Valve Clearances at 30k

[His Dudeness]

The valves clearance on the Fazer seem to generally be fairly stable so a lot of people tend to leave them BUT shimmed style valves like the ones on a Fazer engine tend to go quieter as the engine wears because the valve wears into the head and so the valve clearance gap closes so you get less valve noise rather than more. Some people think if there's no noise all is good but that's not really true. Valves mostly cool by making contact with the head and transferring their heat to the head so if they're getting held open longer because of the smaller valve clearance gap they don't get a chance to cool properly and can burn out. That's fairly extreme but it's what happens. The older older style tappets tended to get noisier as the engine wore because the gap got wider. So you got that distinctive tap tap noise. Tappets need to be adjusted more often than shimmed valves but having a wider gap is better than a tighter gap because of the cooling effect and tappets are a lot easier to adjust than replacing shims. Anyway checking the valve clearance on the Fazer is not that difficult and you could probably do it yourself. You need a set of feeler gauges and a basic tool set to get the cam cover off and the alternator cover off. You rotate the engine until you get to top dead centre on the compression stroke because both intake and exhaust valves are closed on the compression stroke and then slide the gauge in to measure the gap then rotate the engine again to measure the gap on the next cylinder. There's a good procedure write up in the Yamaha manual. If you've done a bit of mechanics you should be able to determine if they're in tolerance or not. They probably will be but you won't know for sure until they're checked. I did need a few shims at 30k