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Two things right off , just dealt with these exact same issues on a 79 , busted badly welded inner primary.
That Cal products inner is going to be a problem, they were rough as a cobb, poor machining and you had to get **** on every little aspect of installing and alignment issues. It will work but you have to play with it and the larger sealing surfaces had a tendency not to be flat or square, sometimes the gouging from poor machining loved to leak.
Next is toss that tin tranny mount plate and get one the old heavy two pc welded together ones, bet you hard money you find the frame mount point are off and not level. Got clip of what I found and had to do with the 79 to get it all correct. Motor fully assembled the front mount check with gauges showed good, after we tore the bike down for work later and bolted the bare cases in now there's a .019" gap, same with the trans plate, solid one rocks bad, one of the two posts off the rear needs shortening or the other shimmed, haven't decided which yet till the motor gets leveled, the primary and the gutted trans case sit in place and all bolted together I see how it all sits. Then I'll deal with making the trans mounts right.
This is a real problem with the later transition years bikes 78 to 83 or so. You don't get , it'll just break **** again. Do as you see fit but I've run across this often enough I look at machine comes through with a bad inner primary. Yet to have one that didn't it the work.
I have been looking an the Cal inner, where the outer primary mounts, large surface checked flat on the surface plate. It sits flat on the engine and the machining on gasket surfaces is as good as the Harley inner. The tin plate for the transmission rocks .010" on the low corner. I will look into an earlier transmission plate. I will check to see how the engine sits in the frame. I was going to take it apart and reseal the cases but it has 120 psi compression so I will pull the cover off from the cam chest and check things out. If the cam and lifters and other parts look good, back together and run it.
Next is toss that tin tranny mount plate and get one the old heavy two pc welded together ones.
Do I need to use a factory 2 piece transmission mount or are the aftermarket OK ? There seem to be a couple of different ones for different years.
I bolted the inner primary to the engine and used a precision square on the front transmission mount and the inner, it is dead nuts on. On the primary that I have all machined are very good with the fingernail test. So far looking good.
I have a OEM transmission plate coming from a '66 shovel head. It appears to have been blancher ground by the machine marks in the surface. Will see how this fits in the frame when it gets here.
Got the early transmission mount today and it has the same amount of rock as the original.I will probably shim the low one because I do not have a good way to shorten the other rear post square.I also compared all dimensions to the OEM inner and they are all within .002". I won't shim at the front mount because it it is at a perfect 90 degree to the inner primary. I will need to cut off the angled rear section of the early mount to fit my application. Wish I had a band saw.
Pulled the cam cover to check things out. The bore for the breather is great, if one looks real close the cam is just starting to show just a little bit of pitting and the rollers on the lifters are tight and smooth. The bad part is that the run out on the end of the pinion gear shaft. is .024" and is way out of spec. The bushing in the cam cover looks good but I am thinking the crank needs to be trued up at least. The push rod on the rear intake was just shy of coming out when shortened all the way and I got it apart when I pulled the cam cover. So I need to check that out, so it looks like I will be pulling the engine.
Where did you read the spec on pinion shaft runout? The factory manual I have for 1978 1/2 to 1984 lists no such spec or at least I cannot find it in the book. As to your rear intake pushrod, mine is the same way and my engine had never been apart.
Last edited by 84 Shovel; Mar 28, 2026 at 09:18 PM.
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