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Old June 13th, 2014, 12:50 AM   #14
KawiKid860
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Name: Murphey
Location: Eastern Washington
Join Date: Apr 2011

Motorcycle(s): 2002 Honda 919, 2004 Ninja 500R NAKED

Posts: A lot.
TL;DR I'm a cheap mechanic and my bike was really broke but I managed to do it.

I did the whole adjustment myself on my CBR, it was a bit scary and took like 5 days all said and done but I wasn't in any hurry and just took my time, could easily do one in a day now provided I had everything I needed for it. I plan on doing a check, and probably not needing to adjust on my 919 in 5k miles when it's time for it. My clearances were so tight that I had literally no clearance on 2 valves and very little on the rest, only on the intake valves. All 8 exhaust valves were at some degree of within spec. so I had to make a guess with shim size and my guess wasn't good enough so I had to readjust those two valves which meant taking out the cams again, going to the shop again to get more shims, readjusting, retiming, etc basically a two for one deal on adjusting my valves which isn't a good deal lol. My first time timing it I used the wrong mark on the flywheel so I had PTV contact which is why you ALWAYS turn slowly by hand first because that would have otherwise destroyed my engine. Then after my final readjustment my torque wrench never clicked when torqueing the cams down so I snapped a bolt in the cam holder plate, luckily enough was still connected the whole thing came out and I replaced it with a bolt of the same grade as OEM from a local fastener store which luckily seemed to work as well as OEM too haha. FINALLY I had all the valves in spec and I had to dick around with the stupid manual CCT the bike had, which I had to JB weld the adjustment bolt onto it because the pin that held it on broke, blah blah set chain tension put throttle bodies back on get new battery FINALLY START THE BIKE VROOOOOMMMMM she started right up, better than she ever had before. Actually, the intake valves were so tight the bike wouldn't even start anymore towards the end from lack of compression. Only put a bit over 2k miles on it after that but that included a cross state trip, a track day where it whooped a lot of faster bikes on the straights, twisties, lots of sitting in traffic at 225 degrees burning the heck out of me (thank God the 919 isn't like that) temperatures ranging from 28 degrees to 105 degrees, and lots of pathetic attempts at first and second gear clutch ups. Now the new owner loves it and apparently races his friends on bigger bikes all the time and easily keeps up....

Moral of the story is if I can do it on my first time with crappy tools and no organization on a bike in a serious state of disrepair, I think you're golden.
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