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Engine Mechanical TopicsDiscussion for motor builds, cams, head work, stripped bolts and other engine related issues. The good and the bad. If it goes round and around or up and down, post it here.
any shop (or regular rider) that does lower ends should have a tool for setting end play on the timkens,especially with the conversion sleeve as the center snap ring is part of the sleeve so a regular "matched set" of bearing cant be trusted because the spacer & snap ring are not matched
So where are all the posts about failed "leftie" bearings??
In a race motor that lives it's life at red line I get it, street motor that rarely sees max rpm under heavy load (ie:top gear) if ever is the added expense warranted? Now I'm sure the guys who do the conversion will swear by them and I don't blame them a lot of labor with low parts cost = great margins on the work.
for one,its not a point of suggesting the Timken conversion to " to get a good profit margin",its also not about the "leftie" failing either.the Timken bearing set up provides much more stability for the flywheels & will help the flywheels stay straight,and im sure you've heard ALOT about the later,non Timken lower ends moving around
Kirby we have all heard stories and seen pictures of bad cranks but what is the ratio of good to bad??
One in ten thousand one in a thousand, who knows I just don't believe timkens are the end all be all for lower ends. Some cranks fail some don't pure and simple. The moco must believe in the new cranks cuz their dealers are dumping 110 topends on stock cranks and retaining warranty. Are we going to see a **** ton of crank failures because of this??
I know you aren't doing conversions purely for profit but your one of the good ones, other shops are well lets just say not good ones. I had a shop quote $400 just to bore cases for 4.125 jugs. I wish every shop was as straight up and honest as you. Have you ever thought of relocating to Arizona? Less Skeeter's then Florida LOL.
I don't know, nor do I care what the ratio is but when the consumer pays $20K for a motorcycle, we shouldn't read about crank failures as much as we do. You just don't read about crank failures from other brands. We didn't hear much about crank failures until a few years, 2007 IIRC, back when the MoCo changed the runout spec for warranty purposes from .003" to .012" the same year the crank manufacture was sourced to an off shore provided. Kind of looks like the Mother Ship was anticipating crank failures and did not want to be on the warranty "hook" for a bean counter, not an engineering, change.
The jury is not in on how these cranks will hold up with the new 110"/117" drop in kits; just hasn't been enough time. However, it will be a good test. Most of the crank failures I have read about in the recent past were failures in the 120R motors that run the SE crank.
DJL,
There are a metric **** ton of 107's making good numbers on stock cranks. I'm beginning to think how you ride has something to do with crank life. I agree we shouldn't need to have these conversations if the mother ship was doing cranks right. The biggest problem I have read about 120's has been jugs out of round from the factory some cranks also but brand new cylinders out of round. If I dropped the coin on a 120 and the bores were messed up right from the rip I'd be wanting a big chunk of someone's *** for sure.
I just checked Ronnie's HD parts look up. The cranks are the same between the 103 and CVO 110. They either have confidence in it or they know their 110 doesn't pull the numbers that an independent builder can pull with a 110" build.
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