Just wanted to give a shout out to the collective forum membership for the info I was able to gather that helped me with this winter project. I learned a ton by searching and studying posts from many folks, and would never have considered attempting this without that very helpful information.

Installed the new cams, bearings, and adjustable pushrods in my Road King a couple of weeks back. Purchased all from Fuel Moto, and Jamie provided a new baseline Power Vision map as well. Had an exhaust leak on the front jug after putting everything back together, so took exhaust back off, took out the James exhaust gaskets that came with the install kit, and replaced with stock H-D gaskets. So far, so good. I think, after a couple of test rides, and re-torqueing of the exhaust studs after each, that all is well on that front. Now I just need to get a window of warmer weather to do some Autotune runs to dial-in the map for my bike.

Still can't say how much I've gained in 'seat-of-the-pants' performance, but it definitely ramps up more quickly and each gear seems to provide a wider / longer power band.

A couple of lessons I learned during the install:
1) Don't pull the cam support plate before hooking-in the home-made (binder clip) lifter retainers. Oops. But on that note, holy cow that is a great shade-tree mechanic trick. Worked like a charm - straight off the J&P Cycles YouTube video!
2) Getting the timing marks on the cams and timing chain lined-up was not as precarious as I had thought.
3) Having the right tool to pull/press the cam bearings alleviated a lot of concern with that process (although there's no way I could do it in 15 min like some on this forum have asserted). ;-)
4) Getting the first pushrod threaded-in and then adjusted took way more time than expected. Once I figured-out what I was doing wrong with threading the top into the bottom to start, doing the other 3 was much quicker.
5) What a GREAT feeling starting the bike for the first time and not hearing various parts crunching together!
6) Not a new lesson, but man oh man it is a tedious process taking off and installing the exhaust on these baggers. Last time was slow, this time was slow - expect it'll always be way too time consuming.

I still have this nagging urge to go back and double-check the pushrod adjustment now that I've done a couple test rides, but that's probably just being way cautious.

Anyway - thanks again to all who have shared their knowledge / experiences on this forum. Cheers~

 

Just did the same job this past Saturday. Reading the many posts here on the forums and watching the JP Cycles YouTube were extremely valuable. The video was 50something minutes in length, so I figured I could do it in a couple hours. I was mistaken. Probably had five hours in it and that was with no beer time in between.

 

Removing exhaust is the worst part about it IMO.. I now have a clutch cable that is stretched and needs to be replaced after I installed my bars. I dread removing the exhaust to fix it.. It's close enough now that it works but way too much play in the lever. Going to have to be done though.

 

About to do this myself, but sticking with stock pushrods. If you were to do it again, what would you do differently?

 

Nice to hear all went well and ya are happy with the results! Ride!!

 

After having worked around the frame to pull the top end off a TC88 to get to the push rods, and now having installed adjustable push rods doing the cams on my 103......

I wouldn't fight the stock push rods again.

Got A LOT of good info from your posts. Thanks for sharing!

 

Which/who's bearing tool did you use?

 

I'd like to know as well.

 

Having done the adjustables and have taken the rockers off...definitely adjustables. Much easier and allows fine adjustment of preload in lifter bucket.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

Try this link. I bought mine on ebay about 5 months ago. It Looks like the price is up, but its a well made tool.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HARLEY-TC-IN...df3fd6&vxp=mtr