anyone here a super first gen guru, cam tensioner question....

ok..... so my bike was rattling, more than normal for a tappy old VF, i investigated and found the bottom part of my camchain tensioner is broken off (no doubt lying in the sump as the oil isnt all metallic)...
anyway, ive got a whole load of spares as i got a whole spares bike plus i got some from work (working at a main dealer isnt all bad)....

so ive noticed that the guide that was fitted (broken) is longer than my spare, by a few cm. i have the original unit as fitted from factory laying in my spares.
(yes, the unit that was recalled back in the 80s is in my spares)
so i compared and im in this riddle: which is the right blade for the cam tensioner?
attached (i hope) is a pic to show what i mean.
the one on the left is the broken one i took off the bike, the middle one is the original one fitted from the factory, with the long blade, the one on the right is the spare one, with a shorter blade.



the part number is the same for front and rear cylinders, so what do i do?

 

When crashed my first 83 VF750, I found both my tensioner arms looked like your broken one. I am not sure what caused it, but both were ground off after a dealer installed new cams under a recall, so I thought them put them ion wrong. I do not believe the one on the right is the correct one. Partzilla shows the two tensioners and two different guides are no longer available. Maybe some knows of some aftermarket company that makes these, otherwise we are all in trouble.

 

The broken one wasn't installed right in the first place and jumped out of the pocket. There's a pocket down in the case it fits in. Only way to break them is not have it in the pocket, which is easy to do. It gets ground up on the crank.

The one in the center is the one I would use. The one on the right doesn't look correct. After market? Or a different year? Not sure. Was this the front cylinders?

 

yeah, was the front, i was thinking the same, to use the long one i mean, i suspected the short one was aftermarket too, i have some more spares that i will look at and see what they look like, cant see why it would have jumped out the locator pocket bit though.... hmmmm

 

It's on such an angle with the tensioner so when you try and get the tensioner in place it will pop out or sit on top of the pocket edge. Then it comes out later. You just have to double, triple check before bolting down.