Shavings in Cam Chest

[tcuzz]

Looking for advice. I decided to upgrade to SE 585 cams and this is what I see after removing the cam plate. The shavings are not magnetic. There wasn’t any metal shavings on the oil plug. Oil pump looks fine. Cam tensioner look normal with very minor scuffing.

I do not know where these shavings came from but they must be aluminum and look like they may have been from residual from HD engine production. The shavings are curled and appear like they came from machining the bolt holes.

I talked with the local dealer and he contacted MOCO tech assist. MOCO can’t explain it but didn’t think it was a major issue. The Service Manager said if it were his bike he would replace with a long block. I think this is a rare issue because I can’t find anything on line. Thoughts?

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[NGOT8R]

It's probably shavings from the casting and drilling of passages during the manufacturing process. Things do get overlooked at the plant on these bikes all of the time. I have personally experienced quality control issues on my 2018 SGS, so I know first hand that it happens. Try and do a thorough inspection and clean up in the cam chest really good and put it back together.

One tip that I will share with you prior to reassembly, is to be very careful when tightening the two screws on the cam plate that have blind holes in the engine casing. I think the threads weaken each time the screws are removed and reinstalled/torqued to factory specs and they pull out of the casing. This happened to me and I ended up having to install heli-coils in the blind holes in order to fix them. I suggest using blue loctite on those two screws and tighten them down to about 60 in-lbs and let the loctite do it's job. The other screws can handle the factory torque specs with no issue and no loctite is needed.

 

[OldMike]

Get a better picture of the shavings and show to a machinist. A machinist should be able to tell if they wore off of something or are left from the block machining process.
I'd do as much inspection as I could and call it good to go.

 

[tcuzz]

Thanks for the input guys. I've thoroughly inspected everything without doing a tear down and I don't see anything causing me concern. However, this issue has stopped me cold. I don't want to move forward until I figure this out. Heck, it's still snowing in northern Indiana so I'm not in a huge hurry.

I'm leaning towards this being a manufacturing issue. I will get a few more opinions but so far I'm hearing inspect, clean and move forward from you guys and a couple of others I know. The only person telling me they wouldn't move forward was the service manager who wants to sell me a long block.

 

[Streetglide16]

Which Dealer are you going too? As you can see I live in Elkhart also, if it is Hoosier I would never listen to anything they say. Not sure I even trust McD either

 

[tcuzz]

Hi Streetglide16, I have been speaking with Hoosier HD. My experience with both Hoosier and McDaniels has been very good but it's exclusively with the parts counter guys. I do my own services so I can't speak about the service from these dealers. I will say that Hoosier trying to sell me a long block was a little concerning. To jump to that conclusion without a full inspection, oil sample, etc was a red flag.

I also spoke with the Sturgis dealer when I was deciding on the level of work I was going to do but ultimately chose to just do the cams for now. They were great and very helpful in the decision making process.

 

[Streetglide16]

Tom up at Hamilton's is Great to deal with.

Might chat with Lou Greencer at Gerencer's motorsports

 

[JokerToker]

I dont see how that debris could be sitting in the cam chest since assembly at the factory. It has to be from the fasteners. Are you sure its metal?

 

[tcuzz]

I dont see how that debris could be sitting in the cam chest since assembly at the factory. It has to be from the fasteners. Are you sure its metal?

I'm pretty sure this happened at assembly. The shavings were curled similar to debris you would see from milling a bolt hole. Definitely aluminum, not steel, since they were not magnetic. On a positive note, I've rode about 500 miles since without an issue and love the new cams.

 

[JokerToker]

Those slivers came out of a threaded hole during disassembly. The by-product of thread locking compound and thread galling during disassembly.