Steve M
Junior Member
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SuzukiSavage.com Rocks!
Posts: 60
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all valves were correctly adjusted, prior to the valve failure I had only ridden about 10 miles and about 2 miles at 70 to 80 mph when the exhaust valve broke. The valve stem was moving easily in the valve guide. It was a simple case of the stem failing.
The savage engine is over square and a fairly torqeuy low revver, max revs is about 5,400 ? So no way should a valve fail due to being ridden hard. In fact the savage engine is in such a low state of tune that it sounds very comfortable at 80 mph, so much so that to me it feels as though there should be another 20 mph or so left in it. I have had bikes that were built in the 60's, 70's and 80's that revved to over 10,000 rpm and covered 50, 60 thousand miles of hard riding. As a rule of thumb that would be 20 times more valve life used than my savage after 20 thousand miles. Of course those bikes ran on leaded fuel were and tuned to run richer than a savage.
I sold a mate an old Yamaha XJ900F a couple of years ago that had done 64,000 miles, and he has added another 15,000. That bike has just had regular oil changes, diff oil changes, one new clutch set and tyres as needed. It is still running sweet as a nut.
I am now convinced that the failure was due either to a flaw from manufacture, or lean running by previous owner(s), and the higher temperatures that would result.
So convinced am I, that I am putting in a bigger main jet, and I will be putting 2 new exhaust valves in the replacement engine before I install and run it.
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