I am going to adjust my valves come spring... No issues with it, starts perfect, preventative maintenance.

I have a service manual, went looking on youtube, no vids. Easy as the manual makes it out to be?

 

Pull the valve cover, side cam cover and the spark plug since you don't have a recoil starter. Bump the engine over to where the cam sprocket alignment pin is close to the center of the head.With the spark plug out it's easy to physically turn the sprocket to where the sprocket pin is at tdc,plus you can pull the stator cover 14mm bolt if you wish to see that the inverted flywheel "T" mark lines up with the case pointer indicating tdc. Most times valves are set at a loose .006 from the factory. May end up just checking clearance and find they are ok.Most times if you don't tear up the gaskets taking the valve cover and the rectangle cam cover off you can reuse them.

 

Thank you OPT. I think I will get the gaskets just in case, if not needed, will shelf them.

 

When I checked my 500 sportsman , they were quite loose. I set them at a loose .006 but found the engine still rattled under acceleration. I read that some adjusted to a snug .006 and the engine quieted down some. I tried that and it's better, well a little more quiet I mean. If your exhaust valve rocker is like mine where it does two valves with one rocker, make sure you set them together. Two feeler gauges at the same time. It's not a hard job , it's hard to get at the area though. A lot of plastic in the way on mine anyways!

 

Always use two feeler gauges on the double exhaust rocker arms so there is no "cocking" of the rocker arm. Some of the old street bikes set up like this were bad about having unequal pressure and knocked out valve spring keepers if you didn't adjust this way and caused some damage.. Haven't seen a 500 do it,but anythings possible..

 

Thanks for the tips. Sounds like the 'no go' way of setting lash will be the way to go.