Testament to Huskys and Motoxotica

1st....Thank you Dan at Motoxotica (and your mechanic) for fixing my problem.

Has anyone had a shim pop out of it's bucket, make it's way to the magnetic oil drain plug, and continue to run for several months while it's owner was in denial and continued to ride it? (And yes I routinely change the oil but unable to remove the drain plug.)

I have an '04 TE450 (Rekluse, GPR stabilizer, stainless steel valves, and a few other nice hard parts) which I bought used a little over a year ago. It was running very good until this past spring. It suddenly became very hard to start but once it started I continued to ride it fairly hard. I had a non Husky mechanic check it out and he suspected it needed some carb work. I got it back and still had some problems. (along with clutch slave assembly problems)

After a recent 30 mile, very technical, hard ride with some friends...and a three day recovery....I took my bike to Dan at Motoxotica. Dan asked me a lot of questions about how the bike was running and the symptoms. I told him it was running hot, difficult to start, but I had the carb worked on recently. Dan asked if the valves had ever been checked. I told him not since I had owned the bike. Dan recognized the bike/parts as being a bike he had sold to the original owner. I also asked Dan to remove and replace the oil drain bolt since I had never been able to get it out. (I had resorted to making a large mess by leaning the bike over to drain the oil out of the oil screens.)

I left the bike and a few hours later Dan called and said they had started the bike and checked the valves. Dan told me one of the shims was missing from the "bucket" and another was out of adjustment overly tight. Dan said the good news was when the got the oil drain plug out the shim was stuck to the plug. Dan and his mechanic did a lot of research and work, fixed several problems that I should have found if I had educated myself on valve shim adjustments. Fortunately for me there was no major damage and the bike obviously runs much better now. It still amazes me the Husky kept running, didn't leave me stranded, and has more power now than I remembered.

I'll be watching the valve adjustment video until I have it memorized.