The chain tensioner on my 2017 Gasgas Contact was not moving as well as I thought it should, so I took it off and cleaned up the pivot and applied some grease and then had such a good time getting it back on the swingarm. As far as I can tell there is no simple trick to installing the spring. Google did bring up a nifty tool Jim Snell made to make the install easy, but takes a bit of welding and grinding. Also some older TC threads talked about using zip ties and I finally used zip ties and made a handle to apply leverage to one end of the spring,  and removed a linkage bolt so I could get the tensioner in position. The spring needs to be compressed, and is not easy to do. Point in posting this is to caution owners of this type of tensioner to not just pull it off to clean and lube as something routinely to do on a rainy day,  unless you have the strength a gorilla or find some trick I could not  find.

Art

It is not easy... but with a 10mm hex spanner, you can force the coil and mount it. Just like Jim's tool

Edited May 6, 20197 yr by cascao

I too installed a new tensioner with brute force and it worked out (and no blood!). Just be careful the spring doesn’t pinched between the bushing and tensioner arm, I ruined the original spring that came with the new tensioner because I didn’t realize it was pinched - which bent it. I reused the old spring and payed closer attention to the installation and it worked mint. That spring sure is a vicious little bugger..!

On 5/6/2019 at 1:24 AM, cascao said:

It is not easy... but with a 10mm hex spanner, you can force the coil and mount it. Just like Jim's tool

this is the way use the spanner and hold tightly!!

 

the '19 has a new arrangement.