Quick update. I bolted the motor back in the frame this morning! ::012:: Still a LOT of work to do before I hear it run, and not a lot of time available to work on it right now.
That whole work and family thing.
But the main thing I wanted to post is that I believe I fully understand what happened and wanted to let anyone out there that may want to adjust their own valves about the trap I got caught in. There are two related issues.
First when you put in the second cam (intake) with the timing mark aligned, it is actually pushing down a bit on the number 2 cylinder intake valves. If you look closely in this picture you can see that the cam will not quite lay flat in the bearings because the #2 lobes are hitting the valves.
When you put the bearing caps on and tighten them down, it will cause the cam to twist hard to the right (clockwise). That is why the manual tells you to tie wrap the chain to the sprocket. If you don't the cam will rotate and jump a tooth on the chain. You can see the tie wraps in this picture:
I figured out that it actually requires that you install the cam one tooth to the left (counterclockwise) of the correct alignment before you tighten the bearing caps down because the cam will twist so hard that even with tie wraps locking the chain to the sprocket, it pulls the chain so tight that it ends up a tooth to the right.
All that is OK, just a bit of a pain when the motor is still in the frame. But all that tension helped hide the real problem.
Because the cylinder slants forward, the rear (intake side) chain guide flops forward and down when the chain is loose. It can go way forward as you can see in this picture.
That will allow the chain to slip around the guide in the wider sections of the cam chain channel. As you can see here.
This is very easy to see when the motor is out of the frame but when installed in the bike it is very hard to see. And from the bottom. looking under the clutch cover, all looks normal. So while I was installing the cam and fighting the above cam rotation and tension issues, I noticed the chain seemed really tight to get over the sprocket but assumed it was because of the cams hitting the valves. ::005:: Now that I have done it with the motor out I can see that is should not have been that tight.
So the top of the guide got twisted to the side and that allowed the tensioner to push directly on the cam chain instead of on the guide. I can see from the groves worn in the case and the guide exactly how the chain was running. So it started up and ran fine. But of course, the chain slowly ate away the tip of the tensioner until the plunger fell out of the tensioner body and the cam chain then jumped off.
So the bottom line is, if you take the cams out, double check the cam chain guide alignment before you button it up. It should look like this when you are all done.John