Alright guys so heres the deal. Went to pick up my bike the lady at the counter said the bike came out fine, she also said the guy that was working on it had already left for the day but wrote down everything that was done on the work order. It seems they lapped the valve shims if that makes any sense. One thing that bothered me though when i dropped the bike off i told them i had just purchased new rear side covers on the bike and to please be carefull with scratches. When i picked up the bike the right rear cover was scratched up i asked them about it they said it might of been the tarp they covered all the bikes with becuase it was raining today so they said they knocked off 2 hours of labor charge (supposedly it took them 4 1/2 hours to do the job they charged me for 2 1/2) i think they are b-s ing though. On the plus side though the bike does feel like it runs a little better, a little bit more power.

Here is the paper work and the scratches (side cover was showroom new when dropped off)

 

Lapping the shim makes more sense but still isn't the greatest way to do it as it removes the case hardening surface. The saving grace is that the shim is under the bucket which means the cam runs on the bucket not the shim.
Hope it all works out OK as it sounds as though these guys were winging it to some degree.

Those marks on the side cover look more like boot scrapes to me. DAMHIK.

 

Altering the thickness of the shims from their standard marked sizes is going to make it difficult for the next person trying to do a valve adjustment!

 

Not really, you should measure the shims with a micrometer anyway to determine thickness, at least thats what i do as most of the bikes i've owned never seemed to have had marked shims or the markings were pretty worn and unreadable.

Sounds like this "shop" did some janky assed hack job anyway. I wouldn't pay those bozo's to wash my bike let alone work on it.

 

@wildcard: never having lapped shims before I am unfamiliar with the proceedure but I am imagining that it would be a challenge to achieve a perfectly uniform thickness across the shim (?)... This in turn may make it difficult to obtain an accurate micrometer reading (?)...

 

Hahhaa... Man... Just another reason to NOT TAKE YOUR BIKE TO A MECHANIC!

They lapped the shims.. hahahaaa.. I'm imagining a guy squeezing a shim with tweezers and using sand paper. haha

I keep a shim set in my garage with any shim I could ever want - and multiples of each. It was $85 for all of them..

If a bike shop doesn't have shims, they aren't worth crap. You just need them if you want to run any sort of bike shop. It's like not having oil.

Pick yourself up a manual and save yourself some money and jury-rigging of *your* bike.

 

4.5 hours? even doing the valve adjustments for the first time and doing it again because i damaged the spark plug and thought i did something wrong with the adjustment, it did not take that long.

the marking on the old shim were all gone when i replaced them. but, i measured and marked them as a free trade for the shims i needed at a shop. the shop also took a bunch of plugs out from the trash to let me take a couple for free to troubleshoot my rough idle after the valve adjustments.

 

The first time I needed to change valve shims I thought about surface grinding them. I only needed to take .005 off and I have access to a surface grinder. It was more about convenience than anything, I could just grind them and put it back together. Between finding that the local shop swapped them out for $2 and finding out that they are only case hardened ( only a certain depth in from the surface ) I chose the safe route and got a new one.
The bike shop probably did it the "old school" way, like when you couldn't easily get a shim set off bay or find a local Mcy shop. It's probably fine, but it wouldn't hurt to find out how much they took off the shims, and tell them that you are concerned about it. Like i said , I think it's ok, but definitely not the best. Like the others have said , it's not really a hard thing to do yourself. ( get the right tools and manual ) If you do it yourself you won't cut corners.
Dan

 

after reading and seeing the how to on Wee valve shim lapping by hand – How To - ADVrider ...i guess it doesn't look too bad if you are out of spec just a tad bit...but, they should have compensated you better for scratching up your plastics...there is no way it took 4.5 hours to check the valves and sand down two valves....

 

4.5hrs is a hell of a longtime to do the job but you only got charged for 2.5hrs....all good

Lapping/grinding shims happens all the time in Thailand, due to the huge number of imported bikes with no dealer support. Strange to here this is happening in a 1st world country on a modern bike.....If it saved a couple of days of hassle & he was honest about lapping the shims, i don't see a problem.

I handed my mechanic 8 possible shim sizes a few months ago before he did my valve clearances & I unlucky with one shim, which he had to smooth down by 0.05 to fit. He saved me a day of running around trying to find one shim. Quite normal practice here!

Next time i buy 10 bucks of assorted sized shims, i will lean towards the bigger sizes so my mechanic can grind down to size if necessary. I was lucky, as the only shim big enough to grind was in the engine already & not one of the shims i bought!!