Valve Shims

My KZ has 13mm shims in it. My valve seats are getting worn out, so my shims need adjusted. I bought a Clymer manual, but I was wondering what tips anyone could give me on shimming the valves?

Also, can I have both camshafts out at the same time?

Where can I get shims for my bike? I'd like to get a kit of shims for it, but the bike dealers around here are filled with morons who tell me they cant get shims for that bike. You see my frustration?

Anyone know of a kit that I could find?

A partial answer:

www.z1enterprises.com/detail.aspx?ID=1852

I just did this for the first time this weekend. WiredGeorge's article on valve clearances helped a lot. Having a shop north of Chicago that specializes in KZ's helped a lot as well (Redline Cycle), as they had all the shims in stock.

I also have the Clymer. Short of you having a place to find shims in your area (and somebody on here may be able to answer this) here are my tips:
-Take the valve cover off.
-Torque the bolts as per the manual.
-Check the clearances.

For the ones that have too much clearance, take them out. I used the little motionpro tool. Took a little fiddling with, but it's a cheap tool compared to the official Kawasaki tool. Make sure you remember where they went.
-Look at the number on the shims that need replacin and do the math on what the new shim should be. There is an excel spreadsheet in the filebase to help with this if needed.

-Once you have your shopping list together of proper sized shims, order them from z1enterprises, or find somewhere near you. Add a valve cover gasket and sealer to your shopping list.

-Once you get the shims, put them in the appropriate location, put on gasket with sealer, put cover back on and tighten carefully (my valve cover seemed a little fragile and I cracked a piece of it by tightening a little too much)

My bike runs a million times better, but that may have to do with the fact that I cleaned the carbs as well and noticed in the process that the last guy had forgotten to put a main jet back in!

Z1 also has the individual shims for a few buck each if you don't want to buy the whole kit.
I only had to change 2 of them.

Unfortunately the KZ650 is underbucket shims so the special tools for the KZ900-1000 do not apply. Camshaft removal is necessary. This issue has been discussed here quite a bit. Everyone has a different procedure. As I’d wager to bet I’m the highest mileage rider here on KZs I’ve done many a shim and this is my procedure and I’ve not read anyone else’s that works as well.
To check clearances only use feeler gauges in the same increments as shims are available, so you need a .05mm, .10mm, .15mm, and a .20mm for the most part, don’t bother with in-between sizes. Take off your right side points cover and turn the engine over slowly while constantly trying to fit a .10mm feeler between the bucket and cam. If at any point of cam rotation the feeler slides through, move up to .15mm and see if it slides through at any point of rotation. If .10mm did not fit, move down to .05mm. What you want to do is find the largest feeler that will fit anywhere in the rotation of the engine for each valve, but we only care in .05mm increments. Why is this? Because shims only come in .05mm size increments. I try to get my valves all where a .10mm feeler fits and a .15 does not fit. This means my clearance is between .10 and .15mm somewhere. I don’t care where in between. For example lets say a .05mm feeler fit, but a .10mm did not. This would mean you would go down one shim size in that valve and theoretically when you recheck you would be right where you want to be, a .10 fits, .15 does not. If you measure zero clearance go down 2 sizes of shim and recheck.
To take cams out of a KZ650 do only one cam at a time. After removing your center tensioner sprocket and the cam caps, lift up one cam while keeping constant tension on the chain where it goes down into the engine and move the cam out of position to the center of the engine. Make sure you keep all slack between the cams and the chain tight going down into the engine. Now your cam is out of the way and you swap your shims then carefully move the cam back into place making sure of keeping the chain tight down in the engine. Tighten the caps to 5.5 ft/lb or so. Repeat for other cam. Why do we do it one cam at a time using this procedure? No retime is needed! Works great. Don’t over tighten the cam caps, trust me, they will strip before you hit 8 ft/lb, particularly the exhaust ones.

Thanks for the procedure. One concern that I do have is my valves. Needing shims, could that mean that I'm starting to pull a valve?

I've done the whole thing with the cylinder head on. I'm getting my shims machined and will have them back in a week or so.

My concern is that I dont want to be doing this procedure again in the near future. I think that its just valve seat wear because its pretty uniform wear. If one valve was WAY out of whack, I could see, but most of my wear is pretty uniform. I'm putting shims back in that are 2.2, 2.3, and 2.0. 5 of my valves are in need of a 2.3, 2 of them need a 2.0, and one needs a 2.2.

Is my thinking here correct, or could I have some major problems? Tell me that my thinking is right, I miss my bike. I've been riding a 74 Yamaha TX650, but its just not my KZ, ya know?

The valve shim article was written for the 903/1015 versions of the KZ but the principles might be helpful for any bike.

Grinding valve shims isn't a particularly good idea. They are hardened through a special process and grinding ruins them... they tend to fracture. I have seen the results of fractured shims.

RonKZ650 wrote: To take cams out of a KZ650 do only one cam at a time. After removing your center tensioner sprocket and the cam caps, lift up one cam while keeping constant tension on the chain where it goes down into the engine and move the cam out of position to the center of the engine. Make sure you keep all slack between the cams and the chain tight going down into the engine. Now your cam is out of the way and you swap your shims then carefully move the cam back into place making sure of keeping the chain tight down in the engine. Tighten the caps to 5.5 ft/lb or so. Repeat for other cam. Why do we do it one cam at a time using this procedure? No retime is needed! Works great. Don’t over tighten the cam caps, trust me, they will strip before you hit 8 ft/lb, particularly the exhaust ones.

I'm going to resurrect this 8 year old post to ask a question - I don't quite understand Ron's post here. Am I to read 'cam' here to mean 'camshaft'? If so, I think I get it - you remove all the cam caps for one camshaft, then move that camshaft, and then do whatever you need to for all the shims on that camshaft. Then, you do the same for the other camshaft.
However, Ron says 'cam', as though I can independently move each cam, which I don't understand. Can someone confirm that my reading is correct?

Also - I'm going to be doing this for the first time tomorrow - this should all be done on a warmed up engine? Or I guess just the clearance checking

It should be done cold.
Steve

swest wrote: It should be done cold.
Steve

Thanks Steve. Thoughts about the other question?

aenikolopov wrote:

swest wrote: It should be done cold.
Steve

Thanks Steve. Thoughts about the other question?

Yes! he means - CAMSHAFT

Also, before you remove either camshaft make a mark on the camshaft and chain that shows exactly where the chain sits on the camshaft (you may also want to take a photo of that mark). That way, when you put the camshaft back in you will be positive that it is turned to the original position to retain the valve timing. Ed