My bike,05 road king,has 25000 miles on and am thinking I should be checking my tensioners. I was thinking about going gear drive but am concerned that I might have whine because of runout,although I havent checked it yet but that is just my luck, I have seen the Andrews conversion and I like the idea of a bigger oil pump and no more bearings to grenade, My question is does anyone have some miles on these tensioners so I will know if they are going to last longer than the stock ones. I dont mind spending the extra money to convert if I know it is going to last. I did a search and did not come up with much regarding if they were lasting longer, Thanks, Todd

 

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That is stock spring loaded tensioners you are talking about,I am talking about thenew style that they put on the 06 dynas and all the newer bikes. I realize if your crank is good, gear is probably the way to go but if it is not is the new sysytem better than the old spring loaded tensioners

 

you can hardly hear my gear drive. i barely can and no one has came up to me asked me about a whine. i have over 10K miles on mine. i looked into changing to the newer style tensioners and the cost is more than the gear drive. im using andrews 21Gs as close to stock that is available. i ran S&S 510Gs for about a year but could never get it to run perfect even with PCIII. now i don't need the PCIII at all.

 

well, I was right ,I have excessive runout,I took my cam cover off last night to take a look at my tensioners, they were not all that bad except for some pitting, I decided to take the gear and chain off and check my runout as to see if it would make my decision easier between gear drive and the new andrews roller chain conversion, and my runout was .005 so I guess if I am going to change it I will have to go with the roller conversionn kit.

 

I wouldn't do gears with .005 either. Some say that after the first set wear out they have polished the chain and the second set wear longer. Putting in new tensioners would be the cheapest plan.