Cam chain timing

[Guest]

First, thank you everyone for all the helpful information on this site! It's been a great resource getting my GS650G back to where she should be! This is my first bike and first post, so bear with me...

while led checking and adjusting my tappet shims, I noticed that the alignment of the marks on my cams and gears were slightly different than that of the marks on my crankshaft/case. In other words when the TDC marks are line up, the cam lobes aren't perpendicular to the cylinder head and vice-versa. When the lobes are perpendicular, the TDC mark is roughly 1/8" from the crankcase alignment mark. Should I adjust this?

Ill try and reply with photos soon, but my phone doesn't want to upload more than 1 at a time.

[Dogma]

Well, you can only adjust cam timing one tooth at a time. That's going to be more than the misalignment you're seeing in the timing mark. Unless by some freak happenstance your cam chain is stretched, you're just seeing the result of tolerance stack-up in the engine components. If the cam timing was wrong, you'd be seeing some serious misbehavior from the engine.

TL;DR: It's fine. Don't sweat it. Bonus points you for taking the initiative to catch up the maintenance.

[probablynotnick]

Ah! Thanks for alleviating my curiosity! There's only so much a manual can tell you!

[tom203]

Rather than cam lobes, you did go by number"1" pointing forward and parallel to gasket surface??? As stated ,it won't be perfect, but it will be close when crank is at TDC mark