On Sat, 6 Aug 2005, Mike Peplinski wrote:
> I've decided to further bond with my KLR and check the valve adjustment. I
> looked in the friendly Clymers and have to say, this looks like quite a job!
> Is it really as bad as it looks?
Yes and no.
The Clymer book recommends removing the camshafts, which is a bit of a
pain. However, I have been assured that it is possible to get the shims
out with a pair of tweezers just by popping the cam caps off, without
removing the camshaft guard and the camshafts. In a scale of 1 to 10,
where 1 is an oil change and 10 is an engine overhaul, I'd put the Clymer
procedure at about a 2.5 and the revised procedure at about a 2. As long
as you follow the directions, step by step (with the possible modification
above), it isn't really brain surgery at all. We are, after all, talking
about the world's simplest motorcycle here (well, almost). There just
isn't much "there" there.
Oh, even if you do just remove the cam caps rather than remove the
camshafts altogether, I suggest popping off the cam chain tensioner as
documented in the Clymer manual just to give you a bit more slack to play
with plus to insure that it is doing its job correctly (have heard stories
about how sometimes it gets stuck, you can verify its operation quite
easily). Ingenius little widget. I wonder why Kawasaki didn't invent
something similarly ingenius for tensioning the balancer chain, rather
than that deranged "doohickey" they instead settled on?
In any event, this isn't as difficult as it looks. Just follow the
procedure and you'll be fine, no super mecho skills needed, just an
appropriate set of torque wrenches.
-E