Harley Twin Cam Oil Pressure Relief Valve

Hey everybody, it's Mike Roen with Fix My Hog. We've got another great tech tip for you here. If you have a '99 to 2016 twin cam, here's something that gets overlooked. Now, let's say you got the cams out of the motorcycle and you got the cam plate off the bike. A lot of people don't know this but there's a pressure relief valve here in the cam cavity. And really, if it's a high mileage bike or you've had some sort of catastrophic failure, typically a lifter will deteriorate and start running debris through the engine. It's possible that some debris could get lodged where this piston for the pressure valve is. So what we do is typically we take this roll pin out, there's a spring and a plunger in there. We take them out. We thoroughly clean it up. We make sure that plunger moves freely. Put it all back together. Boom. You're gonna have oil pressure. So let's go ahead and do that. Now there's a couple of different ways you can do it. You can make your own little tool to hold that spring down or you can buy a tool. Works pretty good. Basically. I've got a eighth inch punch here and it's actually a roll pin punch. It's got a little nipple sticking out of it that helps center it on that roll pin. This is the tool we're going to use to depress the spring and drive that roll pin out. I've got the plate on a two-by-four piece of wood here and then just depress the spring. Take your punch Give it a tap. Okay, now hang on to your little tool cause, if you let it go that spring could go shooting outta there. And that's why you got the tool. So here's your spring. There is some companies that make higher pressure ones, aftermarket companies, typically, whatever you're comfortable with stock spring's okay. Cut that out. Now you take your magnet, stick it in this valley here, and there's your little plunger. So what you're looking for now is of course if there's any galling or debris in there, that's gonna make that thing not float freely. That's usually, typically what happens is any aluminum or metal or whatever gets in there, it starts galling it. We've had cam plates that we've had to just replace because we couldn't extract this plunger outta there. That means there's a lot of debris in there. So for the money at that point, you just put it in. But if you're just doing routine maintenance or whatever, it's always a good thing to check this. Now what you would do is thoroughly clean this all up, put a little lube on your plunger and reassemble it. This is just a core cam plate we're using for the video. So it's kinda irrelevant but here's what you do. You get your magnet. Put it back in the shaft here and make sure that it floats freely, which I can tell it's just fine. There's no hang ups or nothing. You go ahead and push that down in there. You take your spring. Doesn't matter which way it goes either way. And then you take your tool to, actually what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this roll pin and start it a little bit cause it's kinda hard to hold everything in place. You don't wanna to put it in too far. And now I gotta make sure this lines up with that hole. You could take a marker and mark on it but I know there's letters on here that align this one. So I'm gonna push it in, Just about til that roll pin is flush, release it with your tool and I'm gonna push it in a little further A little too far, we're gonna go back. There. That's not on a machine surface there when it's in the bike but okay. Roll pin's in. You probably just saved yourself some big disaster there. It's another tech tip from Fix My Hog. Thanks for viewing in.