I have an 03 and was told by the dealer that after 10 hours it would need a valve adjustment. I thought that I heard they have self adjusting valves. Does anyone know for sure?

 

Youre dealer is right, they need to be adjusted.

 

What should a good valve adjustment cost?

 

Mine was like $120 with an oil change.

 

Valve adjustment is done via changing shims in whats called shim buckets that sit on the valve springs in a hole in the head. The cam rides on the shims which are about 30mm diamater, and 5mm thick (pluss or minus to set the lash properly) which sit in the bucket, that sits on the top ov the valve spring. (I may be getting off topic slightly, or to involved on this next part):

In order to check the valve lash, you have to remove the top half of the head, (valve cover) and use a flat strip stlye feeler gauge (common tool) to see what the clearance curently is. Then to change it you must remove the curent shim and measure it, then subtract the desired clearance from actual measured, and add this value to the curent shim thickness. This will give you the desired thickness shim to install. To change/remove the shims, i think there is a tool that compresses the shim bucket far enough to slip out the shim with a maganet? I had to set my timming chain, then remove the cams to get the shims out as i have no tool to compress the buckets.

If you dont have a service manual, and dont have expierance with 4 stroke valve train, and timming cams, let the dealer do it. Im just an average joe that does my own work, (to cheep to pay 120 each year) so i do mine my self, but i have had expierance rebuilding various types of motors.

You can get shims from your bom. dealer, or try a suzuki shop. Theres a mid 70's street bike that used the same diamater shims as the DS, just bring one in and they should be able to match it up if they stock them. You wont be able to get exact thickness you need, so figure the low and high spec you could use to get the clearance you want, then find one in that range. Might try a BMW bike dealer as well, just refer to the F650 dirt bike motor and they should know.

 

Darn good answer!

 

so if u buy a newds650 after 10 hours or so of riding they need a valve adjustment?

 

I finally checked my own valves after 18 months or about 100 hours and the valves need no adjustment. Don't know if I was just lucky. But it feels great to know there good and I still got the $180 that my dealer wanted.

Could not of done it without the valve adjustment site I got from here.

http://home.earthlink.net/~wegenka/maintenance.htm

Thanks to who ever set that site up.

Rob

 

O.K. I called the dealer that I bought it from and they said it would be $249 with and oil change. I told him that he was a little high, and he said that was because they are the only platinum dealer in the area.

 

WTF- 'the only platinum dealer in the area' that sounds like a load of crap. $250 is too much. I think you should be the manual, & do it yourself. Do a search on here for anything anyone has posted or discussed about doing it, PM a couple of people who've done it before & get some phone numbers so you can call someone if you get stuck, then tear into it when you've got a lot of time - no it doesn't take long if you've done it before but if you've never done it you'll want to go VERY slow and get things as perfect as possible. Once you've done it, you'll really wonder how the dealer was going to charge you $250 to do it!

If you know someone who has adjusted valves before then have them come over to help - buy em a few beers afterwards or whatever it takes. You could buy a lot of beers for a budy and still not be paying half of $250!

And be sure to read that entire web page about adjusting the valves, I looked that over extensivly when I did mine. Also when you need to buy valves: they are a 29mm round shim. The sizes you'll have in your ATV will be different from ATV to ATV so you can't buy shims till after you've checed the valves, then determined whether or not the need to be adjusted. The 29mm shims are easy to find also. You can get them from a Bombardier dealer, a BMW motorcycle dealer (for the F650, same engine) (cheapest option - odd huh!) or a Kawasaki dealer - these same shims are used on the Kawasaki KZ1000 police bike. I paid $6 a piece for mine, and since I have two DS' I bought about $60 worth in a wide assorment.