Has anyone tried to make a home made APE CCT?? I mean come on it looks simple enough as well as easy enough to dodge buying a 60 dollar bolt. no? Would like someone to enlighten me. Thanks bros.

 

2 people on here I have personally dealt with had some homebrew goods.

Berga- Student at a school where he is able to CNC stuff, fired up the old CNC mill and made himself something special

Jk72180- Had a modded stock CCT to be wingnut-actuated. It seemed borderline shady to me, but it worked for him for a looooong time, as far as I know.

I just bought the APE. Mine is some sketchy early-production model, and it leaks. Fit and finish is pretty poor. Others have had great luck.

 

Guy in Mexico made one using cause he was having trouble getting one shipped to him.

Short of issues like that, not sure its worth trying except as purely an engineering exercise.

 

was still working the begining of dec before i parked it. a shop did mine for 20 bucks the oil passage has been blocked the end drilled and taped and the insides removed except the piece that goes into the motor. a little shady but works basicly the same as the ape.

 

I used a CNC mill to make mine nice-and-curvy-like, but you could do it pretty easily with a band saw, disk sander, two drills and a tap.

I would use 1/2" or 5/8" flat aluminum stock (or steel, but it will complicate things.) Rough out the shape you want using a band saw. Then use a disk sander to sand the part to shape. If you haven't done it before, you'll be surprised how easily the sander removes material (but a coarse grit helps). The part will become extraordinary hot very quickly, so have a bucket of cold water nearby to dip it every few seconds.

Then drill your holes. This will be difficult to do accurately. The following file may help: (print it to scale so the center holes is exactly .900")
http://www.rpi.edu/~berga/files/ActualCCT.bmp

Drill the outer holes with a 1/4" drill.
Drill the inner hole with a .257" (F size) drill, and tap 5/16-18.
You may prefer to drill and tap a metric size, so that you will use a metric wrench to adjust. But, it tends to be tougher to find those taps.

If you do it, post some pictures and show us how it turned out.

Edit: you also need a 5/16-18x3" fully threaded bolt, which you may have trouble getting. I ended up using a regular bolt and threading it on my lathe.

 

As far as bolt availability, you might see if you have something equivalent to my local hardware supplier Fastenal. Basically, it's a store that sells what you need to, well, fasten ALL things EVER. You walk in and say, for example, "I need a full thread M8 Bolt with a 8MM socket cap, it needs to be made of stainless steel and be 90MM long. No grip ridges on the socket cap. Smooth sides." ...then they say BAM and slap it down on the counter. They even give me a student discount because I'm a B.S.M.E. undergrad.

 

Were you talking to me? I took your advice and called around. Found a place near me called Douglas Industrial that also sells all fasteners. Sure enough, got myself a fully threaded bolt, no problem. One buck.

Didn't get the discount though -- what's with that??

 

So your saying I can jot down this information, take it to a hard ware store and they can make me an exact one from start to finish no problem for cheaper??

 

Umm.... No. We're saying you can jot down the information and buy the bolt that you need. The "APE CCT" is more of a bracket. A bolt screws through it and tightens the chain guide. You should maybe google for a picture of what this actually does.

My post said that you could possibly make the bracket yourself, without special tools, if you do it carefully enough. You've doubtlessly seen the following photo:
http://www.orientexpress.com/images/...ioners-SAC.jpg

In your simple version using flat aluminum stock, you will omit the upper and lower "cylinders" which exist to give extra support to the bolt. But this definitely isn't a job you want to pay someone to do for you. At that point, it's cheaper to buy one, not to mention quality.

 

So no matter what if I do end up getting my hands on the bolt im gonna need that bracket/diamond shaped piece? And ive been looking up prices for the acual tensioner itself for days now.