not sure. But it's really really fine like powder

Hoping its not anything

Thanks