I love my goldwing even more today. The first 32k mile valve clearance check went incredibly well. No plastics to remove at all. 8 bolts per side and I was looking at the cam shaft. All the clearances were right on the money, 0.006 inch for the intakes and 0.009 inch for the exhausts. Not only that, I figured that I didn’t even need to constantly align the timing marks, rather making sure a cam lobe was pointing away from the shim bucket would do the job nicely. This is a quite valuable knowledge to have. And I saved $170 by not going to the dealer.
As usual I had fun at Susan’s garage with all her fantastic tools. There is hardly a tool that she does not have. Her recent acquisition is a foldaway picnic table which I could carry on my hitch rack if I wanted. Much fun.
Next maintenance items are minor compared to what I did today: Brake/clutch fluid flush, coolant flush and spark plug replacement.
#1 by brian mitchell on November 3, 2009 - 1:08 pm
Just wondering – did you slacken off the cam chain tensioners as the service manual says you need to do in order to get accurate clearance readings? I am just getting set to check my valves and this seems a bit of a pain to do.
You do have to remove inner fairings to get to the chain tensioners, and then you either need the special honda tools (or improvise your own) in order to slacken the tensioner. Looks like the one on the right side is especially tough to get at.
Be interested to know how you handled that! Maybe there is an easier way?
Cheers …….. Brian
#2 by therider on November 3, 2009 - 1:40 pm
No, I did not slacked the cam chain tensioner. Reason being that it would have had very very little effect on the readings since my wing was pretty “new” (32k miles). Even if the engine had high mileage, a slack can be of the order of 0.005mm so unless I am near the high end of the tolerance, I would not bother.
Good luck with your valve clearance check. It is much easier than what it sounds like in the manual.