During the course of my rebuild/conversion of a 1980 K|1300 B2 model I decided to do some back tracking into the engine. I started out 19 years ago when I picked up the bike as a basket case from a kid in his early 20's who had done a valve job and screwed up the timing of the valves and bent a valve. He gave up on the project and that's where I came in. Being a bit of a motor head (understatement) I started the rebuild with a minor port polish, refaced the valves and valve seats and started reassembly. Being a father with young kids and a new wife, life just seemed to occupy my time in other ways than finishing off the KZ. So it sat for the next 17 years waiting for me to find some "MY Time" to go back to things that I love, like working on the old KZ.
Early this year I started the rebuild and it's been at a slow pace. Part of the reason happens to be because I joined this forum and after going through the FAQ page (which is a godsend to this forum) I came up with a list of things I needed to investigate and understand before modifying or design changing anything on my bike and especially before starting it up and taking it for a ride. If you haven't figured me out as of yet, I'm all about the engineering aspect of machinery more so than about the riding experience. I will investigate things to death before I make changes.
There's lots of info on the site about the cam chain tensioner and the faults associated with the original. The consequences of running with a faulty tensioner is the abnormal wear and tear on the camshaft drive chain and associated gears and tensioning wheels etc. The camshaft chain according to Partszilla is obsolete so we need a replacement (aftermarket).
Let’s start by talking about the stock camshaft chain. As near as I can tell, the original design is a Morse Silent Chain inverted tooth chain labeled as a HY-VO Silent Chain. Morse is a subsidiary of Borg Warner who as a company is very reputable in the driveline business. Kawasaki opted to use this silent chain design, but as to who manufactured and supplied the chain they used, I can't tell. There are a number of chain manufacturers out there producing silent chains, some of them are very reputable, others questionable.
Since the advent of the internet, we now have International Global markets and as such anybody can manufacture items and sell them as "direct replacements". They may suggest that they have reproduced these items to meet or exceed the original standard. They may also suggest that they are an ISO 9001 company which would lead you to believe that they have high standards. ISO 9001 only requires then to have an internal quality control aspect to their manufacturing process, ie. self monitoring, self regulating, no reporting to an external regulator. Yes, it’s a standard but as far as standards go, it’s somewhat a low quality standard.
One of the negative effects that’s happened because of the internet driven expanding market is that a number of “third world” companies are now flooding the market with lower quality parts at reduced prices compared to reputable companies who’ve been marketing quality parts for years. And add to that because of reduced market share, quality manufacturers have now gone to these “third Worlds” and started manufacturing to reduce costs so as to be able to compete with the new market. The end result is that we the consumer have been forced to accept lower quality items because the “good stuff” is no longer manufactured. Who’s at fault here, We the consumer!! We opted to buy the cheaper items rather than the more expensive items and without realizing that we drove the manufacturing to produce cheaper items.
So why post this topic “Camshaft Chain Option(s)”? We need a replacement chain. We don’t know the original standard. We don’t know the original supplier to the OEM part. It was manufactured 35 years ago and no longer available. Since the original design, there have been a number of engineering changes to the design in order to improve longevity. Also, I suspect that in order for different manufacturers to produce Silent Chains that will fit the original design gears (drive trains), they all had to come up with minor insignificant design changes in order to patent the new design and produce the item without infringing on copyrights.
What I would like to do here is take advantage of our great Forum and capitalize on our experiences and see if as a group, we can reverse engineer a decent replacement for our Camshaft Chain. It will be a group effort and if nothing else, a great exercise in seeing how engineering change should be done properly, with documentation (posts in the forum) to track the change and monitor for positive or adverse effects. I’m asking for your help here. If you have any relevant information please post
Where does that leave us? Where can we go from here? We need to find out if we can,
1. Who produced the original chain, does anybody know?
2. Who amongst us has an original chain (and they know this to be a fact) and can they accurately measure it up and post? (answer- I do and being the third owner I do know this to be a fact, so I’ll post)
3. Who presently is manufacturing chains that fit the original design?
4. Who on this site has replaced their Camshaft Chain and what components are they currently running with, and by that I mean what chain did you install, what manual adjust tensioner or self adjusting tensioner with what modifications, new nylon tensioning gear or steel gear, state of the drive gear and driven gears at the time of replacement.
5. What engine oil are you using and how often are you changing it?
6. If you have replaced the chain, how frequent have you monitored the chain and adjusted if required. How many miles or kilometers since replacement.
7. How’s the noise level? Better/worse?
8. Have you had a chance to look at the gears since replacement?
9. Typical weather you tend to ride in more importantly how hot?
10. Are you a cruiser running easy or are you aggressive and running the tires off of the bike?
11. If you replaced the chain, at what mileage did it need doing? What chain came out (trying to ascertain what chains are failing and at what mileage)
