watch your valves

[KKXR400R]

Well there really is no moral to this story, other then reinforcing the idea of keeping up with your valve and just overall maintenance on the thumpers. Although we missed our 2 day race and our spirits were down thinking the worst we still got the bike running again the next day.
Enjoy

Friday morning I woke up for work and told the wifey to get everything together for the Checkers race that was coming up. I got a call from her about 2 hours later saying that the bike wasn't starting. I quickly told her to walk through the simple stuff to get it going. about 2 hours after that I get another call that it still wouldn't start, not even cough! I took the rest of the day off and got to the house and sure enough....nothing. Kinda strange I couldn't even find TDC. After about 10 kicks I figured something was seriously wrong. To top it off her left seal was pouring fork out everywhere...GREAT!!! As a last resort I tried blipping the throttle at the end of a strong kick. Started right up but it still worried me quite a bit cause the ran perfect in Ocotillo Wells the weekend before with no starting problems what so ever. I called Chris and asked him if we could bring the bike down to the shop. He had no problem bringing it in. Along with the valves he said he was going to show me how to install new fork seals...Sweet! We got the shop and tore everything down. Mind you, we had checked the valves before Cycle Ranch and they were in spec, puting 20 mild hours on it. We tried measuring the clearance on the Intake but we couldn't get even the smallest feeler in there.
The exhaust was pretty tight also. We got on the phone and started ordering shim kits. On Saturday Tracy went to the shop and helped Chris with everything so I really can't tell you all the details...I'm sure she will pipe in. Today we went for a ride and the bike ran great. Every time I work on her bike I learn more and more about the 4-stroke technology boosting my confidence on the engine side of it. I'm changing the maintenance schedule and will be checking valve clearances every 10 hours. In June we will be doing a top end, valves, springs ect ect on her bike. As a bonus I'm going to film it and post it as a video tutorial. See ya

-Kevin-