1988 CCBR600f CCT

[Kathryn42]

Hi guys. My CBR600 has a bit of cam chain noise (98,000km, no surprises there!) and I have bought an APE manual CCT for it.
On watching some of the installation videos (all of which are for other sorts of bike) I notice that a lot of them recommend putting cable ties around the cam chain and sprockets to prevent tooth-skipping when the OEM CCT is removed. Are they not fooling themselves? The crankshaft end of things is quite unrestrained, although on an end-mounted cam drive I guess you could take up most of the slack in the chain. I cannot see how this is possible on a mid-line cam drive such as the one on the early CBRs. From looking at the shop manual, it looks as if the cylinder block casing would get in the way of an effective procedure.
One of the videos is on a Yamaha R1, and does not use the cable ties at all, merely rotating the engine to TDC to minimise valve spring tension on the cams, which is very sensible, and changing the OEM CCT fir the APE manual one.
On starting the motor it purred like a kitten, although personally I would have rotated the engine by hand for a couple of turns before hitting the starter, just in case!
It seems quite possible to change the CCT on my CBR600 without disassembling half the bike, which accessing the camshaft sprockets would entail; in fact just like the guys at the bike-shop video did it on the R1.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
Cheers.

[Icemaestro]

not sure about the early cbr but I've done it on the F2 and F4 engines (91 or 92 and 98) and was very straight forward? take off old tensioner, take off right side cover etc...the APE one from memory had better instructions than the other brand I tried, but both were very straight forward.

[tigertim20]

have done it to both the 88, and to the 91 CBR 600. (a friend owned the 88 while I had the 91).piss easy, takes ten minutes.
remove stock tensioner.
bolt in new one. will have the exact instructions with it somewhere, but as I recall its a matter of installing and doing up the two bolts that attach it to the engine, then you gently wind the tensioner in untill its hand tight. fire up the bike, wind it back out untill it just starts to make a noise, then back in a quarter turn.
or something close to that from memory.

its easy, forget about fucking around with cable ties, youll be finished before your mate whos watching has finished his beer

[Kathryn42]

Just a note to say thank guys for all the help. Got the CCT installed now; it was a bit of a mission due to the awkward placement of one of the securing bolts, which made it a bit fiddly.
The CBR is now purring like a kitten!!

Cheers,

[rustyblade]

had the same issue on my '06 600rr, honda CCT's are kinda sucky, my APE one was about $80 from the ebays. Literally unscrew the old one, pop the new one in, screw it in and enjoy your less noisy camchain. should be easy as when you find it, the honda one looks looks like a metal rocket ice cream sticking out with 2 allen key heads poking out the sides.

As for the ape, leave it mostly unscrewed, tighten as necessary until the noise goes away then loosen slightly.
Make sure you can rev up to the redline! if you cant then you've tightened it too much. which sucks.

I found threadlocking the nuts saves you heaps of hassle if you're on the highway and it loosens...

[rustyblade]

Just a note to say thank guys for all the help. Got the CCT installed now; it was a bit of a mission due to the awkward placement of one of the securing bolts, which made it a bit fiddly.
The CBR is now purring like a kitten!!

Cheers,

too much scrolling! my bad! good job :D
Spark plugs are a sod on 600rr's too...