I had a knocking / clatter noise in my 2009 Street Glide that kicked in around 2000 rpm up to 3000 rpm. I finally traced it down to a loose breather bolt holding the air cleaner onto the motor. the vibration set off the noise in a narrow rpm range. Just a thought that might help someone out - it may be something simple. Also, mechanics stethoscopes are cheap (around $15) and really help determine where suspicious noises are coming from.

 

Do you hear the noise at idle? I'm having the same problem and cant find the culprit. No noise at idle or accelerating just at cruise.
Milan

 

Okay boys and girls I might have figured it out and if this it I'm going freakin off on something. Last night I figured I'm going to pull the heads and get after it but I had an oil leak somewhere around the oil pump every since I put the heaver spring in. So for Sh*ts and giggles I put the stock spring back in just to see if for some strange reason it was causing the leak. Well it did stop leaking down to a weep and the top end wasn't near as noisy at all. I have a oil guage on it that came with the bike and I think its been reading way high this whole time. The logic is if the pumps weak to start with, putting a heavier reg spring probably lowered the oil flow even thus causing the lifter to sound like it had a starvation problem (which it would). Gotta find a new guage to check it with but if thats it....

 

The oil goes through the lifters before it gets to the oil pressure regulating ball/spring…Even if the ball does not unseat, the lifters will get oil. When there is enough pressure to unseat the ball, it allows oil to the bottom end of the engine.