I took these pics a few weeks ago and am finally getting around to posting them. This is a 2002 fatboy with 30k miles on it. The owner had been starting and running the bike without actually riding it for the last year or two to keep the battery charged. take note this is a bad idea (at least on 2000-2006 bikes) as the oil pump does not build enough pressure to pump the oil onto the cam chain tensioners therefore the tensioners wear even more. If you want to keep your battery charged, get a battery tender. It wills ave you a lot of money in the long run and is much simpler. All you need to do is plug it in.

The forward outer cam bearing is gone!
When the cam chest was pulled out came all this stuff.


There are all the ball bearings from the out front bearing and a bunch of shavings from the actual cam plate. The cam plate. It is toast and a new one is needed.
Here is where the bearing USED TO be


This is the front cam in this pic. The rear tensioner is what went causing this disaster which cannot be seen in this pic


Here what we saw once the gears and cam plate were pulled.


The outer tensioner is worn pretty good too. The oil tank had bits of metal in it as did the oil filter. We are not going to split the cases at this point as we ran a magnet indie the the case and did not find any bits of metal. Lucky, as that will be cause for the entire engine to be torn down and rebuilt.
Kinda blurry, but here is the outer tensioner


We pulled the oil tank and rinsed it out. I never want to pull another oil tank as long as I live.
This is what is left of the inner tensioner that was attached to the cam plate. Nothing! Just a spring!


Here is the damage to the cam plate. See how shredded the plate is where the bearing used to be? This cannot be used again.


So all this stuff you read about cam chain tensioners going bad and what can happen to your engine on a 2000-2006 bike (excepting the 06 Dyna) are real and your engine can really eat crap. We were lucky with this bike with there not being metal in the case, but were it my bike I would split the cases, send the crank out for truing at Dark Horse and do a nice new build regardless.

Drew

 

interesting pics drew

 

It would be interesting to know how much runout there was on the crank on that engine.

 

That crank is shot. He has severe scoring on it and it will eat oil pumps and have oil pressure issues. Look at the scoring at the end of it.

 

Thanks for posting the shots, Drew.
I have a buddy with a 2001 Heritage that starts his to charge it.
I've told him to get a tender, maybe these shots will get him to finally get one.

 

Man, those were some ugly pics Drew. They make a pretty good argument for gear driven cams when you put her back together. If I owned a TC88, it would be the first mod I accomplished.

 

JUst installed the gear drive on my bike 2 months ago, ( thank goodness!) I always knew they were time bombs, but the bearing failure surprises me. I expected oil pump and crankshaft scoring, but why would the bearing self-destruct?

 

Now some will see its very important to check them out sooner rather than later.

 

Always wondered, knew it could self- distruct thanks for the view to hype.

 

Very destructive indeed...sad that a $30 battery tender could've prevented a $1K+ engine overhaul. Thanks for posting.