OK I got a NEW chain in the other day and this is what I found out !
Its not the chain thats wore out !!!!

I keep reading that people are getting new chains and finding out that the tensioners are still falling out ! So its not just me, so whats wrong ?

Seems to me that its not the chain stretching, and its not the tensioner as its only taking up slack !

But how is slack getting in the setup if the chain isnt stretched !

I wholeheartedly think its all in the guides ! Mine has cracks all in it and is flat as a board, I think they are to weak and bend letting the chain slack and the the tensioner takes it up.

I will be working on making a new set out of thicker steel backing plates and white Teflon faces !

Who thinks I'm right ? And if not whats your take on it !

Well the tensioner will only fall apart if its asked to do so by to much slack !
If the chain isn't stretched out enough to see with the naked eye then thats not enough slack to amount to much of anything !

To make the tensioner go that far out the chain would be stretched enough to say....... darn look at it the chain is stretched !

But its not, so something else has to be at fault here. Trust me I've seen chains that had lots of stretch in them and was still working...."with a good tensioner design" so even a bad tensioner should work just fine with the micro amount this chain is out...

I see only one other thing it can be ! The guides !

I'll post back what I find out...

I did some slow yet torturous bending & adjusting on one of the guides.When I was done, new chain, torqued up guide & stilll the tensioner was poking out WAY too far to make me happy. I like the mod that adds the length & a new bolt hole to press the tensioner deeper into itself. Just got a welder, so next time Im in there, I'll add a tab & get more miles outta the chain.
I still think its really important to oil the chain well before installing it. Mine is in a quart jar & is submerged in oil. It wont start dry. Someone has done extensive research into these chains & even contracted from a manufacturer for an order.My memory for such details is the pits. Maybe theyll jump in with some of what was learned. Seems the "stretch" as it is called is really wear at the pins. How much the chain eats on the sprockets( IIRC) is minimal, compared to the wear at the pins adding up to create a longer chain. The "stretch" isnt even much, but the design, with the diameter of the sprockets,& distance between them leaves only a small gap between the chain headed Up & the Chain going back down. My chain , when the miles run vs. the "stretch" on it was figured, indicated approximately 7,000 miles left on the life of the chain, BUT, My tensioner was at 18MM, so, as Mike is pointing out, somewhere there is a weak link in the design. ( YES that Was a pun),I tried to compensate by bending on the guide I could get out & back in w/o pulling the head, but how much that accomplished is hard to say. Considering the amount the tensioner stuck out with the new chain on, ehhh, might not have done much.

I would really like to see how far the tensioner is sticking out on a new engine, OR, any engine with new giudes, sprockets & chain.

I hope you can make up some better giudes. I also think part of the problem is the tensioner itself.I think the teeth are too close together on the ratchet & it "Clicks" when the thing cools & pulls too hard on the chain when the engine warms & the cylinder gets taller. Someone analyzed this some time back, unsure of the findings, Re: Memory, sorry. IF the guides would take up the slack & not get rigid but would press against the chain & keep it from allowing the tensioner to "Click" before the chain was loose enough to avoid being stretch by the jug growing taller when the engine warms up, then maybe that would help out. This could be part of the reason for the disparity in chain life between riders. If someone makes several town runs a day & the bike goes theu 3 or 4 warming/cooling cycles in a day, then the tensioner has had more opportunity to "Click" on a cooling cycle, as opposed to someone putting the same or even more miles on one & not stopping anywhere long enough to allow too much cooling.

POssible? Plausible?

One way or another I'd like to see use nail this down and get a fix for it some how.
It just puzzles me that Suk is still making a bike with the same prob for so many years and not try'n to fix it. You know they have heard or known about this...

Reelthing wrote on 11/19/08 at 14:35:07:

It's not a case of a stronger chain, but the wear points were treated so they last longer.

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 11/20/08 at 08:47:46:


We've 60000kms on original cam chain,  total is more than that as the engine was a few years old when I bought it. The chain's somewhat noisy though. The engine's 1993 or 1994.

verslagen1 wrote on 11/20/08 at 10:08:44:


Perhaps longer trips are better for overall longevity. Most of time the bike was used to and from company offices across Denmark and Germany. I rarely started it without running a tankful or three. Our engine had no recent work done when I bought it so the total mileage for the cam chain could be over 70000 kms.
I don't think Savage cam chain issues are chain related. For comparison, my SV's had similar use with similar HV cam chains and last time I checked the valves at 112000 kms, the original cam chain tensioners were about 25 to 35% out so there can't be a lot of chain wear at that point.

I'm gonna have to get a count on the number of coils, then I reverse engineering it using a program