I'm currently taking apart my 86 savage for the exact reason and also noticed some pretty serious rubbing on the case on the inside. My cam chain tensor was passed the threads as my chain had stretched way to much. I'm at 23,000 KM's so I'm assuming it needed changing a long time ago but I never knew as this is my first bike. I'm now looking into getting a new chain and a new cam chain tensioner.
Vergslagen, I read about your mod piece and I was wondering how much it'd be to ship one to Saskatchewan, Canada.
I also did an post about my initial problem that lead me to tear it down quite a long time ago before I had diagnosed the problem below.
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1368582951/10#10