I think your right about this and will heed your advice. I already did the S&S 510g so the cam chest is covered. Its the MM that has me concerned and I'll face that when the time comes. I think by now Wolfman knows about the cam chain tensioners and cam bearing issues with the early TC's. Lou
Besides the carb swap there is at least one other conversion option for Marelli. Will preface this by saying I don't mind the Marelli system. If one is familiar with its quirks it's not especially difficult to maintain. In fact my larger concern nowadays is the boogey man of Marelli but that sooner rather than later primary components will be obsoleted from Harley inventories.
If, for whatever reason, swapping Marelli is a consideration but you're interested in staying fuel injected Zippers offers a package. I'm not a Zippers fan. Though my issues aren't specifically with the Thundermax package and are more with the company itself and the quality of some machine work I've seen come from their shop.
Zippers does offer a conversion package to change a Marelli bike to Delphi using thier Thundermax ECM. It's the T-Max ECM inside a Marelli the form factor. So the ECM bolts on exactly as did the Marelli module. You get a a complete 02+ throttle body and some pieces to convert the fuel rail/delivery so that you stay using the separate pressure and return lines from the original Marelli tank. You'll need o2 bungs in the pipes if you want to add the "auto-tuning" module; though that's not a requirement for the job. When it's all done you're no longer using the cam position sensor. So that's a problematic old part that's no longer in the system.
The kit isn't cheap. But it's not that bad to do. My 2000 crapped out just outside of St. Louis a couple years ago (ish). ECM and cam position sensor seemed to have committed murder-suicide. An indie shop within range had one of these kits in stock. Between what tools I had and what the shop loaned me I got the kit installed in a truck stop parking lot in a day that probably seemed a lot longer than it really was. Fortunately my head pipes already had sensor bungs.
Rode the bike home rather than having to have it towed somewhere and coming back after it later with a trailer. So saved most of the cost of the kit by avoiding those expenses and time. And the kit has worked flawlessly since. It does start better than it did when it was Marelli. And all the onboard diagnostics and other software controls available through T-Max is an upgrade over being able to manage just about nothing with the Marelli setup.
Anyway..... carb option would be similar or slightly less work and less expense. But a more modern and very effective FI conversion is out there too.
Author
Topic: Will a 88' motor fit into a 1995 Heritage Softtail with the EVO (Read 6765 times)