My 05 has 100,000 and never checked valves. Runs strong as new and same gas mileage. A friend of mine has a 07 silver with 140,000 on it and never had it done...no issues. Not saying it's the proper treatment at all.Just saying.
How many have never adjusted the Valves
- Thread starter randy the x man
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I have 160k on my 03 last checked at 94k no adjustments.
Bike has 28K on it and no valve check. Runs strong. However, I am thinking of doing one either this year or next. If anyone living close by me is volunteering to help as a guide and watch me do it, I will take them up on it and learn the process and maybe help someone else down the road.
Inspected my valve clearances at 140,000 km's,,, as I had no evidence that this "new to me" bike had ever been checked. I found all valves at mid-spec,, except one exhaust valve on high (loose) tolerance limit. Since it was on the loose limit, I decided to let it go for the next inspection interval,, and have fun driving the carbon deposits out of it till then, since it seems to be running great. I may do a compression test at some point,, but if anything,, I expect that loose valve to tight up a bit (.001) by then. Cheers,, Cat'
thekaz
haz gone feral
I prefer grape myselfChecked the valves at 16 and 32 thousand. In spec and no change. Skipped the next two checks and ate Milky Ways and drank Kool-aid!!
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I bought my '07 last fall with 41,600 km (around 25,800 miles) and I don't think it had ever been checked. It's now got around 53,000 km (~33,000 miles) and I haven't done it yet. The dealer (one of the biggest Honda MC shops in eastern Canada told to have them checked at 80,000 km (50K miles) - but they also said that more often than not, nothing is required.
My old '79 Suzuki 850 was like that and the dealer basically told me to bring it back if it ever sounded funny - otherwise just ride it.
My old '79 Suzuki 850 was like that and the dealer basically told me to bring it back if it ever sounded funny - otherwise just ride it.
W0QNX
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Wow what a thread, you'll never hear your valves sound funny if they go to no gap on you. You will hear the sound of a valve going thru a piston top. Honda's are great bike with great engines but sometimes stuff happens.
As your engine runs the valve seat wear down. Hence the valve goes into the head of the engine just a bit farther. Hence the gap decreases as the valves seat in more. As the gap shortens the bike won't run bad in fact it may run better. Less gap more stroke of the valve give more air and fuel. But when that gap goes to zero and the valve doesn't seat in the head the valve will not be able to cool enough and will warp. A warped valve will stick in the valve guide and BOOM you'll get a hole in the top of the piston.
There are a lot of thing that can be ignored on the ST bikes but in my opinion a Valve check is NOT ONE of those things. Especially since it's not really that hard to do a check.
How much did you pay for that ST and why would not check your valves?????????? It's got to be the number one thing to check if you personally don't know what your valve gaps are set at.
I bought a bike once (KLR650) that had a gap of .001. I was glad I checked the gap before riding the bike more than a few miles.
End rant,
Raymond
As your engine runs the valve seat wear down. Hence the valve goes into the head of the engine just a bit farther. Hence the gap decreases as the valves seat in more. As the gap shortens the bike won't run bad in fact it may run better. Less gap more stroke of the valve give more air and fuel. But when that gap goes to zero and the valve doesn't seat in the head the valve will not be able to cool enough and will warp. A warped valve will stick in the valve guide and BOOM you'll get a hole in the top of the piston.
There are a lot of thing that can be ignored on the ST bikes but in my opinion a Valve check is NOT ONE of those things. Especially since it's not really that hard to do a check.
How much did you pay for that ST and why would not check your valves?????????? It's got to be the number one thing to check if you personally don't know what your valve gaps are set at.
I bought a bike once (KLR650) that had a gap of .001. I was glad I checked the gap before riding the bike more than a few miles.
End rant,
Raymond
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Well, you raise a good point - but - I suspect that if the valve clearance closed up like that, the engine would begin to misfire quite badly loooong before the valve got near the piston crown because the valves would be open at the wrong time in the cycle. That's what they meant when they said...."sounds funny".
Anyway, your point is well taken Ziamon.
Anyway, your point is well taken Ziamon.
W0QNX
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Well lots of piston with holes in the top would beg to differ but good luck on your choices.
Maybe a better question would be "How many ST pistons have holes due to valve problems?"
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Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
the difference between a normal gap and too tight gap will not change timing enough to notice any difference in running. The valves won't open at the wrong time, they will just open a tiny bit more because of the tighter clearance between the valve stem and cam, which will have no real effect on the engine performance.
