TOPIC:

There's a thing on the rear of the block - to the right of the cam chain tensioner adjuster that looks like another tensioner but it has a small rubber hose feeding it - looks like an oil line but it's only held on with hose clamps so I doubt it's an oil line - what is it?

Below is a photo of the mystery rubber hose line I'm referring to. Isn't that the tensioner that folks replace? Is that original or has a PO come up with a hydraulic mod?

Weird! So it appears the mystery part is 'factory'. I found the snip below on Partzilla ZN1300 'CAMSHAFTS-CHAIN-TENSIONER' fiche. So does that mean this is how Kawasaki solved (or tried to solve) the tensioner problem?

Figured it out by yourself with a bit of homework. Nice ! The hydraullic piston just replaced the spring. You still have the tensioning rod checked with the locking balls mechanism (items 13116A and 14020) similar to the KZ tensioner. Since there's little to no information regarding the ZN tensioner on our site, you may want to ask members on maybe the American Voyager site and get their feelings on it. I suspect that the design flaw of our tensioner just moved over to the ZN tensioner. Had they been smart they would have put a check valve on the oil feed to the hydraullic piston to stop the piston from retracting instead of trying to mechanically stop the piston rod from retracting. That's how Porsche did it on the 2 camshaft drive chain tensioners on my 928 Porsche. On the Porsche, the check valve is integral to the banjo bolt on the oil feedline. Now THAT would be an interesting mod for the ZN tensioner.
I picked up a 7 year old 928 Porsche off of Ebay for $4200 because of a noise in the rigth cylinder head. Turned out to be a camchain rattling off of the camshaft cover. Found that some jackass had done some work on the camshaft tensioner and replaced one checked banjo bolt with a banjo bolt checked in the wrong direction. Instead of supplying oil to the tensioner piston, it was stopping the oil from applying oil pressure to the piston. Went to Porsche and talked to a technician and he told me that there was only one Porsche with a checked banjo that flowed like the example I had and it was on a completely different model for a completely different application. Cost me $8.00 for the right check valve. it's been working like a charm for 24 years now. (That 928 is in my garage. It's my "other" baby)

Did some more investigation and apparently this is just an oil line for lubrication, not a hydraulic thing.

Bucko wrote: Did some more investigation and apparently this is just an oil line for lubrication, not a hydraulic thing.

I also was under the impression that it was a hydraulic thing, it was fitted to last of the line ZG1300s as well. I wonder why they chose to run a separate oil feed for lubrication? Oh well you learn something new each day.