TOPIC:

The primary chain sprocket is far bigger in diameter that the cam chain sprocket on the crank. i.e. less rotation for the same distance.

Kawboy wrote:
Easy there KWAK 1261. I appreciate your input. Why else are we here if not to learn from each other. I value your comments.

Sorry John, just read that lot again and didnt mean it the way it read, no offence. #
but i think you hit the nail on the head, you took your measurements in relation from crank to cams therefore adding any cam chain slack into
the measurement.
im only measuring between the crank and primary shaft. they are only 110mm apart or 14 pins on the chain.
by your own calculation at the beginning of this post you gave a figure of only 1.9mm of stretch over 20 pins on the cam chain
reduce that to the 14 pins on the primary chain thats about 1.3 mm of stretch. with only 9mm of vertical movement on the chain from slack to taught i get 3 degrees of rotation on the crank. does this make sense ?? there is probably and equation that will give the answer..
Ian

No apology needed. We're good. Glad to bounce ideas around especially with those suffering from the same issues.

I can honestly say that I didn't check the cam chain tensioner to ensure that the cam chain was being held taught. That may be the difference here, but I still have the original tensioner in place and it should have automatically tightened up on the chain. It could be stuck. Ultimately, I'm going to a manual adjuster which is already bought and ready to install.

You're saying the shafts are 110mm apart so I'm going to do a little calculation here to figure this out. Realizing that Kawasaki asks us to measure the slack by raising and lowering the chain then we are actually measuring the slack twice what it really is. In your case, you've measured "18mm" of slack which is actually 9mm below the centerline and 9mm above the centerline that the chain runs on. so we could build a triangle with a base of 110mm (the distance between the shafts) and a height of 9mm (the chain hanging down below the centerline of a new straight chain). A simple Pythagorean calculation works here. Half the base squared + the height squared = third side squared (which is the slack side of the chain). 55mm squared + 9mm Squared = 3106. The square root of 3106 is 3106 is 55.72mm. So 55.72mm is the length of the stretched chain from the top of one gear to the bottom of the stretch. Multiply that times 2 and we get 111.4mm Therefore a stretched chain with 18mm measured is 1.4mm longer over the 110mm.

1.4mm is approximately 1/6th of 1 pitch (which is 3/8") I don't know how many teeth are on the crank gear but if a near out of service chain is only longer by the 1.4mm over the 110mm then the math supports your measurement and whatever I measured was incorrect.

Bottom line I have taken a measurement incorrectly and my assumptions are wrong. Now I have to go and figure out why my measurement came out at 12 degrees of slack.

I'm so grateful for the opportunities provided by this site. We get to throw ideas around and share experiences. All good! I've proven myself wrong here and openly admit it. Had we not discussed this I may have gone off on a tangent. Thanks guys for sharing your knowledge here. We all learn.