King Tech Number 9 Fraught With Illness, Run Deadlines and Bad Photography

Photos by Snake

There's always more to a tech than two quarts of oil and 12-point sockets. There's the old lady bitchin' in the background, the effort to make it to the Arizona Run, parts missing, you name it. Well, this tech was perfectly planned only to have a number of rank obstacles slip into place at the last minute.

We have an ongoing deadline as each issue of American Rider carries a report on our progress. It's a severely edited version since there are space limitations in most magazines. Then we had another mission looming. I wanted to get the hell out of town for a weekend. I needed a long ride to clear the cobwebs.

I received a call from Dr. Hamsters and a run date was set. You can read about it in the King department. We were pacing the deck for some of the parts. Lastly, we had a staffing dilemma. I couldn't afford to pay Markus Cuff to photograph every aspect of this endeavor unless we could handle it in a day. That turned out not to be the case, so I called Snake. I've worked with the beer-ohilic for almost 30 years. As you will see he's not much of a photog. In fact, between you and me, he's not much good at anything except beer drinking and cajoling me and the staff to give him cash for more beer. We'll get to that later.

San Pedro was the holding pattern waiting for all the elements to surface and suddenly they did. We performed some of the functions in the Bikernet Headquarters, but when it came to installing performance components we decided to work with trained, master Harley Mechanics at the fleet center. The process started two weeks from the run date and the installation of the Highbars. With that completed a couple of days past the deadline we hauled the selected components and I was scheduled to deliver the bike into the master hands of the Harley Fleet Center which is headed by Gene Thomasen, his son Gene Jr and Alan Barsi the master mechanic. We had a week left, although the estimated time for replacing the heads, cams, air cleaner, pipes and speedo was a day. No sweat.

Our performance processing date was scheduled to begin on Monday morning, but we were delayed with the installation of the clutch cable, which arrived by UPS that gray morning. We arrived at the Fleet center at 1:00 in the afternoon and were told that Alan could only work until 4:00. Alan was a stocky, quiet sort who tore into my King with rugged aplomb. He knew what he was doing and did it without hesitation. He ripped that sonuvabitch apart like I'd tear the ol' lady's toaster to pieces.

Alan started by draining the gas tank, then unbolted it. He disconnected the fuel line by sliding back the collar on the hose. He cut the clamp at one end of the cross-over tube and unplugged the gas gauge. He put towels on the rear fender and turned the tank 180 degrees so that all the wiring could remain connected. You must remember to turn it back the opposite direction so as not to twist the wiring looms.

Then he removed the mufflers and took the left pipe off first. He removed the right footboard and right passenger board. To pull the pipes free Alan banged down on the rear footboard bracket to free the front head pipe. The next step was the throttle cables, loosening the adjustments, then unwrapping the cables from the injection unit, after the air cleaner was removed. You'll notice that there are no crystal clear photographs of this process. Snake left after panhandling from the Fleet Center crew for enough change to buy a six-pack. Alan wasn't stopping for anybody and neither was I. We were burnin' daylight, had deadlines and a run dead ahead.

Alan turned to release the snap ring setting the cruise control cable free. Then he moved onto the heim joint removal and the top motormount. He took off the intake manifold flanges to remove the fuel injection module. From there he moved onto rocker box tops. Even with years of manufacturing experience, it's still hard to reach some of the bolts. Next came the rocker arm support plates and the breather filters.

He took off the pushrod cover clips on the rear head and removed the pushrods to free the rocker arm assembly (note the color coding on the pushrods. They must be replaced in the same holes), but there still wasn't enough clearance. He had to remove the bottom rocker cover plate to make enough room to get the rocker arms out. Alan worked for Bartels Harley-Davidson for 12 years as the shop foreman before switching to the fleet center. Barrel gaskets on the new models are all O-ring style and didn't need replacing. Alan still had a problem removing the rear fasteners and was forced to pry the engine down with a crowbar to remove the rocker arms. Then off came the head bolts and heads.

Finally Snake returned with a sixer of Coors and soon there was peace in the shop, and we got a shot of Alan taking the cam cover off. Alan used some special tools to keep the Teflon shoes out of harms way while the gear set was removed. He also had a cam gear tool that locked both gears in place for removal. Then Alan began to remove the gears and chain drive.

The Tephlon can't take sharp blows so it's best held out of harms way with the red clips.

We had considered replacing the tappets (or cam followers) with new Screamin' Eagle jobs, but Alan told us that since our tappets weren't worn that they wouldn't need replacing. The rule of thumb, since new performance cams can increase valve train pressure with more severe cam lobes, is to replace the tappets.

We had ended the disassembly process and it was a shade after 4:00, and Alan was leaning toward the door. He pressed out the cams from the cam bearing plate and used a special tool to press out the bearings. New bearings come with new Screamin' Eagle cam sets.

Cam gears are aligned in the front with dots and in the back with chains.

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