Check valve clearances and a few observations

This is the first time I've checked the valves on this machine. It's quite a big job to take off the front body panels and the tank; follow the instructions in the handbook. However they don't mention that there is a retaining point in the middle. It just clips on and off once you know it's there.



Whilst the tank was off I also noticed that the carb full-open-butterfly switch was clearly disconnected.



The socket was even taped into a position to make it impossible to connect!



From a DR350 website it seems that this is some sort of power/rev limiter. Maybe it's disconnected at the factory?

Anyway, to the valves. These are under the usual bolt-retained (10mmWAF) inspection covers. This area was pretty dirty so i washed it down and left it to dry before opening up the covers.



Inside are the usual tappets, exhaust to the front, inlet to the rear. The handbook states:
inlet: 0.05mm to 0.10mm
exhaust 0.8mm to 0.13 mm but I'm sure they mean 0.08 to 0.13mm!
The engine can be rotated to TDC on compression with a 19mm WAF socket or offset ring key. Note that this isn't in the toolkit, likewise there isn't a 17mm even though it's needed for the oil change. Through the front inspection cover a 'T' appears which seems to correlate with TDC as judged by poking something down the plug hole.



As luck would have it my valve clearances were at 0.10mm and 0.12mm the top end of the tolerance. I prefer loose to tight on an air colled engine, but a bit noisy than binding!

Then everything was reassembled and the airfilter wshed, dried and reoiled.