I eyeball it and never have problems. What I do is sit on my butt with the wheel between my legs looking down the chain. I try to line the part of the chain wrapped around the rear gear with the rest of the chain. Some people just measure axle bolt to swingarm pivot bolt on both sides but I always found I ended up being a tiny bit off doing it that way.

 

K, I got home, tell me what you guys think.....as I never payed attention to how this stuff looked before I took it apart.

Front, I think it looks pretty straight but it might be a bit off, Should I have been making sure it was straight when I put the front on too?



Rear....wheel seems to look straight (besides my crooked stand) with the bike but...



A close-up of the sprocket and chain seems to be at a bit of an angle with the tire?

 

According to my owners manual (I know what a crazy concept) you just note where the adjustment marks are on the chain side are and replicate that on the other side.

Why not just do that and not worry about eyeing it?

 

Yeah, or screw the adjusters in all the way, then count the number of turns evenly on both sides until proper slack is obtained.

 

I am a perfectionist so I don't use the markings and counting the wrench turns seems to take forever.

platnumbob, the pics you took are too hard to judge, I will get you a pic tomorrow of what I look for.

 

I guess I am a bit confused of what to look for.....for the chain I loosened up the axle in the back and counted the turns for the chain adjusters and found that notch 4 was the same # of turns on both sides. Seemed to give me a perfect 1 1/4 chain in the tightest portions.

As for wheel alignment I have no idea what you guys are checking for...everything seems to be straight to me in the back. If anything the front wheel looks like it may be a bit off but there is no way to adjust it....I mean all there is is an axle going through the rim and 2 spacers right?

 

As long as the adjusters are set the same on both sides it should be straight provided the frame or swingarm aren't tweaked in any way, and nothing is binding between the spacers. Your chain/sprocket definitely looks off from the rear wheel which means you probably do need to needs look into what is causing that misalignment, unless its some kind of optical illusion from the photo.

 

You can eye it up - or - you can measure from the axle to a solid fixed point on either side. Quite often the markings on the swing arm are different from side to side.

 

You really need to go and buy a dictionary.

Honda knows how to build an entire motorcycle with correct clearences and an engine with tolerances that are in some cases approaching human hairs and they can't make two sides of aluminum with matching markings? I don't think so.

 

Spare me the rude comments. Everyone has their own way of doing things. Using the markings on the bike reminds me of using a ruler with nothing but the inch markings, while missing the 1/16 markings.

On top of that, I know someone who was a honda mechanic for years who didn't use those markings either.