Iron Sportster Pushrod tube R & R 

I am so glad it helped. Hope that Sporty gets on the road soon.

rebuilding an iron, and pushrod covers are a mysterium? not to be a dick, but good luck mate.

Yeah, thank Duncan Keller out in San Jose, who taught me to look for this. He said he kept packages of those washers handy, since so many "leaky" bikes simply had the washers mission. Thanks for the kind words and your comment.

Well bless you for those kind words. I guess there is a reason that old-timers call the Harley service manual "the bible". I am working on the house lately, but will get back to the Sportster videos soon.

Glad to help

Yeah, I have 6 Sportsters and have fixed and broken and fixed all of them, thanks for the kind words!

Glad you like them! Thanks for the comment.

Yeah, I feel it is more honest and prepares people for the frustrations when I show my suffering. I am suspicious of those videos where all of a sudden, it jumps ahead and everything is apart or together, with none of the misery in between. Thanks for the comment.

Thanks so much for your kind words and this info. I do have a 1952 K-model I hope to rebuild on the channel, and I can see how the XL models are just new heads and push-rods slapped on a very similar bottom end. I had no idea the K-model evolved from the W model, though it makes sense. The K was really something, a unit construction dual suspension long before the big bikes got dual suspension in 1958 and unit construction? Heck maybe an 1994 FXR is unit, I don't even know.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks, a lot of this comes from the factory service and parts manuals, they are the "bible" that we all refer to. My feelings about cleanliness and "working out of the box" have come from decades of fixing things, sometimes more than once because I did it wrong the first time. Like the saying goes, "Always time to do it over, never time to do it right".

Wow, thanks for the great tip. I think I used Teflon paste because that what was in the drawer. Darn pandemic, I gotta go to the auto parts store or hardware store and get some pipe dope.

I took many months off, but hope to go through the whole engine over the next few months.

Thanks!

You're welcome

The nice thing about old Sportsters with kickstarters is that you can just roll the engine over while feeling the pushrod go up. When it comes down, you crank a little more and check the clearance. The ideal point is midpoint between going up and coming back down. For electric-start-only bikes, you roll the rear wheel while in gear, and try to find where the pushrods are loose. Ideally, if you have the piston at top-dead-center on the compression stroke, both pushrods for that cylinder should be loose.

Yeah, I have used the "lay the bike on its side, unbolt, and lift the frame off the engine." Most times, I have the top end and cylinders off, and the engine is then light enough to lift out by hand. I have seen guys use a car engine cherry picker to get the engine out, but it is always a pain. Engines 1977 and later have a sump that has to get lifted up over the frame rails, so that is an added pain. Putting the engine in, some guys wrap the frame with newspaper to keep it from scratching.

Doing the head removal this week, then rocker box comes next, maybe next week if I can get to it.

Yeah, when I saw cork gaskets I thought I was back in 1936, but they do seem to work better. Especially on 1977 and later bikes when Harley took out the timed breather, the crankcase pressure would go both positive and negative. An O-ring would "pump" and leak, when the corks would resist this, at least until the blow-by got too bad.

Sorry, no extra parts right now. Keep an eye out on eBay, they come up now and then, and a parts carb should be cheap.

