96 inch, It's A Stroker!
Some people like 'em, and some don't, but the twin cam, despite its "growing pains", remains one of Harleys best powerplants. The 88 incher was good, so Harley kept the bore at 3.75 inches, but lengthened the stroke from 4 inches to 4.375 inches, to arrive at ninety six cubic inches. And she's got more power, but running hot was a problem.
I’d asked around, asked respected motorcycle riders and patch holders, riders who run back and forth across the country: What’s the best motorcycle for travel? And they all told me Road Glide. The secret, it seems, is that the fairing is attached to the frame, and she cuts the wind, slices through, with the least amount of effort on the part of the rider.
The road glide, now has well over a hundred thousand miles; she’s proved her metal. And she’s cut the wind in 48 states, and 5 Canadian provinces. And I’m glad I bought it. It eats up the road. I even like the crash bars. She seems to run cooler since the dyno tune and the 2 into 1 exhaust.
I've been using Mobil 1, full synthetic, car oil (15w-50), for probably the last 100,000 miles.
It Happened On The Interstate Highway In Tennessee
We left Nashville, the Roadglide in an easy lope, center lane, and, half an hour east of Jackson, Tennessee, cruising easy at 72 mph, there was a hard metallic CLANK! from under the left rear of the bike. The whole bike jumped; both wheels seemed to come off the ground at 72 miles per hour. It was almost like we'd polevaulted. I yanked in the clutch and rolled to the side of Interstate 40. It sounded bad, like a trip ender. I'd seen no parts rolling down the road in the rear view mirror. That's a good thing; trucks roared past. I did a roadside inspection. The first thing that came to mind, was that maybe a sprocket bolt worked loose and contacted the swing-arm, but everything looked good, back there. I checked the rotor bolts, and they looked okay, too. Nothing was leaking and I found no apparent damage anywhere, so I thought maybe a bolt came loose inside the primary, and ran through the chain and sprocket. The bike started and ran fine. I walked back down the highway, but saw nothing in the road or on the shoulder, that might help me figure out what had happened. Trucks were roaring past. So me and Rose got back on, and rode to the next exit, and while eating a BBQ sandwich, I called Bumpus Harley Davidson, in Jackson, Tennessee. They said, "We will get you in." I took it nice and easy for the next thirty miles to Jackson.
When the mechanic opened the primary, he brought me in the back, and showed me everything looked fine. We both were scratching our head, trying to figure what it might have been, when he took a closer look at the under carriage, and found a fresh gouge in the crankcase, at the boss where the bolt goes through. And further examining revealed a bent cross member further back, in the middle of the frame.
"That's what made the bike jump," he said. I'd seen nothing in the road, but I must have hit some large metallic debris, something that probably fell off a truck…something metal, that kicked up under the crankcase, hit the cross brace, and "pole-vaulted" the motorcycle. There were a lot of trucks on I 40. He put the primary cover back on, checked the belt and tires, took the bike for a test ride, and gave it a clean bill of health. I was lucky that the debris hit the thick boss, rather than the thin part of the crankcase. We headed west again, blasting through Memphis, into the blinding hot setting sun, crossed the Mississippi, into Arkansas, and ate lobster, and drank cold beer in Little Rock. Walking back to the hotel from the liquor store, I could smell rain in the air.
Andrews Cams For The Road Glide
Ain’t no hot rod, but she’ll get up and go.
When the Roadglide got up near 88,000 miles, I figured she’s ready for some new shoes…tensioner shoes, that is. If she was one of those “trailer queens” I probably would have bought some red-sparkly shoes, like the ones Dorothy wore in the Wizard Of Oz. But she ain’t no trailer queen, so I went ahead, and installed the following:
- a pair of Andrews 26 cams, nice and torquey
-Torrington cam bearings
-new tensioner shoes (orange, plain)
-new lifters, Feuling 4000
-new pushrods, S & S Quickee (everybody likes a quickee…), adjusted 20 flats from
zero lash
-10mm Screaming Eagle plug wires
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| Dyno Chart by DYNO GEORGE with Andrews 26 Cams Nice Torque Curve |
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| Stock Cams At 88,000 |
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Stock Shoe At 88,000 |
The Harley Manual recommends replacing spark plugs in my Road Glide at 20,000 miles. I usually don’t wait that long. But I figured, what the hell, and I did. Here’s what a set of plugs looks like after 20,000 miles.
