That pic reminds me of me at times. Rare few times. LOL

Just the right dose,.....

 

Buying new items and having to make modifications to make it work right sux. Maybe it was designed by the MOCO.

 

I hear ya man. I wasn't at all pleased about having to rip it apart, and again, and again again. He he! But I ain't one to give up. Would have been real pissed had this not worked out like it did.

 

I can appreciate your doggedness in wanting to get this unit to work, but when I shell out $100.00 I shouldn't have to do anything to it except to install it. As for being a hydraulic unit, where are the oil feeds to the unit? It's tension is all from a spring, which wasn't adequate in the first place and had to be supplemented with an additional spring in your case. The closest this unit comes to being hydraulic is that it sits in an oil bath.

 

I agree it should have worked after I paid for it. That's what I am paying for. Wasn't pleased, for sure.

There is a check-ball in the tip of the wedge, and the tube does fill with oil for some semblance of hydraulic damping. But without the spring, the wedge travels too far down the tube when riding the bike hard, and had a tendency to bind in my case.

No need for the wedge to be down that far and the added spring seems to have solved that. THEY should have included that spring. This item could not possibly have been tested much before going on sale.

But as you said, I "shouldn't have had to do anything except install it".
Correcto-mundo. It wasn't fair at all. No denying it and I ain't sticking up for Soho. I'm still pretty pissed at them.

 

Maybe you have a problem with reading comprehension, so I'll spell it out ALL the way, you should become a SOHO DEALER, fix THIER problem and make YOUR fortune!! Oh yeah "hehe" I know how you like that!

Ive been running that POS revised stock auto adjuster for 16000 hard miles and not one bit of problem, but then again I dont fix problems that dont exist!

 

Or that you arn't smart enough to notice exist.

I got scars inside my inner primary from chain dragging across it. If it wasn't self adjusting, then what was it doing Einstien?

It's getting late, not gonna play with you all night.

G'nite. Unpleasant dreams.

 

After 35K trouble fee miles with the stock tensioner, I was of the mindset that the SOHOT Tensioner would be an improvement based on their claims and video on site. A spring/hydraulic unit that continuously adjusts to proper tension sounded like a win/win situation.

Put the unit on, and after a bit over 140 miles was becoming concerned that there may be issues as others I trusted were having to attempt a fix and/or "blueprint" this new unit to work properly.

And I did not want to jeapordize the primary since a tensioner failure could result in a very expensive fix. So I pulled the unit and compared it very closely to the stock unit. After opening up the stock unit I found it's wedge was very different from the SOHOT wedge!

Stock unit:



And SOHOT wedge:



It definitely appears the stock wedge has a purpose built additional tensioning unit built in and after looking at the bottom of the shoe, I can see why it's designed that way. And by the way, the SOHOT shoe is an identical copy of the stock one.

What really surprised me after seeing the two wedges side by side, was I noticed a very strange wear pattern on the top and bottom of the SOHOT wedge!

Top:



And bottom:



As I've circled in the above two photos, there was a very small area of the SOHOT wedge that was contacting the shoe and the base. Appears the rear of the SOHOT wedge was actually "cocking" up off the base during operation and not being in full contact. Also, the hole in the piston were it attaches to the base is way oversize allowing the rear of the piston to foul against the base and not be able to swivel vertically.

I recommend anyone using this unit to carefully inspect it after some miles. As for me, I've tossed it in the junk pile and upgraded to the -06A factory unit.

IMO the SOHOT is a great idea, but the design and initial product was a disaster waiting to happen. Hope I'm wrong, but I can't afford the consequences if it fails inside the primary.

 

Baffling me what could have caused the wear on the top. Looks almost like chain wear, but having trouble visualizing how the chain could get near it. Should be only seeing nylon at that point.

I didn't notice that type of wear on mine - but I can't say that I was looking for it either. Maybe I had some there, but I'd like to believe that it would have caught my eye.

Pictures don't lie.

 

When I made the thread regarding my personal experience with the OEM tensioner and the revised offering, you can see where I was introduced to the SOHOT tensioner. I ALMOST jumped the gun and got on the bandwagon by ordering but something kept me from doing so. I went to their website and I was NOT impressed with the video. TO ME it produced way too much slop in the chain obvious by their OWN video presentation.

Going into my primary was no big deal to me if I would have felt the SOHOT offering was going to offer so much more than the revised OEM one, but I never got the warm fuzzy feeling that it would, so I waited to hear from those that did get the SOHOT tensioner.

I'll be the first to admit, I may not be an engineer, but common sense does prevail with me sometimes....LOL.

Guess I'll stare at my crappy OEM compensator for a while too and just enjoy riding my bike................since it's never given me any problems either. Maybe I can find SOMETHING else on my bike to spend my money on since all the OEM stuff is junk.

CLUNK!!! CLUNK!!!!

If yall need me, I'll be out in my shop taking inventory on what I'm going to fix that ain't broke.

Ben, how's that new motor treating you?!?!?! Axtell, eh? Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!!!!!