Talking cam bearings with our HD wrench, He showed me that now HD parts carry the SE inner RACE cam bearings. for the (96'' motor). Maybe its been in the book for a while, I don't know, just notice it.

Its the same as the Torrington's that most have used for a long time, now SE says there for High lift cams and Racing motors, Details in below in link

http://www.harley-davidson.com/gma/g...bmLocale=en_US

 

Been out for a while. If you look at a closeup of one on the website, you can see that the bearing says Torrington right on it.

 

I just paid $20 for a set. Why dont the motor co just put in the good ones, charge and extra $20 for the bike and one last thing we have to worry about.

 

Haven't really talk cam bearings since I did mine spring of 08.. Several of our HD's only had the INA's back then..

I didn't ask the wrench when they started carrying them, he just said now we got-em...

2 of the 5 HD service Mgrs near home when I did my cams told me back then they've not heard of and haven't use the torrington's, they only used the INA's. Hmmm..

 

Because they can make more money by charging for the bearing and the labor to install it grasshopper.
IMO all the so called SE "upgrades" ( stator, compensator, bearings) should have always been in the motors to improve reliability. But with that being said, I know a guy with an 07 CVO electraglide that had all kinds of problems. Harley kept fixing it under warranty but things kept going bad. Finally, he just had harley fix the motor with S&S parts and covered the extra cost out of his own pocket. The motor has been reliable ever since.

 

Agree 100%,, will say the since the Hyd setup has come out on the 96in's the bearing failure issue is quiet with stockers, haven't heard of any .

Our main HD Wrench said He's only had one in the 96's and that it was a strong build motor over 100hp and the owner rodded the crap out of her.

From what I've read and talked, haven't really seen or heard of any that are just stock or stg1 and bolt-ins thats had a issue.. ??

 

Harley hasn't learned a damn thing in 30 yrs we went through this very same problem back in the late 70's . To cut cost's they put in INA cam bearing and had to R&R most of the 1200 engines because of it , some times just the bearing & cam other the whole lower end went .

The INA bearing has about half the actual load bearing rollers in them in a plastic cage , torrington's don't have the cage they are all bearing in there .

Can you say cheap F*cks .

 

INA and torrington are both good bearing companies. The problem is their engineers calculate and use the least expensive model they can get away with. At the quantities they are using, it's probably a buck a bike.
Your right, it's been thirty years. I'm not sure I would buy a new HD now days. It seems like its one problem after another and they haven't even made the effort to correct the old ones. They are dissing their customers for maximum profits at every angle.

 

I worked for a dealer back then , personal experience . Having been a professional precision mechanic for over 38yrs dealing with machinery weighing many tons and very high speed applications INA is not a bearing that you will see in use nor will be used willingly for anything but light duty non critical app's . Anything to do with a motorcycle drive train falls out of the operating range on those sorry . Engineers blew it period , same as always .

 

More likely the bean counters in management are at fault rather than the engineers.