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Found some cam/shim damage when doing my valves

  • Thread starter Thread starter ezmack
  • Start date Start date
E

ezmack

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Was checking my valves when I found this on the number 4 exhaust:


I dunno thought I'd share with the class. Got it shimmed back in tolerance for now. Maybe I'll check the filter in the pan for debris. Guess I'll be hitting fleabay. I think I'll try some 650 cams this time see if I can feel a difference. Degreeing cams should be a little less painful since I'm working in a machine shop and have access to proper equipment for once.
 
When you pull the cam, check the bearing saddles to see if you have any scoring. Hoping it's not oil starvation and just a bad shim.
 
Hope you are not riding it till its sorted and may i ask if they where genuine Suzuki shims?
 
What bike do you have now? Be careful with your 650 cams. I think the cam profile might be the same, but the 650E (chain-driven) and 650G/GL (shaft-driven) have different sprockets, so be sure to keep the sprockets you have now and put them on the new cam.
 
Phy:Yeah it's a 550/650 swap I stuck with my old 550 cams originally.

Jt: hadn't thought of that I'll take a look. I usually use a little screw driver or pick to pop the shims up in the bucket I just kind of assumed a piece broke off. Or really anything got in, I try to be careful but I do most my shim checks I the driveway.

Sharpy: not stock shims I think the company was kl? Got it off bike bandit or some site like that. I am kind of curious what they're made of its a different finish that the suzuki ones for sure. I think we have some hardness testers at work maybe I can compare it to one of the suzuki ones
 
K&L sold a bunch of defective shims. Something to do with them not being properly flat and the hardness was not up to spec. I've got a bunch of K&L shims. Using a hardness tester on them sounds like a very good idea.
 
Using genuine shims be even better. Not trying to be a smart ass, but shims come into the "performance item" area of a engine. Even sidecover gaskets i use genuine and chain and sprockets are free range as long as there well known brands
 
I thought aftermarket was the only option for shims. You know when that bad batch was? I bought a handful last season and some from a few years back
 
In the services section is the GS SHIM CLUB. Get ahold of Ray and swap shims out before buying them. But yes stock Suzuki shims are still available.
 
Hit a snag when I went to swap in the new cams, had everything apart just had to swap the gears. Then I noticed the gears had the same number of teeth as my 550s. "That's odd" I thought, so I held the two cams next to eachother, and my fleabay special ones are a couple inches longer. Must be from a bigger bike, should've known $7 for 2 camshafts was too good to be true.

I did dig through my email and find the shim order. It was z-1 not bike bandit and I ordered them about a month after that post. So looks like it wasn't part of that bad batch.

Had an interesting conversation with a welder I know. Told him about the damage and showed him the pictures, he said blame the cam not the shim. Something about the way it looked made him think the metal wasn't for.ed properly or something. He compared it to kneading dough when you can still see the line where the dough folded over. He's got a lifetime of experience I don't have but who knows. He wanted me to regrind it (he wanted to weld it), so maybe it's a case of a hammer seeing nails. Everything is a welding project to a welder.
 
The cams are cast not forged, and I blame the shim. It's known that K&L had issues so that's the most obvious possibility (to me anyway).
 
I just bought a bunch of replacement shims from Z1. I'm hoping quality is still not an issue. I'll try to remember this thread next year when I check everything again. So far all of the parts from Z1 have been great.
 
I had one of my K&L shims do that, although the damage was not deep and it didn't hurt the cam. Other K&L shims were just fine, but I think I'm going to stick with Suzuki shims going forward.
 
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