Aftermarket valve shims

This is a first for me, I've used aftermarket shims for decades with success. Yesterday I went to fix a small irritating oil leak from the valve cover on my KZ900. Got the cover off and was looking things over I saw the valve shim on #3 exhaust and #3 intake were nakkered along with #2 exhaust. The engine has only 400 miles on it since I finished the build. I used a set of NOS Yoshimura ST1 cams that I had bought in the eighties. I had pulled the cover and checked the valves at 200 miles and there no problem at that time. However I did swap out #3 intake and exhaust and #2 exhaust shims to tighten up the clearances. I simply pulled K&L shims from my shim box and installed them like I've done dozens of times over the years.
Put it all together and rode it for another 200 miles till the oil leak. The shims were pretty chewed up but the cams I was able to dress up nicely so at least I didn't ruin a set of $600 camshafts. I bought a bunch of K&L shims awhile back and I'm pretty sure these were from that batch. I bought all new Kawasaki shims and am going to use those from now on. Something to think about.

What a shame! Just like everything else this society sells us! Throw away! stove, fridge, dish washer, 10 yr. life and scrap it!
Back in the day! We, my friends and racers. We had a can full of all different sizes. We passed it around! Find some, use them, put yours back in the can! I'll try and find and old picture. They were in an old coffee can of some sort. Went thru the 80's into the 90's.
"Old Is Cool" old school!

More crap quality parts from K&L.

There were a bunch of bad K&L shims a few years back (hardness problems among other things.) Suzuki GS shims were affected and Z1 stopped selling them while K&L got their shit together. Unfortunately, there are some out in the marketplace (obviously) and it doesn't surprise me that KZ shims are also affected. I've got scads of shims and took them to where I work and checked hardness of the metal (all were good.) Anyway, if anyone has any NOS K&L shims purchased in the last few years you may want to trash them.

Pretty sad they can't make a shim. Chinese junk!

I have about 100 kz shims. Now I'll have to go thru them and check for hardness or toss em and start over with OEM. Really pisses me off shim quality was something I just took for granted for decades, now I have to be more careful. I'm really glad I had that oil leak, running it any longer and I would have lunched a nice expensive set of cams.

I am assuming these are Shim-under-bucket adjusters. Is that correct ?

urankjj wrote: I am assuming these are Shim-under-bucket adjusters. Is that correct ?

No. They wouldn't be all tore up if they were.

:ohmy: :ohmy: :ohmy:

What engine oil do you use?

I broke the engine in using Amsoil 30wt break in oil then switched to Rotella 15/40 with Lucas breakin additive. Been doing it this way for decades without issue. And it's shim over bucket.

Been wondering about upgrading from Rotella T4 to something better if available, now that excessive oil wasted through my engine should be just a bad memory.
We'll see after a month in the Spring.

:woohoo:

I've had them get divots in the centers. Watching very close.
Steve

Any oi is good, the shims have to be hard or this happens.