I’m going to take one more pass at the tappet rollers before moving on. My money is on the materials as the root cause of the tappet roller failures. Considering H-D’s past and current relationship with Jim’s, it seems odd that H-D would drop them as the vendor for their SE lifters. It’s a good bet that they both worked to resolve the durability issues before H-D opted to change vendors.
I speculate that Milwaukee has a specification for a material in the tappet roller bearing, most likely the axle, that the Jim’s product didn’t consistently meet. Whatever the issue was with the Jim’s/SE lifters it was something that they were not able to overcome. It is my understanding that H-D now sources their Screamin’ Eagle lifters from the same vendor that supplies the OE lifters; although I don’t know who that is.
Jim’s redesigned their lifter to provide direct lubrication to the tappet roller bearing. We know that additional lubrication has a positive impact on the tappet roller because the intakes, which apparently receive less lubrication, fail well before the exhausts do. What I have not pinned down is whether the added lubrication is masking a metallurgical shortcoming in the tappet roller bearing, or if the high load failures have been a lubrication issue all along.
If the issue is lubrication, then Jim’s may be the only game in town for machines equipped with aggressive valvetrains and Hoisted
over long distances. If the issue is metallurgical, then we have more choices, but we just don’t know what all of them are.
I have experienced tappet roller failure in three sets of Jim’s sourced, SE lifters. The first two were discovered when the lifters had approximately 3,000 miles on them. In each case the rear intake tappet roller bearing had deteriorated to the point where you could just begin to detect it by hand. The last set (pictured) was run approximately 12,000 miles until the roller became squared off and the machine was shut down.
The rationale above together with the experience of three separate incidences of tappet roller failure is the basis for my recommendation to inspect the rollers. If you only ride a couple of thousand miles a year, or if you have an aggressive valvetrain but ride conservatively, you may not own the machine long enough for it to come apart. If you ride 10,000 relatively hard miles each year, IMHO you should consider taking steps to manage the potential risk.
Regarding questions about specific lifters; my criteria for selecting a brand are: they must run quietly, under high load conditions, for many miles; everything else is just background noise. As far as recommendations or opinions on lifters; I’m still trying to sort that out for myself, but now you know what I know on the subject.
djkak
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Topic: Cybil II, My New and Improved ‘07B FLHRSE3TQ (Read 127967 times)