Well, at 15,229 miles, my adjuster is out 19mm. Guess I'm parking it til I can get a "care package" from verslagen1. Now that I've got her just about the way I want her; I just don't want to risk the possibility of turning my bike into a paperweight.
As for riding style, I'm pretty conservative. I've opened her up a time or two, but I don't make a regular habit of it. Peg scraping? Not so much. I have made several highway trips on her, usually at speeds of 65 - 70mph. No more. As for maintenence, I changed the oil and filter four times in the first 1,000 miles and relegiously every 1,000 miles thereafter. Yes I've been told it's overkill, but I just have this paranoia about an air/oil cooled engine not having fresh, clean oil. I used Yamlube 20/50 until 7,052 miles, and then switched to Rotella T 15/40.
Oh justin_o_guy, my insides have the same powder coat looking stuff as yours. What year is yours agian? Mine is a 2008. Could it be something to do with when they put in the 5 speed?
Well, hope this helps somebody with their adjuster. As always, I couldn't have done it without you guys. The stuff in the tech section made it easy. For now, I'm buttoning her back up and waiting on parts. Weather supposed to be bad anyway.

The straight cylindrical protion of the plunger that's sticking out of the housing.  Measure from the housing to the edge where it tapers down.  It's suggested to fix it when it's 18mm (.709" or 23/32") but I've ridden it till it was 22mm but it will oval out the housing.
Picture curtesy of rogue cheddar.
This one measures 22/32" almost ready.

I used a small 9" X20" lathe to make a new piston for mine that was 4mm longer than stock.  then i milled the slot and fitted a roll pin to prevent it from falling out.
This allows it to protrude 2mm further than stock and still be 2mm more inside the tube to prevent ovaling.
I posted photos about a year ago.
BTW , when I installed a new cam chain, the piston protruded 14mm new.
I conclude that at 18mm it has only moved 4mm from when the engine was new.
I also posted photos of comparing stretch by bending the chain sideways.  Since stretch is a factor of wear in the pins and holes in the chain, this is a very accurate method.

Phelonius

  Its the type of oil you use not how often you change it. Thats proof that that Rotella isn't to hot of and oil.He should have stayed with the Yamaha oil.

  Klotz Hi Performance techiniplate M 4 racing oil,Zero wear oil.

I'm still not convinced that it's not an "intended" design flaw. The average mileage for this engine size is about 3.000/year, according to Kelly Blue Book:http://www.kbb.com/company/faq/motorcycles#mv_8
That's about 5 years, pretty much the service life for a "beginner" bike. The folks at Suzuki probably figure that the intended market for this bike (of which we are clearly not) would not own the bike longer than that, and needn't bother with redesign and retooling.

"I think we should be aware we need to pop our covers every 10,000 miles at most and simply take a look inside to see what is going on.  That is just simple prudence. "

Sound advice. At 15,000 + miles, I was just lucky. Admitedly, I was putting it off because I thought it would be complicated. It took all of an hour; and that was going very slowly, with the Clymer's open, and a laptop in the garage logged in to this site. If I'd known what a relatively simple, straight forward procedure this was, I'd have done it a few thousand back! Now putting on the VerSlavy doesn't seem so daunting a task, and will get me a little more life out of the cam chain. Replacing the cam chain, well that's another story.

Nope, and when you see the cam chain on our bike you will understand why.  Ours you take the gears off and slide the loop out, then replace the new loop the same way.

Some bikes (4 cylinder types) have a cam chain set up in the center of the crank shaft and the cam chain is of a type that can be broken and master link restaked, those you start the new chain to the old chain and rotate everything around holding tension to keep the teeth engaged .....  but ours is not that type.