8000 miles, did your valves REALLY need adjusting?

[Lord Popgun]

Pdedse,

The cams must be removed to ADJUST the valves. That's the hard part. Checking isn't that hard a job.

Ok, putting the cams back in and having the timing right may actually be the hard part...

[Ulvetanna_imp]

One of the things that I've enjoyed about owning my KLR650 is the "tech days" we have where between 10 and up to 35 of us get together on a Saturday morning and do minor to major fixes on the bikes with several "tech gurus" watching you do your own work and guiding you through steps if you're in doubt. Oil, tire, fork oil changes, modifications, air filter, spark plugs, running rough, carb isses...and valve checks and adjustments with shims. Now I don't think I would have attempted valve checks / adjustments on my own, but with this group of KLR owners, it wasn't that bad, maybe 2-3 hours total time. What about the CB1100 makes the check / adjustment "daunting"? More valves? Or are there a number of difficult steps? Maybe someone will put together a nice "how to" video?

I owned four KLRs starting with the KLR600, two 650s and also a bitchen little 250 that I could not break.

That bike is an awesome platform for learning about the basic systems of a motorcycle. Still carbureted.

Well, the CB1100 is a whole lot more work and time to get at the valves to begin with, and obviously, a $12K motorcycle is not something most guys want to learn on. It's a real puzzle to get it all apart and some previous experience with at least some kind of motorcycle is helpful.

Daunting? I could see how someone would say that, even those who could do it themselves. Who wants to disrupt his riding or personal schedule to tear apart a motorcycle and find out nothing was wrong with it, lol? But the truth is, unless you want to just skip the valve clearance check, it takes a lot more time to drop the bike at a dealer since it has to cool overnight before the work can be done. So you are looking at three days all told and about 5 hours labor. And it is a LOT of work, it requires a good deal of due diligence. There is only one mechanic I would trust my bikes to, if I couldn't do the work myself. There are more than a few shops that will just listen to it, and tell you it's fine, and charge you anyway.

I have seen what happens to valves when they get too tight from lack of attention; two bikes I owned needed the top end rebuilt because the previous owners did not maintain them. Many of the valves had to be replaced along with a complete valve job (refacing the seats, and so on).

I like motorcycles and wanted to learn everything I could, so I learned to do all this stuff. Only thing I really have not done is to rebuild the bottom end, transmission and whatnot. Not really something that falls under "routine" so in the one or two cases (pun intended) where I needed tranny work, I paid someone else. In one case I pulled the engine out of the frame and took the cylinders off and dropped just the cases off at the dealer which saved a lot of money. I didn't have the money anyway at the time so that was my only option, do it myself.

The CB1100 is a bike that very much lends itself to the role of "education" and while I have said I don't think it's a very appropriate first bike, it's a fantastic bike on which to learn about motorcycle systems. Everything is easy to see, pretty easy to get to, and not too hard to maintain or repair if you take your time.

I thrive on self-reliance and being self-taught, having been on my own since the age of 16 with no one to lean on but me. It has worked out fairly well. Necessity is the mother of invention, but perhaps these days invention is now a test-tube baby lol

[DaSwami_imp]

So, after the "first" valve adjustment is done, I understand the interval for the "second" needed adjustment is much, much longer. True?

[Pterodactyl_imp]

No, valves are checked at each "major" service. That is every 8000 miles or approximately 13000kms.

To cut to the chase; the OP asked whether valves REALLY need adjusting. There are two ways of finding out:

1. Check the valves as per the Honda recommendation

2. Don't check them and see what happens

Cheers

[Ulvetanna_imp]

No, valves are checked at each "major" service. That is every 8000 miles or approximately 13000kms.

To cut to the chase; the OP asked whether valves REALLY need adjusting. There are two ways of finding out:

1. Check the valves as per the Honda recommendation

2. Don't check them and see what happens

Cheers

The owner's manual has all that info and good stuff. So I don't need to look at my valves again until the bike comes up on 16,000 miles which will probably be a couple of years as it's not my main ride. That's not so bad. But I think for a guy doing serious touring or racking up the commute miles it might be a little intrusive. I know there was a time in my life where I would have needed to do three or four per year if it was my only bike. But once again, since I could do it myself, it's an afternoon well spent.

I am still doing just as many services myself; in the past year I had to do two other semi-major services to two other bikes and even though they didn't need a valve clearance check, the liquid cooling and bodywork removal demanded more time than the CB1100.

