billet manual cam chain tensioner

I have a ape cam chain tensioner,can anyone give me the lo down on how to adjust it. School teacher tells me I should hit it with a half inch drive impact.........help!

turn it in until you feel resistance then turn it back a 1/4 of a turn and tighten down the lock nut, make sure that you are at tdc on number 1 just so you have all the slack out of the timing chain.

"I should hit it with a half inch drive impact"... Huh? :huh: Is it stuck or something...

Ok, I have to ask how this came up for I have been thinking of swapping mine out (APE CAM chain adjuster)as well but this statement got me curious as to WTF kind of hell I may be facing....

OMR

your not gonna face any hell they are easy to install work well and look really trick also easy to adjust the lovley people at ape even give you instructions so how much easier could it be.

Thats good to hear that there easy to install .I was thinking of putting something like that on my bike too.

Can anybody tell me what the pros and cons are in doing this comversion ?

Oh I cant resist saying so but " the half inch impact" method the shop teach talks about. On that thing would create just a broken mess I'd think

barney wrote:

Thats good to hear that there easy to install .I was thinking of putting something like that on my bike too.

Can anybody tell me what the pros and cons are in doing this comversion ?

Oh I cant resist saying so but " the half inch impact" method the shop teach talks about. On that thing would create just a broken mess I'd think

The pros are that it is adjustable....no worrying about springs breaking. The cons are that it is adjustable.....you have to maintainthe adjustment periodically.


I think that was his teachers idea. Obviously a ham fisted Neanderthal that doesn't like bikes.....

Doc

All, open for opinions/correction. the biggest drawback in my experiance w/stock tensioner is that even after following rec.adjustment procedure,there is usually still some camchain noise. Hardly remarkable when one conciders the chain wends its way past 3 sprockets,3 chicklet located cogs. a carrior cog and a roller. these, combined w/the fact that there's always at least 1 cam lobe loaded make it nearly impossible to find ideal tension with valve cover in place. Billet tensioners allow one to tension by ear, but in my experiance offer poor feel as to how much tension is being exerted. making camchain adjustment vague. any/all thoughts welcome.G

As far as the half inch impact he is giving me crap. it was a joke where he is busting my chops he will get knocked out next time we work out.

now now boys play nice i prefer the manual tensioner over the stocker because under hard acceleration and then backing off the throttle quickly the stock unit can back off ,the fact that you have to adjust it periodicly is not a big problem do it at every oil change it just takes a couple of minuetes and you can do it while the oil is draining. it just gives me extra piece of mind.

Being a stock kind of guy I've never seen the ape tensioner, but will just enter my opinion that there is nothing wrong with the pre 1979 Kawasaki manual tensioner. It works just fine. The 1979 up auto tensioner works just fine too other than it's adjustment range is much less than the manual which makes no difference to the rebuild every few yrs club. My club is never rebuild and as I've mentioned before I went 150,000 miles on an original camchain and 1978 manual tensioner with a big zero of problems with that setup.

timebomb33 wrote:

now now boys play nice i prefer the manual tensioner over the stocker because under hard acceleration and then backing off the throttle quickly the stock unit can back off ,the fact that you have to adjust it periodically is not a big problem do it at every oil change it just takes a couple of minuetes and you can do it while the oil is draining. it just gives me extra piece of mind.

We have a winner!!!

Under hard acceleration, when you back off the throttle, the stock adjuster can momentarily back out, allowing the valves to go out of time, then snap back in.

That is why we came up with one that can not do that.

Jay

Just placed one on the kzr750r1 a few months back. Dropped the cam chain noise considerably and now I know it has some tension instead of guessing. Rides better without the chain being sloppy.

Should have done this years ago.