I have a 05 road glide with 23k and feel like its time to check the cam chain tensioners. Can someone barney style how to do this. I am no mechanic by and means, and just dont want to screw anything up. Thanks

 

Best way is to buy a manual for your bike.

 

You will first have to remove your exhaust. Then you have to remove the screws holding on the cam chest cover. The cover can be tough to remove and you may have to persuade it with a dead blow hammer to loosen the seal. Be extra careful of the gasket. Having a new one handy is a plus. Fashion a drip funnel out of tin foil to catch and direct the oil that will drain out into a pan. The front tensioner will be seen easily enough. The rear tensioner will have to be viewed with a dental mirror because it is located behind the cam plate. You can pry them back away from the cam chain to view the contact area. You will note in the second pic the tiny voids. Those are air pockets trapped in the pad when they were made and lead to part of the problem with the pads breaking down. The chain wears into the voids and causes pieces of the pad to break off. Another way to check for pad wear is to cut open your oil filter and look for pieces of the orange pad in the filter media. This could also mean that you may be too late.

 

In my own experience which is limited to only 4 bikes I have torn into, miles on motor ranged from 26k to just under 70k miles on them. Each one showed the colored particles in the filter and the worst wear was of course the higher mileage motor and it still had a lot of materiel left, we approximated 4o% when compard to the new ones we put in. Of course it could also mean they are almost worn out or anywhere in between. Maybe the only way to judge by looking in the filter is to cut every filter ope from when it is new. It is actually a pretty easy job to perform the inspection and looking at each pad is the only rea way you are going to know for sure.

 

Remove front exhaust pipe, remove right foot board, remove cam cover, get a good look at the outside tensioner , pull it away from the chain, then with a small dental mirror, and a good light, look at the inner tensioner.

 

Are you the original owner? If you are, you know they haven't been checked. You should plan on upgrading or replacing them. You would be halfway there when you check them, The previous posters all have good advice on the work involved. I just got done working on a '00 with 35k miles and '03 with 16k miles the '03 tensioner pads were the worst of the two sets, orange flakes in the cam chest.I installed the S.E Plate upgrade in both. Bottom line mileage isn't the only factor.

 

If you're a video kinda guy, here's one that helped me: