Hey all,

Pulled the primary apart this week to see what's going on in there. Had gawdawful clunks/bangs going on during startups, and a lot of driveline slack (accel/decel slack) and I figured it was the infamous compensator causing it. Upon inspection of the unit, I really don't see much wear here. Not like some of the pics of other ones on this forum, and elsewhere. Seems like there's no excess wear.

Is it just the Belleville springs that have lost their mojo? Logic tells me it needs more spring pressure.

The magnet on the oil drain plug had a little wad of metal dust, not too unusual.

This 09 RKC has about 14K miles on it.

Here are some pics.

Can anyone shed some light on what I need to do?
Sure don't see that everything needs to be replaced but what do I know?

 

Looks darn near pristine , hope you can track down the actual problem then reuse those parts. No issues with my 09 King, the primary cover has never been off. I have always been a fan off repair rather than replace if feasible. Please post what the fix was if you go that route.
Mike

 

Based on the pictures, it doesn't look too bad. The SE compensator is a better unit. If you have the cash and now that it's apart, you may want to install one.

https://www.surdyke.com/PartsMain.as...TL/TOURING,OLD

 

How's your battery? Not kidding. Some of that banging on start can be from a weak battery. Taking up slack on acceleration is pretty common, I think.

 

To be honest , when I had my compensator done last fall , I asked for it back so I could inspect it . The thing looked just as good as yours , but always made a lot of racket , start up , off/on throttle ect . I had a se comp put in , couldn't believe the difference , made a huge difference , which explains why HD changed to the se comp in 13 .

 

That's not bad at all. However here in Canada, my price for everything (incl gaskets, etc) is over $700.

 

Wondered about that. Battery is fairly old, but seems to crank just fine. However, the slack is very annoying and not the safest thing navigating turns and changing speed in traffic. I've ridden some buddies' bikes of the same vintage without the slack (or having far less) and it's soooo much nicer.

 

Really makes me wonder. I mean it's not worn out! I see where there's been lack of oil in the bushing area however, it's not galled up and still moves freely.

Just realized this afternoon that I should actually RTFM and see if there's a stacked height spec for the Belleville washers. Seems to me that they have to be the main culprit if the compensator ramps don't show excessive wear.

Of course, springs do wear out even if they look good.

I will have to search out the forum to see if anyone has posted spring height measurements for these things and compare my own.
Maybe I could just shim it like you do in a cylinder head for valve springs if the seat pressure isn't up to spec.

Thanks for everyone's insight.

D

 

Primary chain tension OK?

 

When the Moco "updated" the compensator in 2006, it was very problematic and started a series of "updates" trying to solve poor compensator performance. Most of the problems were from the basic design and the weak spring packs... your year falls in the problematic OEM compensator years...

If the rest of the drive line checks out OK, it's probably that you have a worn out spring pack in your comp, yes, even at 14K miles..... you're not alone... new comp time....

FYI.....

Harley switched to a new style compensator in 2006, first in the Dyna bikes. It was part #40296-06. It was different from the shovel head/ EVO / early TC 88 compensators. It had many problems. The Shovel head/ EVO / early TC 88 compensators were pretty much trouble-free in comparison.

They upgraded the 2006 compensator by 2007. The part was now #40296-06A. This was the first redesign of the problematic compensators. There were many reports of compensator problems and failures with this one too........

They changed the OEM compensator, in 2011. It was now part #83935-09A. This was previously called the Screamin’ Eagle compensator that was available through the HD parts catalog as an upgrade, prior to 2011. It was much better than its predecessor, because it had a much bigger spring pack to handle the bigger power of the 96" and up engines.. but still had reported issues and failures, mostly due to poor internal oiling of the compensator..

The MoCo upgraded the compensator again, in 2014. It was redesigned and changed to part #42200064A. It became OEM issue on the '14+ bikes. This is the compensator that uses a deflector, to direct oil into the splines of the compensator. This version has the bigger spring pack, that handles several times the power of the previous compensator spring packs, and gets better oiling to the inner workings of the compensator to handle the the wear issues. This version has proven to be the most reliable of the compensators, since they “upgraded” from the shovel head / EVO / TC 88 style compensator in 2006…

The 2014+ bikes have the defector built-in to the primary cover. If you want to add the newest compensator to an '07-'13 bike, you will need to glue the included deflector into the inside of your OEM primary cover, or buy a '14+ primary cover (at a cost of about $200).

If you want to replace the compensator in an '07-'10 bike, you will also need to replace the rotor, as the older rotors are not compatible with the newer compensators...


Here is Doc Harley's explanation... in my opinion, he really sugar coats the issue and makes it seem like HD handled the issues quickly...

Yeah right, it took them 7 years to get it right...!! Doc Harley even says, "The engineers said we have a good design here but it's not lasting?" Really... good designs don't wear out fast..

Oh well, he works for HD.. he's gotta make them look like the heros in this fiasco... at least he covers the progression and issues acurately..