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Yeeowww! TFI and roller chain conversion w/AP N21 cams!

Hey ,TQ, awesome slide show. Just wondering what you have for milage on the bike? It's kind of making me nervous looking at the wear on that tensioner. My 03' has 21000 miles on it, what do you think should I do the conversion.

I feel your pain. Just got rid of mine!! :)

Unfortunately, there is poor predictability on the spring loaded tensioners' life span. Some reports of tensioner pads going to pieces with less than 20K on the engines, where as some report bike with 6 figures on the clocks still running original tensioners. I think the latter folks also spin the cylinders with one round in and pull the trigger!

I bought my '03 with around 43.5K on it. The outside tensioner nuked into pieces around 48K. I was lucky, and there was no significant damage. I can not find in all the maintenance info I got on the bike that the tensioners were replaced in the past, so the outside probably had that 48K miles to failure. The inside did not fail (yet), but you see the condition from the pix I included. Bike had about 72.6K on it when I did the conversion project.

I would suggest that you pull the nose cone and take a peek. If you are not going to actually gut the cam chest, you don't need to take off the front header pipe, and might be able to leave the floorboard on too. Just cut down an allen wrench so you can slip it behind the pipe and turn the fasteners. On the way back ON, you will have to guess-timate the torque based on "feels like". Spec is 90-120 in-lbs.

The outside tensioner is no big deal to swap out. Checking the inside one is a bit tricky, but if you get a cheap dental mirror that you squeeze in above the plate AND get some light back there you may be able to get a sense of it. If it looks bad, changing it is more involved. At that point I would say conversion project!

I went with the roller chain conversion because I did not like worrying about run-out on the pinion shaft. The gear drives will be far less tolerant of that. Plus, there are so many combinations of gears that one would have to get to deal with the lash specs that buying all ahead of time would be expensive (especially if you couldn't return them!). So the only economically practical way to do it would be to install, measure and then go get (or order) the appropriate gear(s). Potentially too long out of service for my liking. Roller chain conversion for me!! Straight forward - strip it, install it, back it out! About a day or so (if your not taking pix!!).

TQ
 
TQ, I looked at the pictures of the conversion that you just accomplished and I just wanted to say that that was very much appreciated by me. I too, have an '03 Ultra and you did forwarn me in the past about what could happen if left unchecked. If I ever have to do that conversion you can be sure that I will refer to your well done slide presentation. Again, thanks for taking the time and effort for doing that for us.
 
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