I am looking for a cheap place to buy lifters? Who knew they were so expensive!

I was just on Ohio, Florida, Honda, Parts, Accessories, dealer, Honda Direct LIne and they had each lifter priced at $25.68 each! That's $410.88 and that sounds crazy to me. Has anyone purchased them form another source? I thought they might be about $10 each. I was thinking about replacing them when I do my valve adjustment but I think I am going to change my mind. You can by an entire engine on Ebay for that kind of money!

 

you don't need to replace the lifters for a valve adjustment, you just gotta replace the shims UNDER the lifters as necessary.

 

most valves tighten up so you can take material off the shims w/ a flat sander as well.

 

I know and I hope your right. But I am wondering if I should buy a shim kit anyway?

 

I know but I thought it might be better to replace them since I will have everything torn apart already but for almost 26 bucks each is insane to buy them. I can get an entire engine for that much money!

 

IF you're lucky you can switch some shims around to get proppa clearances, maybe only need to purchase 1 or 2.

Probably the shims are extra- hardened, so sanding is not recommended.

 

Yep, valve shims are hardened to Rockwell C. Wish I could find some sandpaper that would sand those puppies. I could just buy a sheet of each grit and never have to buy any more..

Lots more poop on WWWW&H by punching in "valve shims" on Google.

 

rockwell cWhat? c60? industrial diamond at 2000 grit should work well for anything that is heat-treated steel. There various diamond-based "whetstones" that are great for this. But then, if you need to go that route, it's going to be SLOW going. .001" is a lot of material when you're grinding/sanding hardened metals.

(my father owns a machining shop I had to work at when I was in HS. Much grinding of stainless steel surgical drills to +/- .0001" tolerances. And taking .001 to .0015" off at a time (<10 seconds) generated a lot of heat in c60-c65 hardened stainless. the C70 carbine was crazy, and needed a water-based coolant because the heat would flash the cutting oil we used in the other machines.)

 

Two 'not so good' ideas. Why?
replacing lifters at valve clearance adjustment - they basically never wear out...the ones you have are nicely broken into your head already...you'd probably have to reshim every valve...time consuming...expensive...more opportunity for mistakes and parts that don't fit...just plain silly.

sanding shims - new ones readily available and inexpensive in .025mm increments...already perfectly true and flat...there's a fair chance you're not gonna need any to begin with.

 

Another money-saving tip if there's a nearby motorcycle shop or even a honda motorcycle dealership you can bring your shims and swap them for different sizes.

 

E bay has a shim kit for around 40 bucks might want to take a look.
I have access to a machine shop to take down the shims, forgot the name of the machine I do it on but only takes a few seconds to do.

 

Rockwell C and B are scales. What the exact number out of more than 30 that can be used on an unknown Honda shim is unknown. Got any leads on that sandpaper? I am constantly amazed by what the Japanese can come up with by recyclling old beer cans.

It would be interesting to have you call your dad and ask him how much the setup and charges would be to take off a few microns off a shim and then compare that with what you can just buy in the right size.

 

Got a link? I just did an ebay search for "shim honda" and lowest price I saw was for 75 dollars.

 

Here's what I know about the shims...they are 7.48 mm in diameter and that the shop manual calls for a range of sizes between 1.200 mm and 2.800 mm in 0.025 mm increments

 

I'm confused: why are you pricing lifters? All you need are the shims which are around $6. IMO sanding shims is not a good idea because it isn't that easy to keep the shim perfectly square. Last valve check I had one that needed adjustment, I took it to work and had one of our machinists dust .0015 off. Took just a few minutes.

 

Not replacing the lifters anymore on the advice of the previous poster. Just buying a shim kit, I dont want to have to deal with the dealership.

 

JMO but I wouldn't buy the kit since you may only need at most, a couple of shims, which are about $6 on BikeBandit if you don't like dealing with your local dealer. OTOH if you know a group of Honda owners then you can swap shims if you have the kit. I'm a cheap bastard and hate spending money I don't have to.

 

My dad's shop isn't setup for flat parts (centerless grinding and cnc lathes for the most part), most of our work (99%+) is drills (industrial and surgical).

These are the diamond stones I was talking about (or at least are examples of them): Sharpening Supplies - Diamond Stones

 

Just a little FYI here gentlemen. HotCams makes a valve shim kit for the VFR Intercepter. It comes in two boxes.
The shims in the kit start at 1.20mm and go up to 3.50mm in .05mm increments. You get three of each shim in the kit.
I got mine on Ebay from a place called Lytle Racing Group. Here's their home website address>>> LYTLE RACING GROUP TEMPE, AZ (480) 966-9595
The shim kit will cost you about $73.00.

 

IMO the shims are so inexpensive that even if a shop were nearby the setup charge would be pricy. Shims are easy to find. Google "valve shims". This may take a little drilling but they are there. "Sanding" them might prove just a little tedious especiall since it's almost Spring in some parts anyway..

A guy I bought a bike from several years ago (1953 Velocette 350 Scrambler) has a patent on the index for surgical drills. The whole index loaded with the drills goes into an autoclave. If you want to see some neat medical tools, check out the folks at Microplane.