| Hi Dugald,
Thanks. The noise is caused by chain slack that cannot be tightened by the tensioners, ie slack between the links that is sufficient, say between three or four links, to cause float on sprocket teeth. Motorcyclists know about chains, eh.
I did not know the tensioners were rubber covered. This is great, as you can go incremental: you check wear - groove depth-, and if it looks ok, you replace the chain only. And then if it gets noisy at say 160k miles, you know it's time to change the tensioners, a big job. But if you're careful the tensioners will last well over 200k, the slack being taken up by the chain tensioning piston. Teflon heel surfaces on tensioners tend to go bang after a while, not rubber.
One thing is that uneven firing strokes (like on a Laverda 3 cyl or a 6 cyl from a V8, or an inline five) tend to jerk chains and cause premature wear. An inline six is near pefect in harmony, nothing better really.
So, timing chain replacement is on my winter project list.
Laverda |