TOPIC:

Kawboy:

valve tappets and or shim buckets start making audible noise around the .012-,015" clearance

Just to be clear, you mean inches, right? 0.012 inch is 0.3 mm. That's quite a lot. I am reflecting on the 0.18 mm I have on one of my intakes with service top recommended 0.15. Mind you, as we all know it, mine will have a first run in decades with things settling down. I am not worried at all at this stage. The real deal will be after the first torquing down. Just wondering, did you mean mm or inches?

StanG wrote: Kawboy:

valve tappets and or shim buckets start making audible noise around the .012-,015" clearance

Just to be clear, you mean inches, right? 0.012 inch is 0.3 mm. That's quite a lot. I am reflecting on the 0.18 mm I have on one of my intakes with service top recommended 0.15. Mind you, as we all know it, mine will have a first run in decades with things settling down. I am not worried at all at this stage. The real deal will be after the first torquing down. Just wondering, did you mean mm or inches?

You're correct Stan. I did mean .012 -.015 inches. Here in Canada we indicate inches with a " and we indicate feet with a ' Maybe in the future I'll write it up as 12-15 thou. Don't know about you, but all I have for feeler gauges come in thousands of an inch. Don't think I've seen any in mm but I'm sure they are out there.

When I went through primary school, we learned our measurement system in grade 4. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately for me our Prime Minister for Canada at that time, Pierre Elliot Trudeau decided to convert Canada's measurement system to metric. So for me, I learned the North American standard - inches feet, yards in the first half of the school year and then in the second half of the year we had to learn the metric system. And because we had to learn both systems, in my particular year of doing grade 4, we had to learn both systems and be able to convert measurement from one system to the other. So I converse in either measurement system. My wife on the other hand who is 2 years older, couldn't tell you any measurement in metric and I'm constantly converting for her. My kids never learned the North American standard and couldn't tell you any measurement in the North American standard so I have to convert for them as well.

Kawboy wrote:

You're correct Stan. I did mean .012 -.015 inches.

Thank you for clarifying this. After 32 years in Canada, of course I know how inches and feet are marked, haha. I simply wanted to make sure it wasn't a typo, because converting it into millimeters that's quite a high number. But I guess if a rider doesn't check valve clearances for many years it might happen. And it's true that in mainland Europe (no idea if all countries) the mark " is used for quotation, not the ' mark. Perhaps because we use metric system.

Personally, I prefer everything to be metric. Not just because I grew up with it, but it's straight forward in multiplications by 10. Even by name, 'foot', 'stone', sounds archaic, hahaha. But kind of cool in a way. The overall system in Canada, I find to be sort of schizophrenic - measure length in inches and feet, but speed in kilometers??? Couldn't there be a simple making up of the mind involved? No wonder the current Trudeau has trouble putting together a sentence. A millimeter is small enough to comfortably measure most of things in every day life by simple multiplication. When reaching 10, it becomes ONE centimeter and so on. Easy to write, understand and follow. Like a universal language. In standard system you divide by 8, 16, 32??? Why not measure all in feet, and have something 1/256 of a foot! haha
Of course, if you grow up with whatever system, you get to feel it by heart. And whatever system it would be, it's not really that difficult to learn it by heart as well, if people can learn something much more complex like foreign languages. Here in North America, some things are made unnecessarily complicated. Like prices. It's always '99' and taxes are like a ghost behind it, tipping, oh boy. Everywhere else is'what you see is what you get'. No tipping!

At the machine shop they were measuring valves in 'thou'. I have feeler gauges in both standard and metric, the metric one a nice German made and the standard Starrett straight from the ole' USA. Actually metric feeler gauges are easily obtainable. I don't remember where I got an extra set from, but they were cheap and high quality. If I can remember I will let you know.

Here's the link to the feeler gauge I got:

BikeMaster 32-Blade Dual Reading Combination Feeler Gauge Set - 173147