Yeah, one or the other of those cams are off one toothThats good to hear. I do know that my VTR1000F chains have stretched noticeably after 80,000km, effectively each head is a single cylinder so gets quite a lot of pulsing/uneven cam loads, compared to the ST which is effectively a parallel twin with even firing every 360 degrees.
This was the front head cam timing (exhaust to left) with the crank aligned; runs great:
No, the cams were perfectly in phase with each other so with a small amount of crank rotation the marks aligned correctly with the cylinder head, but then the crank timing mark was off.
interesting, I thought that multi-plate (Hy-vo I think it was called?) chain was more resistant to stretching than that article would imply. When I got to about 100k miles on my FZR back in the day I called Yamaha and asked about cam chain stretch and their recommended replacement interval, since it was never mentioned in the manual. Their answer was it should last the life of the engine, no replacement interval recommended. The chain did look a little different than what was shown in the article, but was fairly similar.There's a pretty decent article on the general issue of camchain stretch here:
Cam Chain Wear and Replacement Tips
This week’s post is dedicated to an engine part that is often overlooked, its importance not totally understood, and its service specs minimal. I’m talking about the timing chain. I want to discuss and share with you some signs that the cam chain is wornwww.diymotofix.com
Brutal (but technically correct)."Is"
Brought to you by your friendly neighborhood grammar police.
I just got finished replacing both my 1300 cam chains due to wear and an obvious misalignment of the timing marks, accompanied by intermittent ticking noise from the rh side tensioner. I replaced the tensioners too because they were showing wear near the fully extended area of the plungers. I will find photos to post. Chains were on back order, none on the Continent so this is not a common repair, but I will tell you for sure that the 1300 chains do indeed wear (or stretch, as some say) and if I had to guess I'd say the marks were off around 8 degrees at the cams. I put new chains alongside old chains to compare and the length difference is obvious. Engine runs very smooth now and seems to idle like new, have not ridden yet due to winter. This was as 185000 kms or around 115000 miles. The chains do wear, but nobody replaces them and I probably didn't need to but I'm a little fussy about things like that.....
