Another idea ......

How about cutting a lengthwise slot in the tensioner piston (plunger?) and drilling/tapping a hole for a set screw in the barrel? The set screw would ride in the slot and allow the plunger to move, but would prevent the plunger from falling out (the slot would not run the entire length of the plunger). You might lose the last few mm of range but at least the thing would not come apart. And I'd use red loctite for the set screw.

Actually a slot wouldn't be necessary, all you'd need is a flat spot on one side that went almost to the end of the plunger.

Cam Chain Issue Library

there's a lot here... and more to come...

No can't take credit for that, the welded tab was (to my knowledge) 1st presented here by slavy.  It's his fault.  

My Idea is to lock the adjuster plunger and housing together with a pin and slot.  

I created a new plunger from some 5/8th inch screw rod. I sanded it down to just fit in the current cylinder. This allowed me to make the piston longer. I then drilled the piston on one end with a 7/16th's bit until I had a bout 3/4 of an inch of the end of the rod left. I drilled and threaded the the undrilled end of the piston to a final size of #8 metric bolt. I purchased a #8 eye bolt and threaded it into the piston.

Know it's all back together, and I have had no problems with it after at least 500 miles. I figure with this set-up I can go let the piston adjust the cam chain as normal and then when it is time to service the clutch and give things a good inspection I can reset the piston by unscrewing the eye bolt some. This should just about double the life of the cam chain.

  Hey, Hello everyone! New Savage owner here, Flubbyhead. My 96 was making noise at 6,200 miles. I thought it was loud but my other little thumper makes noise, also. Long to short, the tensioner popped out at 6,900 and I luckily limped home with no interference of valves and piston. I am waiting for the rundown on this issue.                                As Always,
                                          Uncle Flub

A piece of info from vroom:

1997 bike, ~13k miles.  replaced: cam chain, both tensioners (plastic-tefllon slides), and plunger-spring-housing (these parts may still exist in massachusetts!)

4 years and ~12k miles later, I checked the plunger.  21.5 mm +- 0.5 mm extended from plunger.  front tensioner (slide) looks good.  forgot to check rear.  Almost always used Penzoil 10-40 oil, every 1k miles. definitely no sludge in oil.  going to have the tab wleded on there today.

will check the 1998 soon.

to be specific, the welded tab is slavy's idea.
My mod is the pin and slot in addition to the welded tab.

Well, I just installed the Slavy-Verslagen modded adjuster yesterday, as well as new clutch springs.  I guess it was only slightly too soon also.  Pics below of the old one in place show the extension at 9375 miles on the odometer on my bike.  Yeah, there was still some old gasket material on there when I took the pics.  In general, she was nearly fully extended but not enough to damage the adjuster yet.





To give you a better idea, I'll include the below image.  This is not from my bike.  However, at 9375 miles, this same mod was installed and I first used the left hole but that only left 1mm of space before the safety pin would hit the far right side of the slot.  I then installed it using the right hole and the Safety pin is now 1mm from the far left end of the slot.  So I figure I should get at least another 5k-6k miles before she hits the end of the slot and starts to rattle a warning.  I do feel better having the safety pin in place to allow a warning instead of the piston dropping out and grenading the engine.