No way!
Most of the stuff I've read here amounts to nitpicking. For example, valve noise. No sheet, Mon. Es un Harley, Hombre.
You can upgrade your way out of desert heat via fuel tuning, etc., but you should have an oil cooler standard on the bike when it's oil and air cooled.
Not everyone's compensator and/or cranks twist and shout, but the SE compensator should be standard issue by now. And under no circumstances should any crank twist. Ever. The weakest part of a Harley engine (yet should be the stoutest) resides in the utmost remote recesses, the bowels of the engine (and I mean that with the implied connotation) where it costs mega-labor just get to it to fix it. That means Torrington Case, pegging and tig welding, along with Timken Bearing assembled by human hands come standard so cranks and their bearings don't fail--That's right, top-shelf parts and attention to detail are needed here. This is the one aspect of manufacture that if performed diligently spares service departments the necessity to tear down an entire engine, which consumes 20-25 hours labor? Honestly, how much longer and how much more does it cost to make a bullet-proof crank at the factory with nice balanced flywheels with zero run out?
25 hours and fifteen to twenty-five hundred bucks gets you peace of mind when you want to go 103", let alone gear-driven cams nowadays?
John
