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bought a used 2016 Limited, TC103, 9750 miles.
rides SMOOTH as a baby's butt, i mean like scary smooth bike (had a 50k Mile 2009 Street Glide for few months that was lowered too far)
rode it without ear plugs for a few miles, and could hear a metal "slam" in gear, when rolling ON and OFF the throttle, is that the compensator, or the rubber thing in the rear wheel?
How abruptly do you "reverse" throttle input, go from acceleration to coasting, or from coasting to acceleration? All drive-lines accumulate slop (lash) from one end to the other. Automatic transmissions hide the lash, and manual transmissions can seem to magnify it. There is intentional spring loaded lash in the compensator (that is what it is for) but it should not bottom out against a hard stop. The chain must have a little slack because nothing is perfectly round or runs perfectly true, so there are spots in the rotation cycle where the chain will be tight, some places where it will be slack. The slack is more lash. The transmission gears have some looseness between the meshing teeth, if not there would be no room for temperature caused expansion and contraction. The gears are beveled, run on an angle so they run more quietly but under load the gear and the shaft it is on get pushed to one side and the shaft runs against a thrust washer/bearing. When coasting, the load is opposite so the gear and shaft slide against the thrust bearing on the opposite side of the case. That makes more lash and possible noise if the throttle is opened or closed abruptly. We can't hear the noise on your bike so what you are hearing could be normal, or it could be excessive. .Though it is possible, your noise is probably not coming from the cush drive in the rear wheel. That would mean that the rubber cushions are extremely worn or had disintegrated into powder. If it is coming from the compensator you should be getting a loud bang when starting and lots of rattling noise in the primary when running at steady speed. Probably just normal noise and smoothing your throttle inputs shoud quiet it down.
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