Can someone point me to the procedure to check valve timing. I replaced head, head cover, rockers, and cam shaft. They were all damaged due to oil starvation. The bike ran OK before I tore into it, with the exception of the top end being very noisy.
Now the bike is hard to start and needs half throttle to keep it running. Air is puffing out of the airbox inlet when running. It feels like as much air is puffing out as being drawn in.
I marked the cam chain sprocket with piston at TDC before removing it and am pretty sure I put it back together right, But the way air puffs out the air box intake, I suspect I didn't get valve timing right.
Exhaust and intake valves are set to .005"

Thanks Dave, I never noticed those lines on the end of the cam shaft. As I mentioned, I did scribe marks on the cam sprocket and am pretty sure I got it together the way it was. It will be interesting when I get the head cover off again, if my mark corresponds to the cam marks. But will wait for my Clymer manual before digging in again.

I just received my 86-04 Clymer manual and am digging into valve timing again. In dragbikemike's thread, He aligned the mark on the rotor with the notch on the stator cover. When I do this, I can not get the lines on the cam to line up correctly. (pics 1 &2 moving chain one tooth). If I find TDC by resting a rod on top of the piston through the spark plug hole, I can get the cam shaft marks to line up properly, but the rotor bolt mark is slightly off. (pics 3 & 4). I'm thinking the rotor notch mark is not presion and I should go with the piston physically at TDC. The manual shows removing the stator cover exposes another TDC mark. I guess I'll need to order another gasket if I pull that cover.
Lastly, the manual states to turn the engine CW. Is that correct?

3

The notch on the rotor is more likely for doing valve adjustments - which requires a lot less precision on finding TDC exactly.

I would trust your spark plug method more....or the TDC mark with the Stator cover off.

There is a thread that provides a way you can make fine adjustments to the cam timing.  It involves rotating the crank sprocket and then changing the tooth location....as the number of teeth and the number of splines is different and allows a way to advance or retard the camshaft.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1476554649/0

verslagen1 wrote on 01/26/22 at 19:54:31:


Thanks Verslagen1, but I am confused by your answer. When on the left side of the bike, turning the rotor bolt CW, would move the bike backward if it were in gear.