valve clearance on 1980 kz750

So my shop manual seems unclear, and I'm having some trouble checking the valve clearances. so far i've gotten to the point of pulling the cylinder head cover. at this point the manual tells me to check the torque of the camshaft cap bolts, and i dont know what these are? next it says to use a 17mm wrench on on the crankshaft to turn the timing advancer is aligned with the timing mark? where does the wrench fit to turn the crankshaft? i think thats all the questions ive got at the moment. thanks for the help everyone!

oh yeah the bike is a 1980 kz750h

Take the round right cover off the engine,, you ignition points or pickups, depending on your system, is under it, The 17mm wrench fits on the end of the advancer there. "DON'T" use a 13mm wrench on the bolt on the very end or you can break it off.
You want to have to the lobes of the camshaft up to check the valve clearance with the feeler gauge.
Ride and Wrench safely

alright, got the right side cover off, rotated the lobes, and checked the clearances. all the intake valves were unmeasurable with a .052 feeler gauge, but the buckets would spin. all of the exhaust valves were within spec... before i order new shims, the manual says something about checking the torque of the camshaft cap bolts?? are those just the bolts that go in the "U" shaped camshaft holders? and would torquing those effect my measurments?

mattylight wrote:

alright, got the right side cover off, rotated the lobes, and checked the clearances. all the intake valves were unmeasurable with a .052 feeler gauge, but the buckets would spin. all of the exhaust valves were within spec... before i order new shims, the manual says something about checking the torque of the camshaft cap bolts?? are those just the bolts that go in the "U" shaped camshaft holders? and would torquing those effect my measurments?

Yes, the U-Shaped caps are the camshaft holders. Do not over-torque these as they are very easy to strip, especially on the exhaust side. From memory I believe they are to be torqued at 9 ft/lbs. but check the manual and also spend a couple of minutes going through the kzr archives. These need to be set at the correct torque to properly adjust the valve clearances.

It might be a good idea to read some of the posts on how to properly check clearances.

Cheers-Colin Firth-Ontario Canada

I have a '81 KZ750H2 LTD and have adjusted the valves several times over the years.

...camshaft cap bolts?? are those just the bolts that go in the "U" shaped camshaft holders? and would torquing those effect my measurments?

Yes, those are the camshaft bolts and they can effect the measurements if not torqued to spec. I use a torque wrench that is calibrated for in/lbs not ft/lbs for torquing the bolts since they are easy to strip.

all the intake valves were unmeasurable with a .052 feeler gauge, but the buckets would spin. all of the exhaust valves were within spec...

The specs for the intake and exhaust valves on the KZ750H LTD's are 0.003" to 0.007" (I can't remember the specs in metric). I am confused as to the 0.052 feeler gauge comment. Could you explain what you're doing.

the .052 is in metric. and the metric clearances are .08mm- .018mm.

Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh

I think you are probably looking at the Haynes manual. Page 30. Its a typo. Drove me nuts.
It should read 0.008 - 0.018mm. Someone left out a zero in the first number. That would explain why you could not get 0.052mm in there !

Hope this gets you before you try major surgery

i have the clymer manual, and thats not a typo. the metric valve clearances are .08mm to .18mm. where cafe750 mentions the clearances in inches those inch clearances convert pretty closely to my clymer's metric tolerances on the yahoo conversion calculator.

i just wanted to clear that up a bit, because i was confused myself after JR's comment. (no offense to JR)

the next issue i have concerns the shims i removed yesterday. 2 of the shims have size posted on them, but 2 do not. so i decided to measure the shims with a small dial caliper. the largest shim says 2.55(i'm guessing this is a metric measurment). but when i use the dial caliper it says that shim is 2.10mm thick... so first what does that 2.55 mean? and second if my assumption that 2.55 is metric, could the shim have worn that much? or is my dial caliper that inaccurate?

2.55 is in millimeters.
Regarding the valve shims, I have never had a shim be off from the stated thickness before in the 10 years that I have owned my bike. Not saying your measurement is inaccurate, but you may want to track down someone with another caliper to check the thickness of the shim. Wear seems unlikely since the shim rides under the bucket.
Did you measure the actual clearance for the intake valves before pulling the cams and removing the shims? This the the procedure according to the service manual and you didn't mention it in your previous posts.
Also, 210 is thin since the shims that were in the bike were around 2.50-2.60 range on the 4 that I have owned over the years. How many miles on the bike?

I guess I should'nt post late at night :laugh:

You are correct.
There are typos on the manuals though. I went to a conversion website and checked and clearances should be 0.08 to 0.18 mm so I had the decimal place wrong. When I did mine I knew something was wrong and ended up with a feeler gauge in inches.

Anyway, no ofence taken and I hope I did'nt screw anybody up. Sorry about that.

my doubts about the caliper gauge were correct, its a piece of junk. i went to my uncle's and he let me use his and the 2 marked shims were right on. oh yes, i did check the valve clearances before pulling the shims, all the intake clearances were below spec...which explains all the symptoms i've been having (and why i pulled the shims!). but here is the new problem... one of the unmakred shims was 2.20 and the other was 1.90. i have no idea where anyone got a 1.90 shim, but i checked it several times and thats how thick it was. so this leads me to think of valve wear of some kind, and a whole new headache. i'll repost later once i double check myself everywhere, and make sure i didn't miss something...i'm still a noob, but not for long at this rate...