Sometimes, while reading the Harley-Email-Digest, I ask myself: "What the heck are these people talking about?" or "I wonder what this looks from the inside..." or "What's it gonna take to disassemble this?"And when in the last fall the Cam discussions reached their heights and I got remembered twice a day that my scooter is still running around with this suspectible, sometimes fatal INA inner cam bearing, I decided to take her apart, replace that INA with a Torrington and check out what else might need an overhaul, now that she's got 100.000 km (~62k mls) on the clock. And I had plans for a new outfit too...
Well, I figured there may be more people like me who'd like to see how parts of their bikes look like from the inside, or how things can be taken apart or modified. So I kinda documented the different stages of this project, and it turned out to be a bigger one than I'd thought :-)
I started with ordering a bunch of parts: the Torrington, all the necessary gaskets for the valve train, a polished stainless steel 2in1 Supertrapp, new rear and front fender and a 5 gallon tank. The stock tank and fender are stored in the basement so I can always go back to the stock turqoise / white Heritage design if I want to. This picture shows what she looked like before.
After I'd taken off the exhaust, carb, fender and the gas tank, I started to remove the rocker boxes, pushrods and the lifterblocks including the lifters. Off came the ignition and the nose and I could pull the cam. And then for the first time in my life I saw the infamous INA bearing :-) This is a view from the top with the completely disassembled valvetrain.
And here's the view of the inner cam bearing after I'd taken out the cam. Below the INA is the cam gear and the big shiny whole to the left of the bearing, that's where the breather valve goes.
This picture shows the cam, which I thought was in great shape for all the miles it's been spinning around down there. That's why I decided to put it back in instead of buying a new one. And with the hundreds of different opinions about cams that I've heard on the HeD ;-) I couldn't decide anyway which aftermarket cam I might like or may suit my riding style better than the stock. And, of course a new cam would have cost money :-)
The black thing in the upper left corner is the breather valve.
Now I got myself a generic inner bearing puller, modified it a bit and whacked the INA out of it's home. I've been told this is a pretty tricky step because a needle may fall out of the bearing and into the crankshaft housing, which means complete engine disassembly including splitting the cases to recover that needle. But it went ok with the INA coming out in one piece and with the help of a chunk of wood and a not to small hammer the Torrington smoothly moved in instead. Then I started to put things back together, starting at the bottom working myself up to the top. Btw, the rear rocker box is a bitch to get out as well as back into a softail frame! And here's a close-up of the INA...
Shortly after, I received the new tank and fender. I mounted them to the bike to see if everything fits. The only thing I had to do is raising the speedo a bit so it sits flush with the dash. The new 5gal. tank seems to be a little higher than the stock. Then I brought everything to a friend who's doing the paintjob.
After I'd put the valvetrain back together, the S&S carb received a general overhaul and cleanup. Finished with that, I mounted the Supertrapp, put the battery back in, connected an old Sporty tank that I hung from the ceiling, put in some gas, pushed the starter button and she fired right up :-) I checked the ignition timing and once I was sure that I'd put everything back together correctly, I started to check out other areas. The swingarm and the rear part of the frame looked pretty suspicious, and indeed large areas of paint peeled off, showing rust underneath. So I took out the swingarm and the next weekend I spent removing the rust and repainting everything.
While repainting the rear end of the frame from underneath, I saw that the left shock was covered with oil and I figured that the oil can only come from the seal around the transmission main shaft :-(
So I drained the primary and transmission fluids, drained the oiltank and removed it as well as the starter, took off the primary cover, compensation sprocket, clutch and primary chain and the inner primary housing. And when finally the front pulley came off, my assumption was confirmed, the oil was leaking through the main seal. Below are the 'Before and After' pictures:
While the swingarm was still off, I checked the belt and the rear pulley. Well, they both didn't looked to good anymore, so I decided to replace them too since I had the belt out already. Damn, these two parts are pretty expensive!!
When I received'em a few days later I started to reassemble everything again. Here's a picture after I'd mounted the new belt, the swingarm and the primary.
After that I checked the brakes. I'm running 4 piston PM calipers back and front for a few years already, and my only complaints about'em is, that they don't have any kind of dust seal around the pistons, so this area often needs a good clean-up. The calipers are polished aluminuim, but I couldn't really tell anymore, so I spent a couple of hours polishing them. Of course, the pads were almost gone and unfortunately, the rear brake rotor was worn pretty bad too... So back to the shop buying more parts...
Well, finally I could put the wheels back in and now she's back on her own feet again. I hope I'll get back the tank and fender pretty soon, because spring is just around the corner and I can't wait to go for a ride again. And of course I'll show you what she looks like in her new outfit :-)
