LOL speed limit sign in Texas.
Just a few things I’ve learned about the 06 and earlier Twin Cam tensioners that you may already be aware of.
When the plastic tensioner shoe wears through to the metal backing plate what’s remaining of the shoe will fragment apart, the chunks can lodge in the oil pump and passages which starves the engine of oil causing serious engine damage.
The more difficult to inspect inner tensioner shoe wears through around 25% sooner than the outer one.
How long (miles) until the inner shoe is worn thin enough to start breaking varies quite a bit, seemingly as soon as 25,000 miles to as long as 50 or even 70,000 miles. It varies this much for a couple reasons. One is the smoothness of the cam chains vary from batch to batch depending on the wear of the stamping dies. Another is the amount of air voids in the plastic material forming the shoe. If you look at Pingu’s photo of the worn shoe you’ll see the micro bubbles that remained in the plastic from the injection moulding. My understanding is the shoe moulding procedure and material was changed some years back to eliminate the micro voids.
Retro fitting Harley’s hydraulic tensioner upgrade which includes a higher flow oil pump may be the best option long term. However simply replacing the worn spring tensioner shoes with the latest ones made with better plastic is an upgrade. Also while wearing out the original shoes the chain will have been polished smoother, so once replaced they should be good for a long time. Maybe check them again after another 50K.
Pingu's looks like a spring failure?. I think all TC engines including car's need to have the pads changed on tensioner's, its a bit like cam belts on my 944 or indeed a Ducati, not as often as belts but they should still be considered a service, item all be it long intervals / milage.
My 110 TC is a late 09 model with the hydraulic lifters, better than the springs I think, but still needing pad maintenance at say 30 k miles.
When I change my oil in spring I'll put in the full synth expensive SE stuff from Harley, only to try and improve lubrication and pad life through the lifters. Maybe a waste of money and perhaps ordinary 20/50 multi would cut it but synth may help long term. Bikes only got 2.5 k miles so ordinarily I wouldn't use synthetic yet.
It's never going to do massive miles anyway.
