Twin Cam Gear Drive Conversion Explanation

Hey everybody, Mike Roen in Fix My Hog. We're going to give you a little brief overview here on the gear drive versus the OEM spring loaded tensioners. So we're talking '99 to 2006 twin cam. Now really a, you know, the twin cam motor. It's a actually pretty good motor, but the weak link is of course these tensioners and, you know it's all over the internet.

We've got a, you know, a video on replacing the tensioners and going to a high Harley's hydraulic setup. In '07, they all went to the hydraulic setup. It's a little better, lasts a lot longer. You know, it doesn't wear out. But thing with gear drive is it's pretty bulletproof.

First thing you do when you take the cams out of the bike, you put an indicator on the crank shaft and check the run-out. Cause if you have too excessive run-out you probably don't want to do gear drive. Then your next option would be going to the hydraulic conversion. So, but a gear drive is the way to go if you can do it and afford it. And really, if you're going to do gear drive, you know what we look at is the inner cam bearing.

You know, it goes here on the inner cam bearing it's in the case here. And we always update, update that to a Torrington Cam Bearing. These are actually out of '07, later you can see it's a lot larger, kind of helps just for the video. This is the stock one, you can see it's got a cage in there. This Torrington bearing has no cage.

So there's no real failure rate on these. These, we see them deteriorate around 50,000 miles and when that deteriorates it really in turns, end up wrecking obviously the end of the cam shaft, you can see the hardfaces all gone here. And then what it does is it walks way into the crank case and destroys that. And then you're going to spend a whole lot of money. So which you want to do 30,000 miles Harley saying do an inspection on your tensioners.

Here, we got a little comparison. Here's a tensioner that's not too worn. Here's one that's severely worn. Obviously you want to catch it before it comes to this cause you don't want to run a ton of debris through your motor or your oil pump or your lower rods. So you're going to eliminate that set up.

You can either go hydraulic or gear drive. You're going to update the inner cam bearings. You're going to take the oil pump out, replace that pickup and realign the oil pump. And more importantly you're going to put four new lifters in your motorcycle. Cause here's a term you're going to get used to seeing if you've got a new Harley and you're looking in your manual.

You take the, let's say you take the lifters out of your bike and you can get a closeup of this cause you can see it. I don't know if you know what hardfacing is but it's a process of how they make the metal real hard. You can see right there that it appears the hardfacing is coming off the lifter. Now what Harley calls that is frosting. And I'm telling you if, if your lifters are frosting that means the hardfacing is coming off.

So eventually it's going to deteriorate to where your lifter looks like this and the roller shot. And now you've got a debris running on through your motor. So really a nice little upgrade. It doesn't matter what your, your Harley is. Put some good quality lifters in it.

And I'll give you a little shot of the hardface coming off, a stock cam, and that's bad as well. So the hard facing typically on a aftermarket gear drive cam is very durable. I mean, we've been put them in for about 15 years. Never had a failure problem. Anyway, get online, check it out.

Nice little upgrade for your motor.