tonight, we were returning from "two wheel tuesday" a 30-40 mile evening ride and dinner with several other motorcyclists. cruising along at 65-70 mph, i was admiring her flame in the pipe  8), when all of a sudden POOOFFF!!@! a ball of black smoke followed by engine silence  ???  to debby's credit, she did not over react or panic, she simply moved to the shoulder and slowed to a stop. our 15 yr old daughter was riding 2up with me, i grabbed all 3 discs and slowed my bike right in behind debby. the next thing i heard was the compressionless cranking of the suzi  :'( (play taps now) her road king is almost road worthy, so i guess she moves up this week. i have until spring to get the savage back up, so the (then 16 yr old) daughter can start riding it.

azjay wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:


to the fact of what happend I AM A VERY SAD GIRL :'( :'( :'!!!!

i now have to drive the cage for a few days and i am definately not happy about that.    i began riding the suzi on school days.  for the reason that the college has  been doing some major construction and have closed down three major parking lots.   there has been no parking for cages unless you want to park in tim-buk-to or bum-f@#$ egypt .

i think i will fire my mechanic .   or just maybe hold a wake for the bike .

justin_o_guy wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:

the bike has less than 10k miles on it, here is the history of the shortened life span
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?board=RubberSideDown;action=display;n...
typically 20k is the end of life expectancy for the cam  chain. the cam chain adjuster seems to have issues too, i recommend a search and read about others experiences with it, i killed ours  i would not consider highway riding at 65-70 "hard", that is everyday riding.

azDebraD wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:


you'll have to find something else to do with him, sitting in a chair isn't an option

Of course it's really running hours not miles but without a hour meter this is difficult to calculate.

Two interesting situations going on, the chain wears and stretches while the spring loaded  tensioner puts pressure on the chain to keep it tight – when it over extends it falls apart and creates a lot of slack in the chain and it’s not long for this world at that point, however if the chain pops the tensioner also falls apart – hum so which happens first the chicken or the egg?

Azjay, in the case here where oiling was an issue I would  think that the chain wore very quickly – when you take it apart could you measure the 21 pin/20 link as show in the book?

Of course we have recently scared stinger on his ’02 savage with 25k generally higher speed miles which would be far less hours than most commute bikes and has had very frequent oil changes.

Stinger in order to not break the bank it might be worth while to just inspect the tensioner on that ’02 by pulling the right side(starboard) cover. The tensioner is a ratchet device with about 24 teeth maximum travel is right on 1 inch past that it will fall apart. I have seen it stated that if the tensioner piston is out more that .7 inch (18mm) it is time to replace the chain – this seems like a reasonable measurement if the measurement is taken along the ratchet teeth. So it might only cost you a new side cover gasket and an hour labor to find out – since you must take this cover off to do the job anyway.

My old Savage only had 6k on it when the cam chain broke and bent the valves.  I was so sad but I had ti rebuilt at the stealership for 1300.00.  That was just the top cylinder.  YIPE

Jim_R wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:
 

youch! the stealership wont see me, except at the parts counter, and thats bad enough. share your experience with us, when your chain let go. you may have posted at that time, but i've slept since then, so i dont remember it.

That survey took place a few weeks ago in another thread.