1200RT Maintenance

dduelin said:
He said valve adjustment, not valve check. It takes about 4 hours for me to check the valves, which I do at about 20,000 mile intervals. That is including removing the side panels and lower cowling - the tank stays in place. I have never had to remove the tank for any maintenance job, including the valve adjustment finally required at 86,000 miles.
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OK, educate me here as I don't see the difference between the labor involved in GETTING to the valves to check or adjust, not the part of adjusting the shim under bucket valve procedure, which is in addition to the check itself. And why every 20K? Isn't the factory spec every 16K for a check?

And the transmission spline has not been done in 54K.
 
Chris Parker said:
OK, educate me here as I don't see the difference between the labor involved in GETTING to the valves to check or adjust, not the part of adjusting the shim under bucket valve procedure, which is in addition to the check itself. And why every 20K? Isn't the factory spec every 16K for a check?

And the transmission spline has not been done in 54K.
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It takes about 4 hours to remove the necessary items (tupperware, valve covers, I remove the coils & some wires to better remove and reinstall the valve covers) to expose the valve train and check the valve clearances and button everything back up. For several checks it was like this - check, all clearance found to be good, put back together in about 4 hours. Without checking the log I think it was at 22K, 45k, 65K, 86k. Then at 86,000 miles one valve was out of spec so there was about 3 or 4 more hours labor involved in removing the exhaust camshafts and replacing the 5 shims. Since 4 other exhaust valves at the limit of tolerance I reshimmed those as well because it took not much more time and since I had it apart for 1 shim, why not do the other 4 so I won't have to do it again for perhaps another 86,000 miles.

For your bike it would roughly be the same as the time and labor involved in checking the valve clearances and then going further and removing then replacing the rocker arms. You gotta do one then the other.

Yes, Honda says the valve check is done at 16K intervals. I take a minor risk by stretching out the interval. Some owners never do it at all with no consequence. I am not comfortable doing that.

If I did the check at 16K, I have 4 hours checking valves by the time 18,000 miles rolls around, you have 1.5 + 1.5 + 1.5 = 4.5 hours. But I did mine at 23K. I had 4 hours in valve checking by 24K, you had 4 x 1.5 or 6 hours. This assumes you follow the recommendation of 6K intervals of course. If we compare your time in valves by 54k and mine at 54K you have 13.5 hours, I had 12 if done at 16K but I only had 8 hours. I have no belts to change and my brake discs are barely worn while my buddy just replaced his front ones on his RT at 60K, worn below tolerance. Bill was nearly $700 if I recall for the discs, he did the labor.

If you enjoy working on your bike like I do, these few hours we are talking about aren't such a big deal, no?
 
John, the Red Sox taking another World Series is more likely than motorcyclists coming to agreement on how reliable (or not) or how difficult (or simple) to maintain the (insert marque here) motorcycle line is (or isn't).
 
I rode a couple of RTs if I were not a poor boy I would have one but then again If I could afford to there might be 1/2 doszen bike and as many cars and trucks in the garage . My wife might have me lookin for another garage and home tho
 
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