The bike, with 109K on the clock, started and ran fine, but I did experience some slight performance issues, especially “under load,” and at high temperatures, the last few miles. These are the stock Harley plugs, and they did a good job for a long time.
Nevada Backroads Ruined My Belt: The Lonliest Road  We rode over Donner Pass, where in 1847, a group of adventurous folks who were looking to start a new life in California, got trapped in a snowstorm, and wound up eating the bodies of their dead companions, in order to survive. New life, indeed. Blew through Reno in the left lane, and got off at exit 46, in Fernley, NV. Alt 50 took us to route 50 in Fallon, The Loneliest Road, where we headed east across Nevada. We stopped at Middlegate Station which is 55 miles from Fallon and 64 miles from Austin, the next real town. Middlegate Station consists of a bar, restaurant, gas station, motel, camp ground, all in one. Everything runs off the generator; electricity hasn't come here yet. Fastened to the ceiling, is probably 5000 one dollar bills signed by friends and patrons. Nice folks, there. Made some friends and drank some beers, and got back on Hwy. 50, and poured on the coal. As lonely as that highway is, and you can see oncoming traffic for miles to the horizon, I did see a few cops out patrolling, maybe looking for the speeders or maybe for folks stranded in the desert. I slowed when I saw the car coming: sometimes you just get a feeling. Stopped for fuel in Austin. You pretty much have to get the fuel whenever you see it, because you can never be sure which towns have it and, which don't. You can't even be sure which towns are really towns. Sometimes on the map, it looks like a town, but when you get there, it's just a shade tree and an empty building with busted out windows. So we rolled into Eureka, Nevada, where we got a room at the Sundowner Lodge, across the street from the casino, and down the road a ways from the opera house. We went to two bars in Eureka. The casino across the street, called The Owl, which had 32 ounce beers (One quart!) for $2.50. I drank three, ice cold. The other bar is the Keyhole, which seemed like more of a local crowd. Couple of cowboy hats in there. The Owl was a Merle Haggard kind of place; the Keyhole was an AC/DC kind of place. Both had pool tables. Good bars in Eureka, Nevada, and not so lonely…  
 
  
 
 Drank too many of those 32 ounce beers last night. Got back on the Loneliest Road and went east through Ely, where we found Utah route 21, which seemed even lonelier. It's narrower, hotter, and has a lot less traffic. Lonelier. Almost scary. Gravelly. A good place to pick up a stone and break a drive belt. When we crossed into Utah, we set the clock forward to Mountain Time, and got on I 15 southbound to Hurricane, UT, where the temp. was a searing 98 degrees. This was quite a change from the 48 degrees when we left Eureka, NV. We couldn't find a restaurant near the hotel that served beer (Mormons!), so we opted for Subway sandwiches and a six pack in the room. Took the Road Glide through a nearby car wash and removed just some of the over 4500 miles of bugs and grime.
Route 9 through Zion National Park is probably the most beautiful road I've ever ridden, through sculpted red rock spires and bridges. We met Joanne there, riding by herself from New Hampshire, on her five speed Sportster, and camping along the way. There were plentiful good road kill specimens on route 89 out of Zion, mostly deer, in various stages of decomposition, and we rode, for a while with Joanne, until I pulled to the side to photograph a rotten carcass. Joanne just kept right on going; never saw her again. We took route 12 through Bryce Canyon, and I met The Desert Doctor, in a gas station in Escalante. He was riding a cool old Evo, and is the owner of the motorcycle shop in town, greeting and servicing the bikes that pass through. I told him I was going north, and he warned me about the gravel on the curves. And what a road route 12 turned out to be. This was a narrow two-laner that wound down the face of a cliff, with 8% grades, 15 mph curves (with gravel), no guard rails and no shoulders. A little slip here, and you can drop several hundred feet to the desert floor, bouncing off boulders as you go. You'd just disappear. I looked at the map and figured I could make Fremont Junction for gas, at the intersection of I 70 and route 72. Unfortunately, when I got there, it was just that: a junction, no town. But it was 12 more miles to Emery. So we went there and were glad to find two old gas pumps, that saved us from running out, and becoming buzzard food on the side of the road. Another hour of riding, and we pulled into Price, Utah, where we got a room at the Super 8 with a bar and grill right next door, where we proceeded to wash the desert dust out of out mouths. 