I know with my first real streetbike, I tried to do the valves myself and could not figure out how to get the valve cover out from between the frame rails. This was in the eighties. I gave up and took it to a dealer, and the guy took the thing out instantly like he had been doing it every day in the week. I never forgot that. But next time it needed valves adjusted (screw and locknut back then) I persisted until I duplicated his feat and after that it wasn't so bad.

If you think about it if you ride 16,000 miles a year (that is about my average) you are going to spend $1,000 per year to maintain this bike taking it to the dealer for major services. That is ridiculous. That was my motivation to learn all this stuff back in the day.

If you tack on two sets of tires per year as well, there is another $800 if the dealer does the R&R plus mounting and balancing. Roughly in all, over $2000/year counting oil changes. Now factor in $1400/per year for gasoline at around 36 mpg and current prices.

It ain't cheap to own a bike if you pay the dealer for all the required maintenance. For the same mileage with the average sedan, it's about 200 bucks a year. It's easy to see that by doing one's own maintenance, one could afford a more expensive bike or afford to keep the one he has.

So, after the "first" valve adjustment is done, I understand the interval for the "second" needed adjustment is much, much longer. True?

Just a thought, that used to be very true. The first valve adjustment for that bike I mentioned back in the 1980s was at 600 miles. Then the next one was something like four or five thousand miles. Every bike was like that back then, they had screw/locknut adjusters and they needed to be checked and set at the first oil/filter change.

Now we've gone almost exclusively to shims, especially shim under bucket, the intervals are much much longer. Also materials are much better now, metals are harder, surfaces are hardened and coated, and so on. But the drawback is that the cams need to be removed to change the shims, even for a single shim.

I sort of miss the days of screw and locknut but those don't like high RPMs.

[DaSwami_imp]

Thanks for the info, just a curiosity question, do the cams have to be removed also for "shim over bucket"?

Thanks.

[kmoney_imp]

Thanks for the info, just a curiosity question, do the cams have to be removed also for "shim over bucket"?

Thanks.

It depends on the design. Usually it is possible to depress the bucket and get the shim out with a mechanics pick and magnet.

[DaSwami_imp]

Thanks for the info, just a curiosity question, do the cams have to be removed also for "shim over bucket"?

Thanks.

It depends on the design. Usually it is possible to depress the bucket and get the shim out with a mechanics pick and magnet.

It depends on the design. Usually it is possible to depress the bucket and get the shim out with a mechanics pick and magnet.
Thanks man, Triumph Scrambler is the bike I was referring to

[pdedse]

All this info is appreciated...one thing I would like to understand: what are some of the factors that make one bike need a valve check at 8k, another at 12k and even more?

[Ulvetanna_imp]

All this info is appreciated...one thing I would like to understand: what are some of the factors that make one bike need a valve check at 8k, another at 12k and even more?

Valve train design, screw/locknut need it a lot more often.

Air-cooling vs. liquid cooling, air-cooled engines need it more often.

Materials. Better materials such as cam surfacing and valve/valve seat materials can go a lot longer with less wear. Yamaha's Genesis design does not require a check until 26,600 miles. Most bikes seem to put the first check at 15,000 miles.

One thing to keep in mind also regard air-cooled engines especially are emissions regulations.

Valve timing is critical to a clean-running engine and as the valves wear, the engine may create more emissions than it should. Air-cooled engines are harder to design to meet current emissions standards which is one of the reasons they call for a very frequent check compared to liquid-cooled engines. This is something that is part of the specifications agreed upon between the OEM and EPA for emissions control compliance. It may well be that the CB1100 could reliably run 15,000 miles without any need for adjustment, with no risk of mechanical failure. But to ensure the engine is running cleanly, the interval is shorter, as being out of spec only 0.001" does make a measurable difference in tailpipe emissions.

One interesting requirement on this bike is that the cam chain tensioner be fully unloaded while checking valve clearance. Most bikes don't require this step and in fact it is the first bike I've owned that states this step in the service manual.

I called the service manager of my local Honda dealer, a guy who I trust and who is very knowledgeable about the deeper technological details of service and maintenance.

He said there are some bikes that Honda wants this step done for; it allows for a very precise adjustment of the valve train.

One thing I noticed right off when I first started the bike after finishing the check is that it was just as quiet as when it was new. Evidently, by completely unloading the tensioner and then letting it self-adjust, the cam chain was tightened a bit more. Also noticed the bike definitely seemed to run more crisply and strongly than before; that bit of slack might have retarded the cam timing just enough to take the "lively" nature out of the engine but it is certainly back now.

Adjusting the balancer also had a big effect on driveline lash, it really removed 80-90 percent of the lash and made throttle control much, much smoother during on-off transitions.

This is something to check for anyone feeling that driveline lash is excessive.