Gs850 bogging down

[ninjadave7]

mm. I'll check my air box sealing again then. I'm as sure as I can be that the jets are clean, and there are brand new o-rings on the carb intake boots.

[ninjadave7]

Alright, checked valve clearances this morning, every one is too close. I couldn't even get my .003 feeler in there. I double-checked the guide on basscliff's site, and the manual I have, so I'm sure I checked them correctly. On the 1/2 side I could hear the shims sliding against the cams as the crankshaft turned...

I'd rather not buy several sets of shims and experiment, that's pretty costly. I could go down 2 sizes and probably be clear, but would that be too much, or is that assuming too much?

what now?

[cowboyup3371]

Do you have Steve's spreadsheet yet?

Get that and then send a PM to Ghostgs1 as he runs the shim club. You'll get the shims for pretty close to nothing (postage or $10 whichever you want) and you can trade back and forth as needed if you don't get it right the first time.

[Steve]

Alright, checked valve clearances this morning, every one is too close. I couldn't even get my .003 feeler in there. ...
what now?

What now? Please make sure you have the right numbers listed.

If you "couldn't even get my .003 feeler in there", that tells me that you are using INCH feeler gauges, but that's OK, as .003" is the maximum clearance.

On the other hand, if you mis-typed and meant to say you couldn't fit a .03 feeler in there, I would think you were using METRIC feelers, and, yes, .03mm is the minimum clearance.
So, ... which one did you use, which one did you mean?

.

[Steve]

Do you have Steve's spreadsheet yet?

Yes, he got a copy last week.

.

[1948man]

If you're at .03 mm and the shim will spin in the bucket, that indicates you have at least some clearance and going down one size should suffice. Maybe the Unifilter in the stock airbox flows more than the OEM filter which could necessitate jet tweaking.

[ninjadave7]

brilliant, I had no idea that there was a shim club, what a good idea! 1948man, I couldn't get the .003 in-between, but i'll try spinning the shim and see what happens. Hopefully the air filter isn't the problem, I have no idea how to really tweak the jets properly... although I suppose that's what this forum is for. I'll have the bike apart again soon and then I'm sure I'll be back for more info!

[Mattias44]

You really should go to your local auto parts store or hardware store and buy a set of feeler gauges either in metric sizes, or in English that go down to 1 mil. I think the set I bought to do this cost about $6. 0.003in is about .076mm, which is toward the upper end of your clearance.

While you're at the store buying new toys, a micrometer is a very handy thing to have when doing shims as well. Start playing around measuring shims and you'll gain a new perspective on manufacturing tolerances, even for precision parts such as these. Good luck!

[koolaid_kid]

IIRC I got my metric feeler gauges at Napa. The SAE converted to metric was just not accurate enough, and feeler gauges in the correct metric system were inexpensive.