Adjusting 4 Stroke Valves

Valve adjustments are an important part of maintaining any four-stroke engine and should be done at the factory recommended intervals. Ignoring valve adjustment can shorten engine life and reduce performance. Excessive valve wear, wear on rockers, loss of cylinder pressure and reduced engine performance are just a few of the bad things that can happen when valve adjustment is not maintained.

Luckily, armed with a service manual for your bike, and the right tools, just about any home mechanic can perform this task. While it is not possible here to go into all the possible permutations of valve designs and the work necessary to maintain them, a good factory service manual will break down the process into simple steps that just about anyone can perform.

The important part of making this somewhat involved job simple is having the right tools. Luckily, this is where Motion Pro can help you out. From easy to use feeler gauges that will tell you whether a valve adjustment is needed, to many different tools that will make the actual task of adjusting them simpler and quicker, Motion Pro has tools for many bikes.

The tough part is actually adjusting valves when it becomes necessary. Many single cylinder motorcycles use a screw type tappet assembly with a locknut, and Motion Pro makes a tappet adjustment tool set that combines the adjustment and the locknut process into one tool for simplified operation. Many other bikes have shims set into a bucket in the cylinder head, and Motion Pro makes many tools to depress the buckets in these models to make shim changes easy.

Part numbers for all the tools:

08-0052 0.002"-0.003" Feeler Gauge, (Card of 6) / 08-0392 (each)
08-0053 0.004"-0.005" Feeler Gauge, (Card of 6) / 08-0393 (each)
08-0054 0.006"-0.008" Feeler Gauge, (Card of 6) / 08-0394 (each)
08-0055 Mixed Set of Gauges, 2 of each size

08-0073 Tappet Tool Set
08-0020 Yamaha Valve Tool
08-0019 Kawasaki Valve Tool
08-0017 Suzuki/Yamaha Valve Shim Tool
08-0018 Honda Valve Shim Tool

Motion Pro also makes many valve tools for cylinder head service and assembly, see all of the Motion Pro upper engine tools at: http://www.motionpro.com/motorcycle/tools/engine_-_upper/