Timing Marks slightly off - is this normal wear?

Hi folks. I have an 09 with about 146000 kms on her. Seems to run well as always, just doing the annual tear down and maintenance items, fork seals, was going to re/re the swingarm to check bearings/ujoint for any signs of trouble. My issue is that I am checking the valve clearance, discovered that since the last shim change at 92000 kms I now have a few (9) that are at the edge of the spec and am planning to go in and change shims. Upon checking I noticed that on both my right and left cylinder banks the timing marks seem to be about 1/2 a tooth late behind crank rotation if you follow. They are certainly not a full tooth out as that would put the marks way off, but enough that I am suspecting some chain/guide/sprocket wear. Has anyone seen this as well and should I worry about replacing both chains/guides/sprockets?

I would check that out again. What you describe is what I found when I first did mine. I deliberately put it one tooth out to see what it looked like - because from what I could see, spot on looked like half a tooth out. It was to do with not having a perfect line of sight - I was getting a parallax effect.

I put some photos on my own website here with some notes. I'm not going to try posting them here - just now, I'm on the laptop and don't have the originals to hand.

Click the images to see a better version - see if it similar to what you see. Note that one of the photos is when I deliberately set it to be one tooth out. Another is spot on but looking from slightly too high.

I can't comment specifically about the ST, but my VTR1000F Superhawk is just like that at 80,000km: with the crank mark aligned, the cams are off by about a half tooth. I understand this is solely due to camchain stretch, and no big deal. There is a chain guide on the straight-run side (which is the side that is responsible for exact timing), but I don't know whether wear in this part (which I assume would be easier to replace) would account for that.

TerryS said:

I can't comment specifically about the ST, but my VTR1000F Superhawk is just like that at 80,000km: with the crank mark aligned, the cams are off by about a half tooth. I understand this is solely due to camchain stretch, and no big deal. There is a chain guide on the straight-run side (which is the side that is responsible for exact timing), but I don't know whether wear in this part (which I assume would be easier to replace) would account for that.

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Sounds like you are describing exactly what I see. I even put a flat thin straight edge along cylinder head surface to reference the marks to. When I advance (counterclockwise) the crankshaft to bring the cam marks into exact alignment this is what I see through the crank pointer window. I hope the image is clear enough.



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Make sure when you stop rotating the engine that you were turning it in the normal running direction. If you miss the alignment, go around again, don't back up.


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gsforster said:

Sounds like you are describing exactly what I see. I even put a flat thin straight edge along cylinder head surface to reference the marks to. When I advance (counterclockwise) the crankshaft to bring the cam marks into exact alignment this is what I see through the crank pointer window. I hope the image is clear enough.



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Click to expand...

This is what my VTR cams look like, with the T1 mark exactly aligned. Short of replacing the chains I doubt there is much that I can or should do. The bike runs just fine.

TerryS said:

This is what my VTR cams look like, with the T1 mark exactly aligned. Short of replacing the chains I doubt there is much that I can or should do. The bike runs just fine.

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Bingo that is exactly what mine look like. Since both banks are out the exact same amount I'm chalking it up to chain wear. I don't think I'll worry about it since it took almost 100000 miles to wear that little bit and still seems to run fine. Thanks for the pic



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