However, since the exhaust valves start out at .010" to begin with, I wonder how far out of spec they'd have to get before any real trouble occurs. Since it takes years and tens of thousands of miles to get them to move by a couple thou, I have a suspicion that even if you never checked them the chances that they would get far enough out of spec to destroy the engine are still quite low. That being said, this is the one aspect of motorcycle maintenance that I follow on the prescribed intervals without exception.
thekaz
haz gone feral
Its really the question of the thread. How many ST's go out of adjustment? How many ST's burn a valve? How many ST's bang a piston? From what I have read the answer is almost none for all questions. AND considering the mileage some ST's get then WOW awesome
Most of the STs on this list are well maintained, which contributes to that statistic. I think Jeff B. had a valve burn on his ST1100, at pretty high mileage, and he maintained it well.
However, if I had to choose between not checking the valves and paying a shop to do it, I'd choose to not do it. The money spent over the lifetime of the bike would not be worth it to me. Having seen the valve adjustment history over several hundred thousand miles of my own bikes, its not something I'd be worried about.
Based on my limited experience with valve checks and shim changes on the ST1300, I have found that mostly the exhaust valves clearances tend to close. If left unchecked the exhaust valves may not close completely on the compression stroke which would likely cause a lack of compression and heat rising into the valve stem and melting the valve stem seals causing oil to leak into the cylinder, carbonize on the exhaust valve stem, and then causing the exhaust valve stem to stick and potentially burn.
Yes, I would check the valve clearances at least once by 50,000 miles especially if one tends to get hard on the acceleration often.
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Blrfl
Natural Rider Enhancement
Given Honda's penchant for over-engineering things on this bike, I suspect you're right. The tolerances are probably on the conservative side to allow for some neglect in maintenance without causing the engine to go kablooey, which is a good thing. Most manufacturers do that.
The thing is -- and I think this has been covered in this thread and others -- that as good as Honda is at manufacturing, they're not so good at it that the valve trains all behave the same way and don't require checks and adjustments. (There are hydraulic lifters, but there's a reason they don't show up on high-revving, high-performance engines.) Every engine comes out of the factory run in and adjusted, but things change in unpredictable ways.
Deciding to not check the valves because lots of other bikes measured fine is a risk just like anything else. Those bikes aren't your bike, but everybody has some level of risk they're willing to take. If you can stomach the possibility that your $15,000 motorcycle could become a boat anchor, that's not any different than riding in a three-quarter helmet because you don't mind the prospect of losing parts of your face in an accident.
--Mark
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Yup - certainly with you on that Blrfl.
For those of us who do their own valve check/adjustment work, the call is easy. When you have to pay the dealer to do it the decision gets a bit tougher. I'm not sure what they charge, but I'm going to use $400 for the sake of argument, correct me if I'm wrong. After 100k miles you'd have paid the dealer over $3000 to do valve adjustments. If you choose to never have them checked, and the engine blows, you're probably still money ahead using that $3000 you saved to buy a used engine and have it installed. Even at 50k miles, you've probably saved enough to cover the engine replacement. And by the time your $15k motorcycle blows its engine, its more like a $3-5k used bike, so if you decide to just throw it away, you're really only out $3-5k. This doesn't even take into the account the sheer horror of an 18-year old m/c mechanic pulling your cams and throwing them back in correctly if you need an adjustment.
So while I'm a regular valve maintenance kind of guy, I can see the argument for the other alternative.
In post #93 ... I said I believe the reason the gap decreases over time is because the soft aluminum head material is being compressed incessantly by the hardened valve seat every time the valve springs shut. I stand by that belief after reading about ST-owners who performed follow-on gap checks found no further change. Sure, the valves and seats may wear a bit, but usually a minuscule amount if the hardened steel is of good quality. So how does Mother Honda install the valve seats? Do they push them into the heads until a pre-set amount of pressure is built up? Or do they merely press them in to a constant depth dimension? Regardless, I agree that they should be checked at least once ... probably around 40k or 50k miles. After that, fuhgeddaboutit.
Blrfl
Natural Rider Enhancement
What price would you put on having the engine give up the ghost while leaned over in a turn where loss of power would result in a wreck?
--Mark
I've crashed about a dozen times on various bikes over the years, so what's one more? But that's just me, others here aren't quite as indifferent about crashing as I am. If I start running those scenarios through my head I might as well give up riding altogether.