Dear Savagers: I took it upon myself to do two things on my 2006, which has about 1100 miles: 1) check the head bolt tightness, mainly because it says to do it in the manual at 600 miles and 2) measure/adjust the valves.
The Suzuki manual says "remove the cylinder head side covers and cylinder head cover." It makes it sound easy but getting the head cover off is a serious job. I used Greg_650's bolt on the top of a box method to keep track of all the bolts --it worked brililantly (see
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?board=tech;action=display;num=1099227...). Then I was puzzled that one of the head bolts seemed to be missing, but it was just underneath a plug. After removing the plug I checked the tightness of all four bolts with my torque wrench. The were all fine so I did all that for nothing! I must admit it was a good learning experience to finally see what the engine insides look like.
Putting the head cover back on is also a bit tricky, as it has to be resealed and certain bolts must go in before the cover is attached. The plug also has to be resealed. I reset the automatic de-compression cable, which isn't hard but takes time. In retightening I was very scared that a bolt was going to snap-- they just don't feel very strong so I used less rather than more torque. When some just felt like they were going break soon I left them wrench tight rather than use the torque wrench. Does anybody have any ideas where to get stronger bolts? I think it would be worth changing them all out.
I used Vroom1776's posting on adjusting valves (
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?board=tech;action=display;num=1151938...) and it was very good. I had never done anything like this before and had to sit back and imagine what was going on with valves going up and down before I could begin. Finding the exact space to measure at first was hard, but the red arrow on the photo saved me. After re-doing the head cover they were tight so I adjusted all four of them to .004 inches. I ran to Lowes and got some new bolts to replace the very weak valve cover bolts that came with the bike and put those on. They felt a lot stronger, real steel. Replaced the tank, rehooked the cables, and fuel lines, put on the seat.
To my amazement the bike started up and sounded great. I rode it around the block two times, very gently, and couldn't tell much difference from what is sounded like before, although I did notice it was a bit smoother sounding. I will wait until the sealent cures before testing the engine at higher rpms.