Hey guys, long time commenter, but first time poster. I got a question to run by y'all.

I've had my bike since 2011, bought it with 11,800 on the clock. It now has 25,XXX miles, and upon taking it out of dealership winter storage, I FINALLY have gotten it to a tuner shop and on the dyno. Now my ranting about how awesome getting it tuned up and running correctly will be for another thread. This thread I wanted to ask what would be the longterm effects of a bike that has been running out-of-tune since the previous owner had it?

The previous owner put on the S&S Teardop Air Cleaner and Vance & Hines Big Shots Staggered and messed with the stock carb a lot. Upon reflection and how she ran under load, it was running real rich when I got it. Had H-D install an oil cooler installed at 15k after I read how hot the TC engines get, just to be on the safe side. So it ran like that up until I hit the 20k mile mark when I had it converted over to gear-driven cams using an Andrews 26G. Made a night and day difference in the engine. While my indy did that I also had a new set of pipes put on (V&H Straightshots) and an "unmodified" stock carb off eBay. I don't know what they're definition of unmodified is, but it was much better than the one I had on the bike. It was a good thing I did those cams at 20k (thanks to more online reading), because upon removal of them, found the inner chain tensioner pad was pretty worn, AND one of my cam bearings was actually cracked!

Anyways. so new cams, new pipes, and a new carb on my bike all at once. Little to say my indy could only do so much as far as tuning out of his small garage operation with no dyno to test it on. The bike had a massive flat spot at WOT that only went away if you backed off to 3/4 throttle. He messed around with the main jet but the problem didn't go away. Rode it like that for 5k miles, and fast forward to now and getting the bike tuned up the right way this past week. It was running pretty damn lean, evidenced the bar graph on the screen. No matter what load or RPM range, that thing is in the red for Air/Fuel Ratio. Pretty scary huh? Check it out:

I know Harley's are durable, and their engines can always be rebuilt from the ground up. But given the whack-*** tuning and running conditions this thing had endured for the first quarter of it's life, what are the possibilities of it already having engine damage that will result in a lesser lifespan, like less than 100k on the clock? I have no weird noises coming from the engine, and with how she ran on the way home from the tune, it's like a whole new engine again!
I'm even going to stop running Lucas Oil Treatment in it, as I'm hearing bad things about that stuff too in what it can do to the engine.
I have no X-ray vision, so I'm just curious about some input from experience. This is still my first bike after all :-)

 

From your write up you now have a good tune and bike is running well.

Get on, ride it. If and when something fails sometime in the future, even if a bit prematurely...fix it...get back on it and ride. Pig rich wastes gas, hurts performance, but running way lean hurts stuff like valves....rich just gets stuff dirty. Think positive...maybe the engine got so dirty you got a free compression bump up. Get on it and ride...this time as soon as it runs/sounds odd get it looked at. Keep good oils in it, use good clean gas...get on it and ride.

 

You are over thinking; as my grandma used to say "why borrow trouble". Stop thinking and enjoy the progress you have made in improving the rideability of the bike. Ride the bike, keep up the maintenance and when something breaks or wears out, fix it.

 

Thanks for your feedback guys. I am just over-thinking it, OCD kicking in, haha. Just trying to think far enough in advance of scenarios for when/if I don't have spare money to throw at repairs. Wish I could've owned the bike when it was brand new, but that was impossible. I was still in high school and remotely owning this was just a pipe dream, LOL!

I already follow the school of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", so ya I will just ride it and care for it meticulously like I already have been. Thanks again for the advice.