jbrown
Active Member
I bought a new feeler gauge set marked with inch and mm to check my valves with. Intakes were all mid-range, three of the exhausts were right at the tight end, and one exhaust was .01 mm too tight. I decided I didn't have enough time that day to pull the cam and finish it up, so I let it sit until I had more time. A few days later I measured clearances again to be sure I had a reliable starting point for my calculations. I had mislaid my new feeler gauge set, so I used an old set marked only in thousandths of an inch and did the conversion. This time my exhaust valves were all in spec. Hmmm.... Double and triple checked. Broke out my trusty old Starrett micrometer, which I trust completely. The old gauge set is dead on. I found the new metric/inch set and measured those. Way off. Several don't match either the mm or inch marking. The bike's all back together with no adjustment needed. Yay!
BTW, I decided to replace the auto cam chain tensioner with a graves manual adjuster I recently got from a member here. That went just fine, but now I'm in the group that is uncertain about how tight it should be. I started by setting it finger tight at the loosest point as I slowly moved the engine through a couple revolutions. It's only an 8mm hex on the adjuster, so finger tight isn't very tight. The bike started right up. No horrific noises. But it is a Tenere, so there are plenty of other, regular noises. I see lots of different suggested techniques for adjusting, and most rely on listening for clatter (too loose) or whir (too tight). I've gone a half turn tighter and a half turn looser from my finger tight starting point, and I can't hear any difference. People say you'll know the clatter when you hear it. I don't know if I will, but I'm sure I'll hear the BANG! when I go too loose and the chain jumps a few teeth. Does anyone know of any you tube videos that demonstrate what too loose and/or too tight sound like?
BTW, I decided to replace the auto cam chain tensioner with a graves manual adjuster I recently got from a member here. That went just fine, but now I'm in the group that is uncertain about how tight it should be. I started by setting it finger tight at the loosest point as I slowly moved the engine through a couple revolutions. It's only an 8mm hex on the adjuster, so finger tight isn't very tight. The bike started right up. No horrific noises. But it is a Tenere, so there are plenty of other, regular noises. I see lots of different suggested techniques for adjusting, and most rely on listening for clatter (too loose) or whir (too tight). I've gone a half turn tighter and a half turn looser from my finger tight starting point, and I can't hear any difference. People say you'll know the clatter when you hear it. I don't know if I will, but I'm sure I'll hear the BANG! when I go too loose and the chain jumps a few teeth. Does anyone know of any you tube videos that demonstrate what too loose and/or too tight sound like?