OK, I am not telling you what to do, I am just saying what I would do. The easiest is just ignore it and hope it goes away. If you have ridden “calmly” ever since the engine rebuild, the rings may have not seated. The hope there is that you should occasionally build full cylinder pressure with wide-open throttle, when it is very safe to do so. You are trying to build more pressure in the cylinders. Piston rings are more complicated than we used to think. They don’t seal with springiness. They seal when cylinder pressure weeps down between the piston and cylinder, over the top of the ring, and behind the ring where the pressure forces the ring against the cylinder wall and seals. Now before you do anything, one of the things that makes Iron Sportsters smoke is the oil tank being too full. This blocks the vent line, and leaves too much oil in the bottom end that gets whipped up to the point of smoking. Drain the tank half-full, and do two drive cycles to see if the hot-engine smoking goes away. Remember to get the oil tank full again. Also make sure the return line from the engine to the tank is unobstructed and clear. If the oil pump cannot get the oil back in the tank, same thing, it builds up in the crankcase and starts smoking. It might also be gasoline getting in the oil and that is what is smoking. This could be a very very rich engine, you will see the spark plugs all fluffy black. It can also be gasoline leaking past the petcock and needle valve in the carburetor when the bike sits. Make sure the petcock and needle are working. Let the bike sit and peer down the carb throat and you can see if gas is weeping down into the engine. Another reason for smoking is the breather system is not working. If you can see smoke, that means you are not running the rubber hose from the cam cover to the air cleaner. This is good in the sense that it reduces back-pressure on the breathing system. Hey, maybe hook it back up and just burn the smoke when the engine gets hot. Harley eliminated the timed breather in 1977 for cost savings, and the engines never breathed right until they had Porsche do the Evo top end. The 1984 breather is a little reed valve in the gearcase/cam cover. Some folks bend that reed thinking they are improving breathing, when they are ruining it. The reed valve lets air out of the engine when the pistons go down, and when working, actually pulls a vacuum in the cases when the pistons go back up. With an ‘84 you might be able to take off the oil filter housing and see the reed valve. If you have a generator instead, you can remove it and look at the reed valve.. That filter housing came in late 1984, I suspect when the eliminated the generator and stuffed an alternator under the clutch. Otherwise you have to remove the cover, which means taking out the pushrods and making sure all the little cam shim washers go back where they belong. It’s bad practice to switch cam covers. If the breather reed valve is missing or broken, better to fabricate a new one or transfer it from a junk cam cover. The cam gears are matched to each particular cover. I just cheeked the 1979-1985 parts book. They call item 35A a reed valve until early 1982 and a check valve from 82-85. OK, all the above is avoiding the likely problem. Sorry to say, if the rings didn’t seat right away, sometimes they never seat and you will have more blow-by than you want and maybe the pushrods start leaking from crankcase pressure. You can pull the plugs and look at the cylinder walls. If the cross-hatching is there, good, just ride the bike hard with some safe full-throttle now and then, and maybe you can seat the rings. Maybe run cheap oil instead of synthetic super-oil, if you want to take the risk, until the rings seat. If the cylinder walls are shiny smooth and glazed over, you have to pull the top end, and do a light hone, even just a ball hone if you are good at it, and then a new set of piston rings. Of course you check piston clearance, ring side clearance (so the pressure can work behind the ring,) and ring end clearance so they don’t touch ends and seize up when they get hot. So other than making sure the oil is not too full, and doing some full-throttle now and then to seat the rings, I would just live with this. Enjoy the bike, get your money’s worth, and it might need a valve job after 10,000 miles when you can do a bore and hone and new rings. Hook the breather hose to the air cleaner and you won’t see the smoke. Good luck, hang in there, and remember, it’s not a Honda and it won’t act like one.

Thanks, more videos on the way!

I think I sound more like him than look. Ed O'Neill and I are both from Cleveland, so the Midwest accent is there too. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Gp9Q7WQyLEg.html

Thank you too!

Well, it might be an air leak at the manifold. You can spray some carb cleaner or brake cleaner where the clamps are, and if the engine changes RPM, you probably have an air leak. You can burn a piston quick with an air leak so be sure to check it. Otherwise, yeah, you have to adjust the valve on an Iron Sportsters, even doing every 300 miles is not crazy. I set them loose and don't check them as often, but they are a little noisy when they are loose.

@@Open-Sport I followed your video and found the front exhaust push rod with no adjustment, the tappet screw was completely loosened up. I was able to pull the pushrod out without touching the tappet screw! I'm assuming the front exhaust valve was not opening. Adjusted all the pushrods, replaced cork gaskets and cleaned everything and bike runs much better now. I uploaded before and after videos to my profile. thanks for the video.

@@71iron13 Wow, this is great to hear. Sometimes I worry that I don't tighten the jam nuts enough, but since I check the valves so often, I have never had an adjuster back off. Congrats on fixing things!

The pushrods are identical length, or they should be. I have had some that somebody cut down a few mm because the valve seat had receded and the stock pushrod would not fit. You are tight, you have to turn the engine to get the lifter at the low position, before you remove the pushrod, sorry if that was not clear in the video.

You can check out my other answer, but the only seal back there is on the kick-starter shaft. The starter housing or block-off plate might be leaking. It can also be oil dripping from the tank and fooling you into thinking it is the primary.

You have to keep an eye on eBay. After I try out some newer Kehein carb on my bikes, I might put some of my butterfly carbs for sale, but that might be years away, sorry.

Yeah, I worried about not being clear when I talked about assembly. Thing is, I just tore this engine down for the parts, I won't be putting it back together. So I figured this was my chance to talk about assemble stuff. I guess the modern thing is to stick to specifics, people can search for assembly or tear-down as they need. Thanks for the comment.

Ha ha, I love it. Al Bundy and I are both from Cleveland Ohio, so I think we sound the same. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Gp9Q7WQyLEg.html

Yeah, they are just marking their spot. I got my 1977 dry for a couple years, but as soon as I worked on it more, I was less careful, and it started to leave those lovable tell-tail spots. Worst is when a buddy has a paver driveway and you have to ask for a piece of cardboard to put under the bike, or park in the street. Thanks for the comment.

Good point, wood is softer than aluminum, and it rarely will dent aluminum. Thanks for the comment.

Channeling my inner cave man.

Good tip, thanks!

Not sure what you mean, but glad you got a chuckle.

Well, if you could outline what corners I cut, I would be glad to address them one by one. Do you remove the heads to work on your pushrod tubes? For people trying to understand the world, XDXD means too laughing faces.