Damn, I was hoping for you to do a write-up on the APE . Just kidding, good work, mate!

 

Small update, been riding today about 200km with the old, cleaned CCT in the bike.


It has NEVER idled this smooth, has a LOT more torque that with the "new" unit and runs overall better than ever before.

So people, if your CCT starts rattling, it is possible it`s not actually broken, it just needs to be cleaned!

 

Hey I have this same problem! Between 2k-3k rpms there is a noise in the engine that sounds like a loose part rattling in my engine and the only thing I'd do is increase the idle speed and decrease it for a bit and it would temporarily fix the issue (sometimes)
I actually had it for a long while (I'd say about 3-4 months) and couldn't figure out what it was.
I didn't most of the maintenance on it because I couldn't figure it out and after I had the carbs cleaned out the noise went away more the most part. And that was the 15th of this month. Yesterday I was riding and I heard it again at about 2k rpms just for a split second or two but it went away on it's own and was wondering if there's something I missed. Now I'm thinking this might be it.
Has anyone here seen a walk through of how to do this?? I'm still a little bit of a newb and this is my first bike so I'm kind of learning everything as it comes along. Consider me the apeman from Geiko attempting to do this

 

Well:



Take off the right side service hatch and the right side tail fairing (I had to take the whole tail off cause it`s a one-part¨...



Take out the three bolts holding the back end of the side fairing, and the one under the front blinker as well as the one in the triangular vent at the bottom of the fairing. It would be a good idea to take the whole fairing off, I didn`t bother, it can be done that way but you have to be careful not to bend the fairing too far out



Notice that the middle one of the three bolts holding the fairing is longer than the other two.



Right, here is the CCT, take off the two bolts holding the clutch cable leg, no need to touch the adjustment. You also can take out the engine bracket if you don`t have fiddly fingers but it`s not necessary.



take out the two bolts holding the CCT, take the top one off first so the bottom one will hold the cct in place and you have that extra 1cm to do it. Notice which way the metal gasket is, there are two rivets on it that have a high side and a flat side, remember which way is up. The spring will push the tensioner out a bit.

Take the tensioner to your hand, push the piston in for a bit and pull the pin out, the piston and the spring inside will fall out. Blow compressed air into the small hole in the flange of the CCT and watch brown foam spray into the cylinder side, this is oil and crap from the little valve from the bottom of the unit. Take some carb/brake etc cleaner and spray liberally into the cylinder to get all the impurities out, repeat the blow/spray until no more stuff comes out. Push the spring and the piston in and insert the pin back onto it`s groove. Put the bike back together in reversed order, when you first start the bike, for a second it will sound like a tank clattering away on a pebble road but right when you give it a few revs and the oil reaches the cct it should go away.

Easy as pie, shouldn`t take more than an hour.

If this doesn`t work then your CCT is shot and needs to be replaced, however it`s so easy to try I recommend doing that first.

 

Bumping the post just to confirm that this is an excellent guide on how to do it. I did it yesterday to my CCT (which was pretty clean and functioning well, I might add). Took me about half an hour. Don't really know if it solved anything yet but at least I tried this one before doing anything else. Doesn't cost a thing either!
Thanks Mattson.

 

Wait, I did a write up on the Kreiger, a manual cam-chain tensioner that has been fault-free.