I'll try to be as specific as I can since nobody can actually hear what my motor sounds like.


I have a 95 dyna super glide. 2 months ago while riding at about 35 mph one of my lifters rollers locked up and scored my cam. We tore it apart and replaced the bearring with a torrington bearring, installed an andrews ev3 cam and feuling hp+ lifters. My bike already had adjustable push rods. We reused the old cam gear, put it back together and fired it up. When the motor is running there is a "whistling" noise coming from the gear case assembly...my buddy described it as sounding kind of like a super charger if that helps a little.


Now I know before the lifter froze that noise was there but not nearly as loud. Aside from the noise the motor runs great, I put 500 miles on it, varied my rpms and don't seem to have any issues. Changed the oil, ripped apart the oil filter and everything looks good.


My question is...is this normal with aftermarket parts? Did I get a bad part? I'm not a mechanic and my buddy isnt a harley mechanic so we're kind of stumped. I held off stopping by a dealer just to see if after the break in process and an oil change the noise would get quieter but it didn't.

 

Stop riding it now! It's a sure sign that you have not matched up the gears and that your running them way way too tight. There is a proper process you need to follow when installing cams to make sure that the gear wheel matches size with the othe gears it interfaces with. Read the manual as its covered in there.

 

Like I had posted before, we reused the old cam gear from the cam that was in it. The previous owner had an ev3 cam installed so I replaced it with the same. Before we reused the old cam gear we tried the one that came with the cam and that was too tight, bought the smallest pinion gear and tried that which still had that same noise and then went to the original cam gear and pinion gear. Still have the same sound

 

Did the lifter explosion damage the crank pinion? If that was damaged in any way it could make that noise.

 

I wouldn't think it'd be considered an explosion when the lifter locked up. From what we could tell the roller stopped spinning causing it to score the cam and make a banging sound inside the motor. With it froze I could still start the bike if that helps clarify

 

Okay... So that rules out the common cam gear cause of that noise. Could a bit have broken off the lifter and gotten into the oil pump?

 

Sorry if this is a dumb question but what's a good way to check that? The only piece that might of come off would be from inside the roller...is needle bearring the name of it? The cam wasn't severely scored but we decided it was still better to replace it anyway

 

**could*** be the outer bearing is also trashed, on the cone.

 

You mentioned that the noise was present ( but quiet) before the cam change. How does the old bearing look? Is there evidence of significant wear? Could it be a cam shaft/ bearing alignment issue?

 

I stopped at my local Harley dealer and asked them to listen to it. They do think the cam and pinion gears are too tight. My ignorance has me in trouble now since I need my bike for next weekend and I dont think its going to be ready by then. Hopefully nothing else was damaged in the process...fingers crossed.

Thanks for the responses...I'll post my outcome