Did my first valve job today following Klxrelic's pictorial. Piece of cake, wasnt hard. They were tight. Just shy of tightest limit but within range.. I read that loser clearence is the way to go because they wear "tighter" and loser, the valves spend a fraction of a second more open - theoretically better performance and saves you from doing inevitable valve job later.. so I losened them up 0.05 mm each.. now they are in range, but in the upper limit of range instead of on the tight side. What do you think? Better now than later? Preventive? Dumb? OCD? Or smart?

 

Thats what I would do. If they are on the tight end of the tolerence and the valves wear into the seat they will be out of tollerence sooner than if they are on the loose end of the tollerence.

Cheers, Jim

 

As long as you are in spec, its good. "Loose" allows the valves to run a little cooler. More time on the seat.

David

 

tight valves will make the bike hard to start too... been down that road.

 

How many miles you have on the bike?

I'm coming to about 5K on mine I'm wondering if I should take the time to pull the valve cover...

--
Mikko

 

yea it has 3100 miles on it thats about 5000 km. the valves were just about to become out of spec on the tight side.. Kawi is smart in that they installed .300 shims in both exhaust valves and .305 shims in both the intakes.. it was an easy swap to .295 on both exhaust and .300 on both intakes.. so easy i wish i had known how easy i would have had much less anxiety worrying about paying the monkeys at kawi to do it. thanks to you guys it was a 2 hour home job

 

Tiger, nothing is really hard as long as you pay attention and take your time. I find myself getting excited when im working on the bike and end up goofing up. Valves are easy as pie.

 

What is the usual procedure for getting the new shims? do you wait till you know which ones that you need then go get them, or buy a whole box full which seems ridiculous to me.

 

I wonder how "universal" the shims are? If other bikes use the same diameter shims they might be easy enough to buy as you need them. It's not like one would need them very often from what's been posted re "checked but no adjustment needed".

 

well i bought a box from hotcams 3 shims of every size for 70 bucks.. will never have to buy them again i think