Still Ugly Part 2

Both bikes needed some work done to them before taking off on a 15,000km journey of sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Neither bike had ever had a valve adjustment. The recommended valve adjustment schedule is something like 500km, 1000km, and every 10,000km from then on. My bike was overdue with 20,000km on it, Marc's was seriously overdue at 30,000+. To adjust the valves we needed to pull the Gas tank, seat, upper engine mount and various other do-dads. The KLR uses shims to get the valve clearances to proper spec.


We pulled the bikes apart in my garage in minus 30 celcius weather. We tried using space heaters as well as 2500W of lighting to heat things up, didn't help much. There's something strangely comforting in drinking a ice cold bottle of beer to warm you up. Off come the head covers to expose the valve shims. Mine were out of spec, not too bad though. Marc's were out a little further, one exhaust valve had only .05mm of clearance, dangerously close to bad stuff. We made a sweet little tool to rotate the shim buckets to get the old shims out. Smoked some cigars and slapped the head covers back on. More to come later including badass exhaust.