My OEM have never been lubricated on my 2004 and at +50K.
It's a call out. Think just to make those PM bend over jobs at the dealer look palatable.
Just my opinion. (mine are the SS exterior braded ones but came from the dealer)

 

can the harley live without the tensioner, sure, there are plenty of chain drives that transmit hundreds + hp without tensioners.
to be told, the tensioner is there for one purpose, to dampen vibrations, not to put the chain in total tension. typically you will have harmonics in the 200>2000hz range. if you look at the dynamics of the drive, you must look at: chain size, pitch, sprocket, speed, link thickness, stiffness, oil vis, pin to roller clearance, span and the list goes on. the chain itself acts as a dampner to a degree.
the tensioner is on the unloaded side and if designed/adjusted right, see very little friction. as was mentioned, it reduces noise by removing slap and vibrations.
what happens when your tensioner goes lame, increased noise, vibration and ****** as the chain loads and unloads.
do composites wear, sure but if designed correctly, will out last many other products. if you put a metal shoe on your tensioner, will it live, sure, will it wear, sure, so what is the big deal?? it will sound like a chinaman in a bucket with a spoon.

sorta like the honda sound.

 

The original OEM tensioner has buttrees notches under the tensioner. So as chain wears and stretches, you can adjust it so it has about 5/8- 3/4 play .
That is what it is for. It moves in 1/4 " reductions of over all chain slop.

Side notes. Once the chain links groove into delrin shoe, the roller chain rolls. So the delrin shoe ceases to wear. It will probably last life of chain and sprockets.
Chains wear uneven, so slop varries with lot of wear and with Harley's hunting idle, it makes and odd noise since tension changes and makes compensator tweek back and forth. This hurts nothing.

Replace sprockets, tensioner and chain when tensioner runs out of travel. I have only moved mine once in 50K.

The newer autotensioner does same thing but requires no maintenance.

It has two small but heavy tensioner springs that fool people into thinking it is too tight. You really have to push hard on chain to see travel. And of course whole cover would have to be off. This make it very quiet.

Lot of uneven chain wear can possibly fool it into over tightening. By then, service would require sprockets, chain and tensioner.

The belliville (cup springs) compensator smoothes impluses from v-twin odd slight out of sinc idle and cushions a little . However, it is pretty easy to lock it up or it would not do what it is intended to do.

Harley had to add cush drive rubber bumpers in rear sprocket to protect heavy cruisers with owners who have crotchrocket mentality.

 

Never mind.

 

I can't believe not one person has asked the question: What does your service manual say. That is the easy answer.