Valve Adjustment

Look all over and have more questions than when I started. I have check my valve clearance and now need to see what size shims I have in place.
Why not just treat my bike like a shim under bucket and loosen up the cams to get to shims?

Seems I could set #1 to TDC, Remove the chain tensioner, zip tie the chain to the cams, remove the caps, move one cam at a time, measure shims and replace, move to other cam.

Cams don't have to come "out" and no special tool.
Am I missing something?

Thanks'
Ken

KZ1000 J2

If you have shim under buckets (lifters), you need to remove the cams. Sounds like you have a good plan. I'm glad to see a new bike owner willing to tackle the job. Most don't want to until damage occurs. Good for you. Do you have a manual?
Steve

You can do it that way, but the whole idea of shim over bucket was in the special tool, that costs very little, to minimize effort so shims can be swapped without unbolt of the cams. If you want to unbolt cams, not a big deal, do it that way. The over bucket shim setup was not a long lasting design, all new motorcycle with shims use under bucket and cams must be removed, so remove away, no problem there.

It's easier to purchase the tool. Less worry about busting one of the cam cap bolts too.

An alternative to purchasing a shim tool is to use zip ties to hold the valve open. Lots of guys on GS Resources use this method, many preferring it to using the tool as well.

Tutorial here... members.dslextreme.com/users/bikecliff/i...lve_tool_zip_tie.pdf

What bike is it?
Steve

I'll just use the proper tools, thank you. :whistle:
Steve

Sorry I meant to say which bike. '82 KZ1000. I bought it in '87 with about 11000 miles on it, it has about 23000 now. It set for over 10 years when I bought my Voyager. Brought it back to life in '13.
It has a oil leak from the cam end plugs so decided to check the valve while I fixed those.
It.s doesn't sound hard just time consuming. I have replaced the gears in the Voyager as well as split the case on the Vulcan 750.
I'm just looking for the easiest and quickest way, since I don't have the tool.
Thanks again,
Ken

If you are keeping the bike for a long time, might as well get the knack of using the tool and leave the cams in place. There are quite a few posts regarding stripped cam caps. You can avoid that by using the proper tool. Having done shim-over-bucket on cars, the tools are sometimes clumsy, so I see why you may want to remove the cam caps. But there are a lot of little things to be aware of. You have to really be diligent to turn the cap screws incrementally... that is, don't remove one entirely, remove them all a little at a time. If the cam is not lifting as you unscrew the bolts, the cam is bound, start over, or you can start damaging the cam bearings. Same is especially true when installing them. Evenness is the key.

I think its best to get a huge clamp and clamp the cams down then you dont have as much problems with bolts and such. but the tool works fine and so does zip ties. if you take any cam caps of do exspect to find some messed up or more than likly they get messed up.

Get the $9 tool. You can have it in 2-3 days. I want the factory style one. $50 and I had one until my tools were stolen. Tool thieves are varmints and should be dealt with the same way. :evil: I was and am a Carpenter/Builder for 30 years. Taking my tools is like saying, you and your family can starve so I can have my bag of dope. If caught, I will cheerfully beat them to a pulp, then turn them over to the Sheriff. :woohoo:
Steve

The Motion Pro tool can be easily replicated, it's basically nothing but a large bent screwdriver to open the valve and a piece of metal (aka the batwing) to insert between the cam and the edge of the bucket to keep the bucket down while replacing the shim. For the first valve adjustment I did on my 1100 I made my own tool and it worked fine .

The downside of the Motion Pro type tool is the time spent crawling around looking for the batwing when it slips out and goes "pliinnnng" across the room, usually ending up in an unreachable place under the heaviest item in your garage... :dry:

For this reason I much prefer the factory tool like the one pictured below, mine is an aftermarket copy, I think it cost me a little over 30 bucks.




Whatever route you decide to take, if the bike we're talking about is your KZ1000-J2, here's a couple of things you should be aware of. Pardon me if you know already, but they are kind of important:

1:
You have a sliding block for the cam chain in your valve cover. When you remove the valve cover, you release tension on the cam chain - this will make the cam chain tensioner push forward to take up the slack. The tensioner (in this case a cross wedge type) can not move backward so you MUST remove the tensioner (or at the very least the tensioner cap and spring) BEFORE installing the valve cover or you'll mess up the cam chain tension and possibly your cam timing.

2:
For some reason the torque spec for the cam cap bolts listed in the manual (both the Kawasaki and the Clymer) is WRONG.
Both manuals say the bolts should be torqued to 12 ft.lbs/144 in.lbs/16 Nm - if you do that you're more than likely to strip the threads in the head (3 in my case before I found out). The correct spec is 9.4 ft.lbs/114 in.lbs/12 Nm, I took some good advice and went with 8 ft.lbs/96 in.lbs/10.8 Nm and had no problems so far.

Some more info on this issue can be found here and here .