Topic: CB400F Cam chain guide and slipper problem how do i fix? Pictures!

[andrsn]

My cam chain has always rattled and I've adjusted my valves a few times, messed with the adjustment etc... nothing ever helped, at all. I took my rocker cover off today to see if there was something more going on and sure enough there is. The guide seems to have eaten its way through the shelf it is supposed to be sitting on (check out the pictures below).

and

The guide itself is also damaged (missing one of the pins that sits in shelf thing)

What should i do? I'm going to order a new guide, but it doesn't seem like it will ever sit how it is supposed to.

Also, when i tried to remove the slipper or tensioning side, it wouldn't come out. It seemed stuck in there and I didn't want to pull on it too hard. Any experience or ideas on that?

[Tim2005]

The guide doesn't have a pin- it should have just lumps of the plastic sticking out from the sides to hold it in place. Maybe someone put the wrong guide in yours. I'd get a correct one & see how well it fits, if it fits badly you may have to get that damaged shelf built up with weld.

The blade at the rear should pull out- they can be tight, there's actually a little packing piece in the tensioner at the bottom & they sometime stick on that.

[andrsn]

The guide doesn't have a pin- it should have just lumps of the plastic sticking out from the sides to hold it in place. Maybe someone put the wrong guide in yours. I'd get a correct one & see how well it fits, if it fits badly you may have to get that damaged shelf built up with weld.

The blade at the rear should pull out- they can be tight, there's actually a little packing piece in the tensioner at the bottom & they sometime stick on that.

I think it used to be lumps of plastic, but has worn and now shows the metal beneath it. Do you think I could JB weld the shelf, or would that not be strong enough?

[Bodi]

The shelf looks pretty normal to me. I don't know what that metal stuff is, the slipper and just sits in the groove as I recall. To the best of my knowledge there's no metal part there so what those bits are is a mystery to me. There are rubber thingies at the bottoms of both slipper and adjusting guide I think, and the guide has a holding metal part with (I think) another rubber thingie in it at the top hekld on with two bolts.

[andrsn]

The shelf looks pretty normal to me. I don't know what that metal stuff is, the slipper and just sits in the groove as I recall. To the best of my knowledge there's no metal part there so what those bits are is a mystery to me. There are rubber thingies at the bottoms of both slipper and adjusting guide I think, and the guide has a holding metal part with (I think) another rubber thingie in it at the top hekld on with two bolts.

The gauges that the guide wore in the engine block are definitely not normal, maybe the pictures don't illustrate them well enough. Any how, is there any engine putty type product that I fill the gauges with? I was going to do that and then make some small steel pieces to go on top so the new guide cannot do the same thing. Any other ideas?

[Bodi]

Sorry, I bow to your superior knowledge. I've only had a 400F engine apart a few dozen times.
Here's a pic of a relatively normal 400F camchain slipper socket. The little gouges are not normal but this head is serviceable as is.
Unless your pictures are somehow distorted, my socket looks exactly like yours except yours has what appears to be bent bits of mangled steel wedged into it. These steel bits are foreign and are not part of a stock slipper, some PO must have McGuyvered a solution for a broken slipper blade. The stock slipper just has a pair of ears/pins/whatever extending from the rounded top and these sit in the wider part at the top of the socket. I can't find a slipper just now to show a pic of the end.