Hey fellas, I picked up this 2000 929RR with 4800 miles on it for 1600 bucks. Story is the original owner lent the bike to a friend and it came back with a noise so he parked it for 15 years. Guy I bought it from who bought the bike from original owner fixed a fueling issue the bike was having and then noticed a noise coming from the top end. Thinking it was the CCT he took it to a local dealer and they replaced it for him. Apparently the top end noise was still present but he took the bike back anyway. Next day he was riding it he said it just died on him.

I picked up the bike and after figuring out what I thought at the time was zero compression because of the cam chain jumping a tooth or two I dropped the motor, and swingarm, lol. What a pain in the *** by the way. Here is where **** went south real quick. Pulled the valve cover to find the intake cam gear off the camshaft and wedged against the exhaust cam gear. Thankfully the cam chain broke and after a leak down test showing 15% on all four cylinders I got really lucky not having a bent valve. The noise he was hearing was the cam gear bolt hitting the engine case lol. Never found the second bolt for the cam gear but I did find all the nubs from the cam chain.

Fast forward to getting parts in and my dad and I going to assemble the top end. With the crank on the timing mark and the cams oriented correctly they would not rest in the journals without pressure on the buckets. No big deal just tighten down the caps with even pressure. Tried to put the cam chain on before tightening the caps, no go, tried to put the cam chain on after tightening the caps, nope. The chain seriously looked like it was not long enough but we compared it to the broken one and it is the same. CCT is out of engine and the guides are not interfering. The only way we could get the timing chain on was to remove the intake cam gear and install it and the chain after tightening the caps down. This made getting the timing correct a hassle and we had to put one cam gear bolt in then rotate the motor to access the other. With the chain finally on it had slack but not what I would consider a normal amount. There was no feasible way to install the camshafts the way the service manual wanted us to.

So here's the question, would an aftermarket cam cause this? There were no markings on the cam that eluded to it being non OEM. It would not rest without pressure on the buckets and I'm sure this was a major contributor to our chain installation woes. Good news is the bike is back together now and running like a top so I stand to make a good chunk of change on it. Thanks for reading and I hope someone can provide some insight on this because the way we had to install the cams did not seem normal.

 

Wow, sounds like a freakin' nightmare but glad you got it figured out and were able to get it up and running!

Oh, and I don't have a clue re: aftermarket cams... lol