Hello,

New to me 2000 Savage.  15,900 miles.  Guy who sold it to me said I’d need to replace the cam chain tensioner.  I asked how he knew.  He said it was noisy.  How noisy?  He shut the engine off and pushed it home.  Didn’t want to do further damage.  

Well I pulled the case open and I’m at ~ 17mm.  I’ve combed this site and closely studied Verslagen’s posts, and others.  Looks like I’m inside the 18mm when it’s  “time to do something”.

So my questions are these:

1. What physically causes the noise?  Is it slack in the chain?

2.  Would the chain/tensioner be noisy at only 17mm out, noisy enough the previous owner would walk the bike home?  

3. If not, is there something else on this bike that fails in a noisy way that could be confused with the cam chain tensioner?  Interestingly, when previous owner described the cam chain tensioner problem he was pointing to the other side (left) of the crank case.  Has me suspicious.  

4.  At 17mm should I get the verslavy mod, since I already got crank case off?  What’s the measurement from the factory?

Greatly appreciate all who are so helpful on this site.

I’ve appended a photo

Common rattles are speedometer, and headlight bezel.
Don't rule them out until you rule them out.
Hand pressure will quiet them.
They can be sneaky.

Thank you all!  I talked to the owner again today.  He clarified something.  He assumed it was the tensioner, mostly because of the mileage on the bike, but wasn’t sure.  

Another thing, when the bike is pushed it makes a “ticking” or  “clicking” sound.   Is this normal?  Maybe from the drive pulley area?  

Thanks again.

JED wrote on 08/30/21 at 20:40:31:


That could be a sing of a loose pulley nut.

Does the outside of the pulley look messy?

In the photo the left pulley has worn splines as the pulley nut was loose, on the right side is a good pulley.  This bike made a clicking noise when it was pushed to my trailer.