Checking Valve Clearances
These measurements were done after my bike was broken in and the Technical Bulletin M2006-009 was done to it.
Remove the seat and gas tank in order to have easy access to the valve cover. Remove the spark plug and the valve cover vent hose, then use a 5mm Allen wrench to remove the valve cover.
My iridium spark plug seems to be in good shape and the tannish color indicates that my jetting is good.
Use a quarter, a big flat head screw driver or a pair of needle nose pliers to remove the 2 caps to check for the top dead center (TDC) mark.
Use a 17mm socket and a breaker bar to turn the crank counter clockwise until you line up the '|' mark inside the TDC peep hole. The TDC mark is hard to see unless you have very good lighting.
At TDC, the cam chain side should look like the first picture below, notice that the 'E' and the 'I' dots on the intake cam are horizontal. There should be 12 pins on the cam chain between the two 12 o'clock dots of both cams. The second and third pictures below show how the back of the cams should look like - notice how the lobes are pointing at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. I used an Allen wrench to touch the piston in order to verify TDC.
Checking the left intake valve, then the middle intake valve then the right intake valve - the left and middle valve clearances were on the loose side at 0.152mm while the right intake valve clearance is at 0.229mm (way too loose), the valid range for the intake valve clearance is 0.10-0.15mm (0.0039-0.0059 in).
The right exhaust valve clearance was also on the loose side at 0.229mm, while the left exhaust valve clearance was out of specification since the 0.152mm (0.006 in) feeler gauge can fit in there but the 0.178mm (0.007 in) won't fit - the valid range for the exhaust valve clearance is 0.17-0.22mm (0.0067-0.0087 in).
The following pictures show that the 0.178mm feeler gauge will not fit under the left exhaust cam lobe.
The following pictures show that the 0.152mm feeler gauge fit nicely under the left exhaust cam lobe.
They were supposed to punch a dot under the first 'C' character of my VIN to indicate that the Technical Bulletin M2006-009 has been applied to my bike but as you can see that was not done!