**********************  Pack Man Cracks: that’s the official designation in the Harley Davidson Service Manual, and I discovered it after returning from a cross country blast from the Pacific Coast in California, to The Hudson Valley in New York. I’d taken Highway 50 across Nevada, THE LONELIEST ROAD, and decided to head south, just past Ely, on 93. I was going to Zion, and sought out the road less travelled. Less travelled, indeed. And I’m really not sure if I stayed on 93, or somehow wound up on 894, an unpaved road across the Great Basin. Both roads end up in the same place, more or less. But there were long stretches of road that consisted of nothing more than miles and miles of little beige pebbles. And at first, I kind of took it slow, but then I’d drive several miles and get to the top of the next rise, and for miles in the distance, I saw more of the same. Heat waves, like a mirage, dancing off little beige pebbles. So I sped up, going faster and faster on those little pebbles, there was no traffic, no reason for me to stop or even slow down. It was hot like the desert. And those little pebbles were bouncing around, like carborundum, on the underside of my bike, bouncing everywhere…bouncing into the drive belt, and rolling through the sprocket.  Pac Man was the little round video dot, with a big mouth, in the 1980’s arcade video game. And it was with that wide open mouth, that Pac Man would gobble up little pac dots or “biscuits,” in a maze, all the while searching for enemies and “power pellets.” So…when I got home from my cross country adventure, to the beautiful Hudson Valley, each and every tooth on my drive belt looked like it had a mouth. A mouth that could open wide and was ready to devour the various enemies and power pellets. It was an expensive proposition, changing that belt. I had to buy the belt and both sprockets. I bought the BIG SOCKET TO REMOVE THE BIG NUT….and an electric impact gun, to get that fucker loose. And of course gaskets, and hardware. And while I was in there, some new rubber mounts on the pivot shaft…and I needed a new rear tire, anyway. Expensive proposition. But you know what, that front sprocket, the one that came off the transmission, that fucker makes a great paperweight. And it was all in the name of adventure.      First Road Glide Oil Leak First road glide oil leak at 112,000: 2 drops from the stator plug. It came after a 2,000 mile road trip. We rode down through Pennsylvania, got caught in hot Allentown rush hour traffic. We split lanes for maybe five miles, between hot truck traffic…trucks that moved aside and gave us room. It’s an air cooled engine, and we need the air moving between the fins, and we thank the truckers, and say a big “fuck you” to the asshole in the Toyota who honked the horn and tried to squeeze us. Harrisburg is so nice at dusk…red sunset, concrete arches over the Susquehanna River. We didn’t even get over to “restaurant row” because we found some really good Indian food, right next to the hotel. And ice cold, let me say that again…ice cold Yuenglings. Cheap, too.  Interstate 81 sucks. I used to think it was better than 95, but no. I sucks, big time. There’s only two lanes. The whole length of the road: only 2 lanes. And what happens is this. Everybody wants to go around the slow truck in the right lane, even the other slow trucks. So you get this jam up in the left lane, and everybody starts getting pissed off, and driving like assholes, passing on the right, cutting people off, jamming on their brakes, just generally, being assholes. It’s contagious. At least on Interstate 95, the lanes open up to three, four, and sometimes five in the bigger metropolitan areas. I 81 sucks. But downtown Roanoke sure is pretty.  So we rode down through Hot Springs, and picked up a curvy road, that once was used by moonshiners, escaping pursuit, and they called it The Rattler. Challenging road with less traffic than The Tail of the Dragon. Only problem was, at some point, in the not too distant past, a gravel truck must have gone through, and on each sharp curve, must have spilled a little off the top, making the curves, a real adventure. All in all, a good experience, but I would have liked to take those curves at a little faster clip. We rode into Maggie Valley, but there was a lot of traffic and heat. We had some ice cream, gassed up, and left town.  