From the factory, they can use shims that go in increments of 2 (hence 1.52 and 1.58). When you go and buy shims, they only sell them in increments of 5's (1.60, 1.65, 1.70, etc.) Just buy whatever shim that gets you within spec. Some people will tell you to go towards the loose side for clearence so you get a little more life before the valves tighten up, but some also go to a tighter setting. Some of the guys at my shop actually save shims as they replace them in customers bikes. That way they can use the odd ball size shims that go by 2's. If you have any motorcycle shops near you with some tech's your friends with, see if any of them have any.

 

Some places will exchange cost u nothing. lucky for me there is a place like that near me.

 

Write down what your tollerances are when you measure. Sometimes you can shuffle your shims around and reuse them.

For example. #1 is .05 out of spec. The Current shim is 1.65. #2 has a 1.60 shim. Move #2 shim to #1.
Make the most of what you have and only buy what you need.

 

Yea thats what i did

 

reading about this i really wanna check the valve clearances myself. Thats the last major maintenance thing i have yet to accomplish myself. I really wanna check them as im sittin at 19.5k miles and the manual says 17.5k is when you should have them checked. the only reason i havent checked them yet is everyone i talk to that has had theirs checked say they never needed anything adjusted when they checked them the first time the service manual said so. any other special tools you need besides a micrometer? any help on this would be nice cuz if i dont feel comfortable ill just take it to the local bike shop around here thats trustworthy. thank you

 

A good torque wrench and feeler gauges. The micrometer won't help much unless you are holding a shim that you can't read, or don't have the shim chart.

 

thank you

 

You'll want a torque wrench with a low range that is accurate to inch pounds or newton metre. Don't buy some cheap crap from autoparts. Get a craftsman or snapon. Some of my shims had numbers that I could not make out so a properly calibrated micrometer was very useful. Since micrometers might not be in metric, it is useful to know how to concert to metric (for ease), you can also use a chart like this -> http://mdmetric.com/tech/cvtcht.htm. It's 25.4mm to an inch. So, if your micrometer reads .0625 of an inch then it is 1.5875mm. Also be aware of precision vs accuracy. For example, you only need resolution to a hundreth of a mm, so we chop of unused digits... 1.587 (signifigicant figures) means it becomes 1.59mm. Perhaps thats being too particular, but its a good thing to learn how to do.

One dealer wanted $4 a shim and wanted to order them. I did find a dealer that charged me $3 per shim but had ones that pulled (as suggested from a post above) from other jobs. Of course I checked them at the counter with the micrometer to make sure they were correct before leaving!

Next time, I'll try to find a shop that will swap them out. And I was able to use shims from my other valves for a few. I needed to change out all 8 on the EXhaust side but only needed to buy 6.

Thnaks for the suggestion folks and I hope others find this useful.