Background: I'm the second owner of my 2000 FXDX. I bought it about three years ago from the widow of the original owner. It was bone stock, with the exception of the engine. When it was about two years old, the original owner had work done by Andy Simon, a drag racer who used to have a very well respected engine shop outside of Philly. I have most of the paperwork from then... 95"; Wiseco 10.5:1 pistons/barrels; "Stage Two" headwork; Andrews TW60 cams; SE selectable ignition; etc. The dyno sheet shows it to have been what I would consider a pretty strong 95" street build.

I was aware of some pinging when I first got it, and took a degree of advance out. I was also aware of a little puff of oil smoke here and there, but the bike has always run well, and I've ridden it a lot. Two years ago I had to take out another degree of advance. Late last year burning oil became pretty evident, both on startup and under acceleration. And I had to take a third degree of advance out to eliminate pinging.

Earlier this year I put a plan together (after toying with the idea of an S&S 124 crate motor, with lots of useful input from the forum). I tracked down Andy Simon at his new home in North Carolina and talked everything through with him.

The plan:

I would send Andy my heads and barrels. He would fit fresh S&S pistons, and perform a full refresh of the heads. Since I don't believe my tensioners have ever been done, I decided I would tend to the cam chest while the other parts were out. With Andy's input, I decided to use the S&S forged cam plate and a set of 585 cams.

My progress is slow, as earning money seems to take a lot more time than spending money. I'm not usually home before 9, and sometimes after 10. Sometimes I work 5 days, but often 6. It's also been a very long time since I've done any of this particular stuff... In the late '80s I worked part time in an independent custom bike shop, but I mostly worked on ironhead and shovelhead engines back then. Over the years I've tinkered/fixed/modified lots of stuff on bikes, as well as cars (I was an avid time-trialer for awhile), but I haven't been inside a Harley engine myself since about 1989 (although I've done stuff everywhere else). So I'm working slowly and carefully.

I've been reading everything in the factory manual, watching videos, and asking you guys lots of questions (and there will be more). But I feel pretty good about it, and it's extremely enjoyable work so far...

Here were the results of the original build:



My first order of business was a J&S lift (and to clean/organize a work space in my garage that was free of clutter). About fifteen minutes after I found the lift on my front porch, I was ready to start!

 

On the first night, I removed the rocker boxes, heads, barrels, and lifters. Since I'm naturally pretty disorganized, I was careful to label everything and put things on lots of clearly marked zip lock bags. And again, I read everything in the manual and watched some videos...

Little bungie cords made pushrod access easy (they're adjustable)...



AS I suspected, the heads and pistons were pretty gunky...





Here's how I left it at the end dof the first night, but with a plastic garbage bag carefully taped over the whole engine.

 

A couple of days later, I brought the rocker boxes, pushrod tubes, and lifter blocks to the powder coater, and boxed everything up to send to North Carolina.



It's hard to see in pictures, but the barrels really didn't look bad... No real scloring, and nice cross hatching.



The original porting work still looked nice too...

 

A couple of nights ago I removed the old pistons from the rods. I used one of the factory-style tools to remove the wrist pin clips, but I don't think I'll use it for installation. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the carefully-placed-finger-and-tiny-screwdriver method is probably easier...



However, this inexpensive piece from Motion Pro was handy for removing the pins.



I left it with plastic gorilla-taped onto the rods in such a way that I can rotate the engine without exposing a hole... I can always manage to drop something into the most inconvenient place, so I'm trying to be cautious...



It's also very important to stay refreshed (but not too refreshed)!



Apparently my heads/barrels/pistons are now on the way back from North Carolina, although I'm still waiting for powdercoating. And the cam plate was back ordered, although it's now shipped...

I'm shooting to be able to start it by my birthday, June 6th. D-Day!

But we'll see, as my time keeps becoming unavailable...

 

Gtb?

.
.

 

I like the direction this thread is going

Good looking bike and I like your garage, wish I had done that to my floor

 

Great thread. What car is that in the first picture in the garage?

 

gts...

 

That floor was one of the best things I've done... I bought my house about six years ago, and the slab in the garage had just been poured. It was kind of a pain in the ***, but I knew it was the time to do it. Basically nothing had been on that floor yet... It took several days, but it's help up really well. You can park a leaky car on it for a long time, and when you move it, everything wipes up with paper towels... Very handy with a British bike, a Harley, and an Italian car...

 

That was a pretty strong 95". Should be even better freshened up.