touring america, the world?

[Clinton Kendall]

Aware of the balancer chain tensioner problems, I was careful to adjust the tensioner on my Y2K KLR often. Then, after a couple thousand miles I began experiencing a chattering, rattling sound from the left side of the engine when accelerating from low RPM. In any other condition it sounded and ran fine. Being curious and paranoid I investigated. With the alternator cover off I saw that the slotted adjuster arm had a lot of free play with the bolt loosened. I took out the free play manually in the direction of more tension and tightened the bolt. Noise completely gone! Now being more curious I remove the cover again and pulled the rotor. The source of the adjuster arm free play was discovered. The arm was loose on the D-shaped shaft which carries the tensioner arm. This allows the tensioner arm to jump back and forth even though the slotted adjuster arm is tightly bolted down. This jumping is worse at low RPM under power when crank speed variation is greatest, thus producing the chattering/rattling noise. This condition must be very hard on the whole tensioner assembly. The play also eliminates the ability to adjust the tensioner without taking the alternator cover off. I decided something had to be done. I saw no obvious wear on the adjuster arm or its shaft so I concluded a tolerance mismatch had occurred and bought a new adjuster arm hoping it would be a tight fit. No luck. It was just as loose as the original. Not seeing another solution, I laid some weld inside the adjuster arm's D-shaped hole and filed away until a light push fit was achieved with no slop. 10K later the noise has not returned. Clint

[John Sideris]

looking for company for a nice long ride...will go anywhere...i am in nyc...or if anyone could tell me where i can go to find organized trips cross country or out of the country...thanks for the help