So then it was time to put the hammer down. Interstate time. Time to Boogie. Time to make tracks. And in the morning, we got on 74 into Charlotte, and picked up Interstate 85. Making time. Rock and roll through the heat of the day. Splitting lanes for miles, as the construction signs read: LEFT LANE CLOSED AHEAD, KEEP RIGHT. And it jammed, and we eased on down the yellow line, and there were two tractor trailers, spewing black diesel fumes, and Rose said, “you’ll never make it though,” and I eased on in, and they gave me room, and the lady in the Toyota, who was ABSOLUTELY NOT going to let us through, well she changed her mind quick when she thought I was going to clip her pretty little mirror, with my greasy little throttle. So we got a room in South Hill, which by chance, turned out to be right across the parking lot from the beer store. Yessir.  So we rode south to go north…down through Newport News, and some heavy, morning rush hour traffic. And yes, I did partake in some more conservative lane splitting. It was all good. And we picked up thirteen…route 13, over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, a great ride, across and under the water, where the container ships look so, so close. And we had some breakfast, right there, out on the bridge, and we crossed and entered into Maryland, where some big old shore bird, took a massive wet shit, all over the front of my bike, my shoe, everything. I had to stop at the “Welcome Center,” to clean the shit off. Welcome to Maryland. So we rode in light traffic, nice…route 13…up to Ocean City, and got a room, at reasonable rates, a block off the boardwalk, with MOTORCYCLE PARKING. Yes! And close to the bars! And pretty soon, we found out it was happy hour, and we had some oysters…some scallops, and when the bartender, “New York Annie,” told me that it was the last PBR, well, it was time to move on…and we walked a ways, played a little Skee-Ball…won some prizes…a lizard (maybe it’s a newt!), and “clapping hands.” Don’t ask. And we found a bar with a pool table in the back: 4 quarters…a buck a game. So, now it’s time to go home. And let me tell you this: that run up I 95, was an absolute pleasure, compared to I 81. We rode with the trucks, over in the “truck section” of the divided highway. The right two lanes were “trucks only”, and most of the time, it seemed like I had the third lane all to myself. And then when I got home, I parked in front of the garage door, and lo and behold…two drops of oil came forth, fell to the blacktop pavement that is my driveway, and made themselves apparent as: THE FIRST OIL LEAKAGE FROM THE ROADGLIDE. Two drops. I’ll just have to keep my eye on that.  Screech. Gazzinga. Those are starter noises. Bad starter noises. Starter noises should not draw attention. Screech. Gazzinga. When my starter began the weird litany of sounds, I was somewhat perplexed. I mean the bike started. Always. But sometimes it took a few attempts of …screech, gazzinga. The first time I changed the starter clutch on the roadglide, was at about 38,400 miles, and I actually rebuilt the starter clutch, using genuine Harley Davidson parts. At that time, I realized a bigger problem was present, and I wound up installing a Screaming Eagle compensator at 39,395 miles. Problem solved; the bike never started so smoothly. It sounded like a well oiled machine…a Mozart concerto.
And those parts served well for a long damned time. They held up over the Mississippi River, through the Nevada desert, all across Alberta, and down to Key West. Up through Nova Scotia, and into Idaho. What…Idaho…no, you da ho. Well you get the point. But like a ghost from the past, I once again became aware of Screech. Gazzinga. So now I’m remembering the pain in the ass of the starter clutch rebuild. Circ clips, compressed springs. And for a few dollars more, I could just buy a new intact Allballs starter clutch. I bought it, I installed it, and I ran a few errands this morning. And so far…she’s good. A Mozart concerto, a well oiled machine. Mileage now is 115,600. So it appears that I did much better with my “rebuild” than with the original part that came with the bike. New Battery:131,000 Somewheres around 120,000, the yellow electrical the idiot light came on. The battery didn't seem to be charging, so I eventually, put in a new starter and regulator, recharged the battery, and GOOD TO GO! But the battery must have been damaged. It lastedt for another 10,000 miles, or so. There was an older woman, probably lost, stopped at a crossroads. I stopped to give her directions. She thanked me and left, but when I went to start my bike, the battery was dead. I got rescued by some bikers passing by, and wound up getting a new battery the next day. I'd only gotten about 4 1/2 years out of the "damaged battery;" I usually get anywhere from 5 to 8 years.  When I was changing the stator, I took a picture of the Tennessee Crankcase Damage. Every Winter, I Lube My Cables |
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