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This whole topic just blows my mind!! Why Kawasaki decided to call it a cam chain tensioner is laughable. It's a cam chain slack adjuster.
The secondary shaft is the drive for the camshafts and pulls on the cam chain which pulls on the exhaust cam and in turn the intake cam. The tension on the cam chain is between the secondary shaft and the intake shaft from the front of the engine. The section of the cam chain between the intake shaft and the secondary shaft on the back side of the engine is not under any load whatsoever and that's where the excess slack in the chain is taken up. In theory the compression force of the "tensioner" spring only needs to be enough to push the tensioner rod out so that the roller bearing on the original tensioner or the notch locking system on the zx11 tensioner lock the rod and hold it from retracting, thus maintaining the "slack" in the cam chain down to a minimum.

The worst situation happens when the slack in the chain is excessive and allows the section of cam chain on the rear of the engine between the secondary shaft and the intake shaft to whip back and forth which would slap the nylon gear and prematurely wear the nylon gear.

The other thing to bear in mind is that compression springs have a varied tension. For example, the exhaust valve spring holds a tension on the valve of around 120 lb. per sq. inch when closed and around 220 lb. per sq. inch at an opening of .315" so the tension increases as the spring is compressed. The cam chain tensioner spring has it's highest force on the chain when the chain is new and as the chain stretches the tensioner starts taking up the slack by the tensioner rod extending and as it does the force of the spring reduces it's pressure and this is why you really should learn how to manually adjust out the slack in your cam chain with a manual adjuster. If you do it correctly, you'll only put enough force on the nylon gear to nicely take up the slack.

Long story shortened the whole purpose is to take up the slack not put tension on the chain. That's it I'm done.

KB