I have decided to do my cam tensioners now instead of waiting any longer. I have 20,000 on my bike. I know i can wait a bit but i think its better to do it sooner than later . From what i heard once they start to deteriorate little pieces of that crap gets into your motor. They will have to be done sooner or later so I am going to have it done.I am going to go with the scremin eagle upgrade kit with which includes a new heavy duty oil pump also the plate I am also going to do lifters while its apart, . I have a top notch Harley tech doing it same guy who built my motor going to run me $1200.00 with parts and labor parts are going to be about 800 dollars 400 for labor. any one know if this is a decent price

 

Planning the same thing for mine this winter, 43k miles and original tensioners. Had my cams done at 23k, and tech said the tensioners looked brand new, no need to change. I know I'll have to do it eventually, so this winner is it. From what I've read one here, the new cam plate is about $350 without install. Planning on doing the install myself to save some coin for all the other winter mods!

 

I switched to gear drive cams on my Heritage at 38K and have never looked back. I haven't decided whether I will do the HD upgrade or switch to gear drives on my Softail Standard when the time comes.

 

Good video for opening the cam chest!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5Kva...eature=related

 

If your bike is an 08 it has the roller chain and hydraulic tensioners. Unless your into the rev limiter all the time yours will go 100K. You can not judge it by the older ones with the link chain. They never stop wearing. The roller ones groove it till they roll and then that is deep as they go.

 

that sounds expensive, i bought my complete SE upgrade kit from st pauls HD for around $360, a spacer kit is required to, which isnt too expensive, the labour cost of $400 is about right, my indy said around a 5 hour job!
buy tour own kit and take it to your indy and total job should cost you around $800

 

If you are reuseing the perfect fit pushrods then yes the labor is correct. He isn't too far off on the parts either as we know there is profit built in the price on the parts. I know any work I do I mark up the parts. The biggest thing is that you trust him and thats worth something, you could have it done cheaper but we all know how that turns out most of the time

 

Look in classifieds there is a upgrade kit for sale may save you some money while you are at it change cams

 

I just did mine at 60k. The hydraulic SE upgrade kit from HD is $495. If you didn't change your inner bearings to the torrington bearings, you should. Don't know if that is in your price or not. HD lifters are $130. You can probably buy this stuff online (although HD is trying to crack down on this) for less money. I don't know why you would do lifters unless you are doing cams. If one is worn, then the other is worn. You also have to buy the spacer kit and the flange bolt kit, plus gaskets.

Changing with adjustable push rods - 4 hours labor.

Changing with original push rods - 6 hours labor.

Whatever the difference in the cost of the adjustable push rods vs. 2 hours of labor is the deal but nothing in your rocker box gets inspected.

If you are changing support plates and lifters, then you will be doing everything you would do to put in new cams and bearings. If I was going to spend $1100 because I thought my bike "needed it" then I would add the extra $350-$400 for a cam and set of inner bearings because my bike would "need" those also.

If you're hot rodding your bike then you might as well do the whole thing, cam and all. If you aren't, then at 20k I would just replace the original cam tensioners with another set just like them assuming that everything else passed inspection. Each new set of tensioners lasts at little longer, I have heard, because the chain gets polished. The hydraulic tensioners wear also, but I don't know if they are more durable than a set of geared cams. Many change to geared cams but they don't last because they didn't check the runout on their crank and they heard it was a good idea to go to geared cams. Your runout has to be less than 0.003" to use them. I have heard, but have not verified, that the newer "design" pressed cranks have more runout than the older welded ones. I didn't bother to check mine since I was going with bolt ins.

I think, if you like your bike and the newer bikes don't catch your fancy enough to open your wallet, that getting 100k out of the original engine with normal maintenance (including staying with the tensioners as original) and then replacing the entire engine while doing things like new swing arm bushings, neck bearings, shocks, etc. is the way to go. In my case my inner cam bearing journal was pitted in one spot and the lobes were discolored for no other reason than heat, apparently, due to the higher temps that these engines run thanks to the EPA. So I did the SE upgrade and then next effort will be an engine rebuild (with a 95 kit) and the oil pump replaced again, but I will have the hydraulic support plate in place already. If my cam wasn't bad, I would have had S&S build my engine the way that I wanted it and just replace the whole shebang at 100k.

The counter balancer chain guides are your next worry... it never ends.

C#

 

If you are going to bother to have this done do the new hydraulic cam plate and you might as well do cams. You'll get some extra oomph for it. I'd read a few tutorials, either buy or borrow the special tools and do it myself for less than $1200. If i was doing that I'd do a big bore too as you are halfway there with the tank off and the Rocker boxes pulled if you are reusing the pushrods. But then again tat is just me.

That is the thing that gets me about the labor charge on all of these jobs. If you do it yourself you can do twice as much work to the bike for less money. I have been blessed by having friends that have taught me how to do all this stuff.

However, if you don't want to hassle with it which is quite understandable, I would find out if the $1200 included new push rods or reusing the old ones to figure out if it is worth while to do a big bore. I would most definitely do new cams as once the cam plate is out it is very simple to put new cams in. New cams will breathe some new life into that motor. You will think your bike is fine until you get some new cams in it. that is the only possible negative as once you feel the added oomph from the cams you might want to do more and if you don't want to spend too much it could be a trap. LOL.

Drew