Shims, camchains and things

I have now had my XJ600 since April and it has done 5,000miles in my
incompetant hands. It has never had it's shims looked at in this time and
god knows when they were done before I got it. I am a great believer in the
"if it aint broke, don't fix it" school of thought.

There will come a time in the impending winter when it will have to come off
the road and be fettled with. I would like to do the shims then. Is this
as fiddly as it looks? I have never done shims always having owned good old
two strokes or shite old four strokes with screw and locknut tappets. (ah,
them were the days).

My understanding is that shims gaps don't get looser but tighten up and the
valve can recede into the head. Is this right or just total bollocks? I'm
also looking to do the camchain as the mileage is at 41,000 and rising and
who knows if that's ever been looked at. I'm also of the better safe than
sorry scholl of mechanics.

I intend to fit a soft link camchain for minmal dismantling. Would this be
a good time to get the shims done?

 

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 13:05:35 -0000, "gazzafield"

If the shoe fits...

 

sock sandal?

--
ColonelTupperware
spouting bollocks on Usenet since 1997
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Colonel Tupperware continued the witiicism with:

I can see I'm going to get far with this post. I don't know, one poxy typo.
At least it's all formatted correctly. Isn't it, Pip?

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "gazzafield"

Mostly right, but some engines don't go out of adjustment much. Slight
valve recession and valve stem stretch, slight wear compensation on the
bucket,shim and cam lobe (not too much, you'd hope) and if the engine
isn't getting the nuts revved off of it on a regular basis all combine
to negate the need for much adjustment. After the first shim adjustment,
many engines hardly need looking at, depending on the treatment they
get, which gives rise to the shoddy workshops not even bothering to
check them.

Too right, 41Kmiles is a long time for a camchain of unknown age.

Certainly would.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

Actually an easy enough job, providing you have a tame Yamaha dealer or bike
shop to exchange the shims with.

Recommend getting the bucket holding tool over the 'jamming the fucker down
wiv a screwdriver' method. Won't cost you much.

Measure each valves clearance, then remove, measure and replace each shim to
get an idea of what ( if any ) replacements you require. Then go buy shims.

Oh, get a rocker cover gasket while you are at it too. The one currently
fitted will tear if you don't. If you buy a new one, the one currently
fitted will be perfectly reusable.

As you will have written down what each valve shim measures, when it comes
to valve time again, you just measure the clearance and can select a shim.

Thats right.

Measure the link length as layed down in the HBoL. If its OK, just leave it
alone. Camchains run in near perfect conditions. Of more concern is the
tensioner mechanism. Make sure it works.

If you really want to change the camchain, then yes.

 

Well, sad to say it isn't really. It is very clear and
understandable, just not laid out in the conventioanl style. You've
made yourself a hell of a lot of work to achieve no more than the
standard layout would manage. Not only that, but you have made it
impossible to read conventioanlly, by erasing the indent marks against
the names of the posters.

Why don't you leave the attributions line(s) at the top and intact,
letting your software do the work for you, then as much quoted text as
is required to make sense of the thing, snip out what you don't want
to refer to and leave it at that? There's lots of useful stuff on how
to do it here: http://www.i-hate-computers.demon.co.uk/quote.html
which is a link from the FAQ.