Valve adjustments--why?

CABNFVR said:

To add to what Lee said most motorcycle engines have an aggressive cam profile. Hydraulic lifters do not work well in these applications. (The ramp shape is the issue along with the lift. Ducati went desmo decades ago for this very reason.)

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I've always read that Ducati used their desmo system because metallurgy at the time couldn't deliver valve springs that reliably closed the valves at RPMs Ducati was interested in.

pyrrho said:

I've always read that Ducati used their desmo system because metallurgy at the time couldn't deliver valve springs that reliably closed the valves at RPMs Ducati was interested in.

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Yes, this is what I read also…at higher rev ranges valve springs can’t fully close their respective valves. They call it bounce, or float, something like that. So the Desmo “closer” follower does it in a mechanical way. There are videos out there illustrating the system.

Getting Back to the OP issue, I have to say that adjusting valves takes very little in the way of tools and time, once you’ve done it once, or watched a video. It’s also pretty different to do an adjustment by “feel”. Especially nice because my vision ain’t what it used to be. +1 on similarities to a VW beetle valve adjustment. I did that a few times decades ago, and the R bike adjustment is much the same deal.

CABNFVR said:

To add to what Lee said most motorcycle engines have an aggressive cam profile. Hydraulic lifters do not work well in these applications. (The ramp shape is the issue along with the lift. Ducati went desmo decades ago for this very reason.) The shift cam won't help with this as the high rpm cam lift is still very aggressive. We've had K bikes since 1985. I have the dealer do the 600 mile adjustment, then again at 24 to 30k, then maybe 75k. The newer twins also seem to seldom need adjustment. It's not a conspiracy, just physics.

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My understanding is that Ducati went desmo because metallurgy and oil technology wasn't adequate to deal with valve float without being so stiff/strong that cams wore and/or springs broke. Their new V4 uses springs.

I did valve checks on my wetheads as recommended until my warranty ran out. At 150K, I traded the first one and it had never needed new shims.

FeeJeR maintenance

motormike said:

I have a friend that rides a 50,000 mile FJR like a scalded dog. With the exception of oil changes, the engine has never been touched. Same plugs, same coolant, same everything since it left the factory. I suspect there are thousands of Japanese motorcycles running around that are the same.

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lol..lol.. My '10 FJR has only about 14K miles with valve checks every 26K miles. At this rate I may never see 26K miles unless I ride more. From reading the FJR Owners Forum it sounds like an actual necessary adjustment at 26K miles only is needed by maybe 30% of FJRs so I'm hopeful. It would be a two day job for me from the look of it if an actual shim change is necessary. Seems more than a few owners have had not good experiences at Yamaha dealers with maintenance on their FJRs especially when it comes to valves adjustments because if you don't take precautions you can slip a link on the timing chain and then you have issues. My local Yamaha dealer warned me that if I ever need service that they have never had an FJR in their shop but since they are a dealer they would have to work on it. With that in mind I bought a service manual and I do my own maintenance same on my BMW.

motormike said:

I have a friend that rides a 50,000 mile FJR like a scalded dog. With the exception of oil changes, the engine has never been touched. Same plugs, same coolant, same everything since it left the factory. I suspect there are thousands of Japanese motorcycles running around that are the same.

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Some riders even neglect their BMWs like that too.

PGlaves said:

Some riders even neglect their BMWs like that too.

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Well, given that it is a Japanese bike, other than consumables like brake fluid and oil/air filters, imo that’s not true neglect. But the bike would sure last longer if the correct maintenance were performed. Yet most rider seem to sell their bikes before any problems arise.

Frankly, I do not trust used bikes with no records. I got burned once really bad on a K12RS because I didn’t check with the dealer that originally sold the bike. Had I read him the VIN I would have learned that the Previous Owner did the 2-gasket boo-boo when changing the oil for the first time. The engine blew and the dealer did know what happened but the bike received a long-block replacement motor anyway, after which, I bought it. Learned my lesson on that one.

Visian said:

Well, given that it is a Japanese bike, other than consumables like brake fluid and oil/air filters, imo that’s not true neglect. But the bike would sure last longer if the correct maintenance were performed. Yet most rider seem to sell their bikes before any problems arise.

Frankly, I do not trust used bikes with no records.

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Being an experienced Neglected Bike Adopter, I've had quite a few experiences validating your mistrust of used bikes with no records...I have owned at least three Japanese bikes that got treated far worse than the FJR mentioned further up in the thread. My R850R, before I rescued the poor thing, was almost as bad as the worst of those.
I'll mention just one, the bike I sold to buy my 850: a 2002 Kawasaki ZG1000 Concours. That bike was owned by a frankly dangerous "home mechanic" who worked without the hindrance laugh) of a workshop manual or torque wrenches. He owned the bike for 8 years.

He rode it for 8 years, in the mountains of north Georgia and beyond, with a non-working speedometer/odometer due to a broken cable, and I'm pretty certain he never once changed the rear brake fluid. The speedo cable is a $15 part. He estimated that he put ten thousand miles on that machine while having no clue what speed he was going, or how far he had gone. When I went to replace the rear brake fluid, it was completely opaque and disgustingly cloudy, and I couldn't get it to flow despite opening the bleed screw until I shoved down on the pedal and a plug of crud POPPED out of the bleed nipple.
I later did a valve adjustment and had to adjust every valve on that poor thing. He had broken off part of the mounting antler for the right saddlebag and rather than dip into the sea of cheap Ebay replacements he instead drilled holes in the saddlebag and screwed it to the mount using self-tapping metal screws. He had also chopped off the factory mufflers and, using a flux-core wire-feed welder, had wired a pair of direct-from-China fake carbon fiber mufflers with extensions to the factory headers. He did this with the whole assembly mounted to the bike and couldn't reach the inner side of either muffler to weld them, so he only welded them about 3/4 of the way around and did the rest with JB-Weld. I could tell it was a flux-core wire-feed welder because of all the pieces of flux-core welding wire still stuck to the welds. Not only were these mufflers disgustingly loud, he had also put the mufflers so high up that they started melting the bottoms of the saddlebags and had made a hole in the lid of the right one.
He broke the coolant expansion tank during some other attempt at repair and tried to fix it with JB-Weld, then broke it again while installing it. He then used duct tape to try to further repair it, which of course led to it leaking once I was the unfortunate owner of the machine.

That's not all of it, but that's all I feel like typing right now. Some motorcycles live very sad lives, and their owners live very dangerous lives. That was certainly true for that machine.