• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

How many miles you got?

I am going to (or did) check my valves at 6,000 miles

  • Nope. To expensive and complicated. Ride on to 12k!

    Votes: 8 40.0%
  • Yep. It's the engine and it's important.

    Votes: 9 45.0%
  • I will wait until I hear valve clatter regardless of mileage.

    Votes: 3 15.0%

  • Total voters
    20

Next

Strada Demolitionist
I was just sitting here drinking my coffee and wondering how many miles folks have got? I am just shy of 4,000 and about to perform oil change #2. How many miles do you have and what services have you done? Just curious. I encourage a post of the ODO reading for the truly hardcore high- milers.
 
I've done a few now. 16,647 miles... 26,791 km
Valves checked (by dealer) after 20,000km. Dealer services at 1k, 10k, 20k. Plenty of oil changes & handful of air filters. One coolant change. New chain at 18,000km.

What? Picture proof?
4aac47c4-a43b-409a-a303-3c6a1a2c1384_zps76c57065.jpg
 
I only have around 1800 miles, but I will put it off to 12,000 miles as well, unless I start hearing here that folks are finding them way out.

I believe these engines have had 6000 mile call outs from the beginning, which was what a lot of bikes had back then.
I can’t think of another modern, water cooled, shim/bucket bike engine that is still that low.
I think the 6000 mile call out is simply German pride/stubbornness.
The BMW 650's still have that call out.
Perhaps changing it would be admitting they were wrong.

FWIW, I bought a KTM 640 once that the original owner had no idea that it needed regular valve clearance checks/adjustments.
It had almost 10,000 on it. That bikes specs I recall were for checks @ 600 miles and then every 3000 miles.
It was slightly tight on the exhaust side when it had its first ever check & adjustment near 10K.

So Chuffa, were any adjustments made?
If so do you know at what service and how far out it was?
 
I have 1700 miles and did plan on checking at 6k but I am very interested in what every one finds out. If it is proven at 6k that is way over kill then I will wait until 12k. I have done alot more oil changes than most though to get all the metal shavings out quickly. I did 20, 50, 300, and 1200 mile conventional oil&filter changes. At 1200 miles I went to full synthetic from now on.
 
Chuffa,

Do you know how they did the checks?
Did they drop the engine?
Disassemble the rear and remove/move the tank?


Riding again,

Since you have done so many oil changes I am surprised you have not checked the valves twice already. ;)
 
I bought the bike as a hobby.The break in procedure I choose to do is why I changed the oil so many times. I have not checked the valves because I do not have the bike off the road long enough lol. Although from what I have read into it, leaving the motor in place and separating the back bone seems the way to go. Personally I do not want to tear that far into the bike yet but I have re torque just about every nut on the bike since I got it. I do appreciate Chuffa putting so many miles on his bike is very helpful. I am averaging about 1200 miles a month.
 
I have 5,800ish miles on mine and had the valves done at 5,200 miles. Wish I had waited to 12,000 at least. Pissed away $400. Valves were within spec. I will have it checked at 12,000-14,000 and insist that it be adjusted to right on spec, regardless if it is technically in spec but on the othe outer limits. (Or I'll do it myself if I have a second bike again by then). Then I won't bother with it until I get symptoms like hard starting or weird noises. But that is just me, you have to do you.

I mean that is assuming I don't just trade her in on a ktm duke 690 this winter. Don't get me wrong I love the bike, but I ride mostly street and sometimes I feel like I'm sitting on a money pit/impossible to get parts time bomb that is beyond my income level/wrenching ability/patience. Sometimes I feel like I would be better off with a 690 and a 250-450cc jap dual sport. Then again I haven't ridden my bike in a week and sometimes forget how just plain awesome she is on the back country Pennsylvania roads, and my opinion would probably be different if I wasn't currently on a riding dry spell.

But my opinion wouldn't differ about the vavle check. Personally I will still wait until 10,000-12,000 miles intervals. If you call around to some of the guys in the US who have been dealing with these bike a lot they will probably tell you the same thing. But it's a risk I suppose.
 
I've got about 6300 miles in 2.5 months. 2 oil changes so far and that's it as I'll wait on the valves but I really need to replace the rear tire.
 
10k miles..several oil changes..new rear tire @ 8500 new chain around 9k. I run a booster plug. The bike does great. I also run a 15 tooth sprocket..love the mid range performance. Mileage didn't take much a hit either. I split time on the Strada with 3 other bikes. It's become a favorite..(r1200GS) triumph street triple r & Aprilia Tuono. I just like the way a single jingles!

Oh and I might do the valves @20k...I am undecided.
 
Also at 10k, valves adjusted @7K and way off, though i don't recollect to what value, but do know it was accessed via rear sub frame, air box, throttle body. Between that and the Moss last week, runs pretty good!
 
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