Obviously I have lived a very sheltered motorcycle maintenance childhood. With the GPX250, to adjust the valve clearances, I do the following..... Remove the rocker cover. Remove the alternator cover. Rotate the crank shaft appropriately. Measure the valve clearances. If they need adjusting, I then..... Loosen the locknut with a quality socket. Ajdust the clearance with a screw driver Tighten the locknut back up. Time to accurately do one valve: 5 minutes. Time to accurately do all 8 valves: 40 minutes. I thought that was pretty good. Then I got the ZX10 and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The process is the same for measuring, but to adjust.... Push rocker to the side along slide shaft. Remove old shim. Fit new shim. Time to accurately do one valve: 2 minutes. Time to accurately do all 16 valves: 32 minutes. Sooooooooooo simple. They should all be that way. Then I was going to do the clearances on a friends ZZR600 on the weekend. Again, the same process to measure, but to adjust...... REMOVE THE CAM CHAIN TENSIONER REMOVE THE CAM CHAIN GUIDES REMOVE THE F**KING CAMS Remove old shim. Fit new shim. REPLACE ALL THE ABOVE CRAP Time to accurately do one valve: At a guess, about an hour. Time to accurately do all 16 valves: At a guess, about an hour and a half. BUGGER THAT SHIT OFF!!! Then I find out that way is the norm!!! Ok, so what are the reasons for this? I can think of a few: 1: It reduces weight. Less stuff in there, means less kilos. 2: It reduces the number of moving parts, in theory, increasing reliability. (Not that I've ever heard of anyone losing a rocker with the set up of the ZX10. 3: It takes up less space. On some engines, this may be a consideration. It could _maybe_ be on the ZZR600 engine. Is there anything obvious and major that I'm missing as a reason for this? Personally, I think I'll stick with engines that are nice and easy to work on, like the ZX10, thankyou very much.
