Twin Cam Upgrade
At somewhere around 33,000 miles, Fred Reed’s ’00 Heritage suffered an inner cam bearing failure. He loaded it in a pickup truck and dropped it off at a local dealership, and Harley-Davidson took care of the repairs. However, the dealership cut a few corners, saved a few minutes, and somehow neglected to flush out the oil system — namely the oil tank.
Things went fine until the 43,000-mile point, when the bike was jacked up pretty high in the rear to install some new shocks. The extreme angle let a residual bearing piece roll into the oil feed line, carrying it into the oil pump (one of the original Feuling units) and shattering one of the gears — a failure that could have been avoided with a little extra effort during the rebuild.
Knowing the oil pump was going to have to come out, we took the opportunity to upgrade it to one of Feuling’s new one-piece designs, along with a Delkron cam plate for added beef in the cam support area. Choosing the Delkron cam plate turned out to be a great idea, since the stocker was badly gouged by the broken gear. We did the repair at home using some JIMS cam tools to make things easier.