[san rensho]

I cleaned the two lower tensioners today without using the cam locking tool and it went fine, in terms of not skipping timing. My method was to lock the crankshaft, take the tensioners out one at a time, clean and then replace before moving on to the next tensioner.


To lock the crank, I just rotated the crank pulley CLOCKWISE ONLY with a combination 24 mm wrench (socket would not clear), lined up the marks and pinned the pulley with a longish 8mm bolt through the hole that was near 11 o'clock on the pulley.

Then I heated up some mineral spirits and Marvel Mystery oil that I put in bottles and placed in boiling water. One at a time, I took out a tensioner, submerged in mineral spirits and plunged repeatedly till it ran clean, same with the MMO and finally in clean oil, the immediately installed it completely. Torqued to 59 ft-lbs.

Good news is it was easy, bad news and I is a still get clatter on start up. By the way, I also changed the oil to Castrol 10-40 at the same time. I don't know if the upper tensioner (which I didn't clean because you need to remove the AC compressor to get at it) may be making the noise, although this morning I listened to the upper tensioner with a stethoscope at dead cold startup and the tensioner did not make noise. Maybe the noise is not even the chain tensionrs, possibly valve clatter before the hydraulic lifters get pumped up.

Anyway, I'm done chasing the clatter. I've tried really thick oil, 15-50 and 20-50 and thin oil, 0-40, and nothing seems to make a difference. I give up.

DISCLAIMER-I'm not recommending anyone follow my method, especially if you have a 3 chain motor, several knowledgable posters recommend against removing the tensioners without locking the cams.