Hey OPT, I was wondering about the valve lash adjustment schedule on the late model 500 sportsman. The book calls for every 100 hours, I know you've done hundreds of them; do they tend to require adjustment that often or is that just preventative maintenance? How often did you find them out of adjustment?

I would have thought that a yearly task, rather than every 100 hours; I've owned V-4 Honda motorcycles for many years and I have yet to find a valve out of adjustment on one of them until around 30k miles or better.

 

I would check em every 100 hrs,but to be honest with you 95% of the ones I've checked even ones with several hundred hours on em (that never had been checked before) were pretty well dead on .006 intake and exhaust. It's usually ones that haven't been maintained properly,wrong oil,extended oil change intervals,etc that I've had valves start to tighten up. You can check a new one and actually a lot are set at a LOOSE .006 from the factory,closer to .007 actually. OPT