Hi folks. Another year, another post.
Some things happen too slowly here at Chateau T. I need to buy a big box of "round tuits" but not even eBay has them.
I finally got around to taking the cam cover off and doing a check on the valve clearances.
I was curious to see if there had been any loosening of the cam bearing cap bolts.
Readers with a long memory will recall that I cured an apparent camchain noise by finding that a few cam bearing cap retaining bolts were loose. Some others had been somewhere near finger tight.
It was nice to find that all looked and felt well inside this time.
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed the questionable appearance of the fuel filter in the above pic.
The concern would be justified as the filter was almost clogged with rust from the tank. The cheap filter did its job and kept the nastiness away from the carbies.
Here is a close-up pic of the filter and most of what came out of it.
Any suggestions of products or services in Melbourne to fix the rust in the tank are welcome.
When I poked the feeler gauges around the rockers the only ones in spec were #3 intake.
The rest of the gaps were all below spec.
Either the rockers were never done before or somebody did them wrong in the past. I suspect the latter.
I looked up the specs again in the German FSM and compared them with the specs in the Haynes manual.
The German FSM lists two specs. When I put the words through Google Translate, the smaller spec is between the cam and the rocker, the larger spec is between the rocker and the valve stem.
The Haynes lists just one spec, the smaller of the factory pairs, but between the rocker and valve stem.
The difference is only about 0.05mm (5 hundredths of a millimetre) but there is not much gap there to begin with.
Resetting the clearances took longer than I expected because it seems that somebody in the past may have assumed that whatever torque spec for the adjuster lock nuts exists, it somehow translates to "fahrkenteit".
I can't remember the last factory manual in which I have not found an error of some sort. If I were fluent in technical German I may even find something dubious in the German FSM.
Non-factory manuals may use diagrams and specs from FSMs but the FSMs are not always perfect to begin with and then the non-factory folk also add their own errors on top.
I once sorted out an electrical issue on a friend's old 650 Bonneville "aided" by a Haynes manual which I recall my friend referred to as the "Haynes Book Of Lies".