I bought this recon ES new about 6mo ago for the Wife. The quad has about 3 tanks ran through it. After the second tank of gas I noticed that the valves were clattering higher in the RPM band. At this point I decided to perform the brak in maintenance as spec by the service manual. The thing that really annoys me is how you cannot line up the T mark on the flywheel without it rolling past the set mark. No matter what you do the T mark will not stay in the correct position but moves a few mm past the set mark. I have set the valves on this quad twice now with no luck. The topend /valves are still making a racket when you are up in RPMs. Now I am new to the push rod design on an ATV, are all of these motors noisy in this way? I have been riding quads for 20yrs and owned many 4 strokes and set valves before, but never with this much trouble. Any info is appreciated

 

try taking the spark plug out when you line up the "t" mark. It takes the comrpession off the piston, it should stay where you put it now.

as far as the noise, it's normal. My rancher does the same thing. You'll always have some valve lash noise. If you have NO noise then it would actually be bad, because no noise would mean very little or no slack in the valve train and could lead to valves not closing, and possible burned valves.

 

I have owned 5 Honda quads with the transverse mounted, pushrod engines, and I can't say that I ever thought the valve train was at all noisy on any one of them.

 

This is the first 4 wheeler I have owned myself. I have ridin them before, but my first one I performed the best brake in that i could. Idle sounds fine putting around sounds fine, but like peaking out is when u here the clatter. I figured it was fine, because i don't peak out that often. I have also heard much worse. Guy tried to adjust his and thing doesn't fire right anymore and clatters were loud any rpm. Another guy I know went and bought a 4 wheeler and went all out on its first ride and now his clatters.

 

I appreciate it guys. So you are saying that the push rod design makes more of a clatter higher in the RPM band than AN OHC set up? Oh ya I also always set the valves with the spark plug out, just to make it easy to rotate the crank. What I am hearing may just be the nature of the design, I just know it’s louder than any of my previous quads.