Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Early valve clearance check

Just wondering if any readers who do their own maintenance have checked their valve clearances before the recommended 20k interval? I was doing a 10k oil & filter change today and while I was at it I had to remove my cam cover to replace a gasket which has been bugging me with a slight oil leak for a couple of thousand k's now. While I had the cam cover off I thought it might be an opportune time to just slip my feeler gauges under the cam lobes to see how my valve clearances were going? To my surprise, 3 of he 8 valves were outside the maximin recommended valve clearance range. I don't intend to do anything about this until my 20k service anyway but would be interested if any other readers have checked their clearances prematurely and come up with surprises?

Interesting. I bet many are off or close to it before they go out the factory door.

I checked mine while in the process of swapping pistons. 4 out of 8 where out of spec. This is at 2500 miles.

By outside the range do you mean they were too tight or too loose? Too loose isn't really an issue so long as it isn't excessive. You will end up with a bit more valve clatter. Too tight could eventually cause the valves to not seat and potentially burn/fail.

Well that's interesting, John. I checked mine (for the 1st time) after 35,000 km (22,000 miles) and all were within recommended tolerances. I wonder why the difference.

Inlet valve clearance should be 0.15mm->2.00mm
Exhaust valve clearance should be 0.25mm->3.00mm
At 10k on the clock mine valve clearances were:
Inlet left to right looking to the front of the engine:
0.203mm/0.229mm/0.152mm/0.127mm
Exhaust left to right looking to the front of the engine:
0.279mm/0.305mm/0.330mm/0.305mm

Looks like there will be a little bit of valve shim shuffling going on when I come to do my 20k service.
I'm quite sure I'm not Robinson Crusoe when it comes to sloppy valve clearances set by the factory. Just that probably most owners rely on dealers to service their bikes so they never actually know what's going on under those cam covers?
Oh well I enjoy wrenching so I'm looking forward to my next 10k's so I can roll up my sleeves and get stuck into my first Triumph valve service.

I did my valves at 12,000 miles and all needed adjustment. None were really bad but all were out of spec. (might have been 14,000 about, not sure anymore)

I did a valve adjust on my '05 Spdmst this week, I suspect it was the first time for this bike as all but two shims were 2.8mm and the others were 2.9mm, all the valves were way out from spec. the intakes ran tight and the exh. way loose. Finding all the shims I needed was a long range Easter egg hunt as the closest Triumph dealer only orders them as needed, go figure.

I read somewhere on here I believe you can use shims from other sources like Toyota,Honda,Yamaha.

It's in the Tech Vault--Yamaha shims. I have a couple on my bike right now.

I found most of the shims I needed at two different Yama dealers, one at a Honda shop and the last two at a generic motorcycle repair shop and they had them left over from a Polaris snowmobile, I believe 25mm shims are also used on some car steering linkages for caster/camber and who knows what else?

Yup, even though I didn't need shims this time around, I learned that Yami and Honda (and other sources too) 25mm shims work just fine. No need to have to count on a Triumph dealership.

IMHO, every engine is different. I have almost 30,000 miles on my 2001 BA and check every 4 to 6,000 miles. Have not had to adjust yet!