That's a good deal. IDK what mods are allowed there. Someone said something about not being allowed to change intake or exhaust, something, I don't remember who,,  or the details..

There are 63.000 km on the bike and I have put around 15000 of them there.
I have no history from before I bought it.
I have changed oil quite often... Especially the first  times, since it had been standing still a long time.
Think I've changed oil every 2-3k km.

Maybe it's easier to just state  this...  I read most of all,  yes,  all... threads on this forum,  before I had put 500km on the bike,  so have had a very good idea of how to take good care of my Savage from the beginning. Based on all the collective knowledge here, which is awsome...  😁

My personal guess at a reason is, that the previous owner have had the idle too low.

Updated main post with 2 more photos, showing bearing surfaces.

I cannot feel any play in the cam shaft when placed in the bearing surfaces, so I think the surfaces are still OK.

Used rockers arms and cams that are in good condition are nearly impossible to find, as they are the first parts to show wear if the wrong oil is used.

Since the cam bearings are not worn excessively, and the rocker arms and cam lobes are....I would place the blame on using an oil without an adequate amount of ZDDP.

Getting your cam welded and reground is most likely the best way to get your cam issue resolved.   I can buy new rockers from Bike Bandit next time they have a 10% discount sale and shipping will be free.....and I could have them shipped to Lancer so he could ship them back with your welded/reground cam.   Last time I checked the rockers were about $ 56 each.

I don't know how to help with the tariffs.

Dave

The cam bearings don't need ZDDP, the pressure of the cam against the head is within the ability of the oil to lubricate.  The cam/rocker load is very high when the cam is pushing on the rocker to open the valves, and the curved rocker and curved cam lobes provide very little surface area where the contact is being made.....and the result is a pressure than can exceed the shear strength of the oil....and you can get metal to metal contact - unless there is some ZDDP particles in there to prevent the metal to metal contact from occurring.

A lot of the older bikes just had a single valve pushing on each rocker....this engine has 2 valves that need to be opened, and the resulting pressure is more than the wimpy 600 ppm ZDDP level can deal with.

Did Suzuki fix this problem....maybe.  Somewhere around 2004/2005 the rockers were modified to have a hardened insert, and so far I have not seen any engine where the newer rockers have failed.  I am sure they could fail if you ran the engine low on oil - but that generally kills the bearing surfaces before it kills the rockers and cam lobes.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1476207917

Youzguyz has proven that the early rockers and cam can survive for 155,00 plus miles without wearing out - so the early rockers can survive if a proper engine oil is used.

Well... This photo is not specifically related to the topic, but just wanted to show a handy little tool I made to clean the (gasket) surfaces on the cylinder head etc. now that I had to dissassemble the head and cover.

Soft copper edge and a stainless steel handle.