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Lannis, I understand your position on this. The labor to pull the parts and look at the tappets would be about $400 (it was in my case). If the tappets are bad you have the dealer put in a claim for the kit. If not you put everything back and hope for the best. In 10K miles do it all again. Given that this is not turning out to be a case of owner misuse, odd climate, or bad oil it seems that the question is not 'if' but 'when'. You feel lucky? I like the bike so eating $1K was a tough meal to swallow but I can't think of a bike I like better. I'm still hoping that Piaggio will pay for the kit. When I had a Multistrada we had lots of problems with the gas tanks swelling. In the end there was a class action suite that cost Ducati, or the tank supplier, a bunch. The lawyers got rich and the owners got a new tank. I hope Piaggio got the message. It would appear that this problem extends to all 8V engines sold in the US. It's expensive to comp a $1K assembly to every 8V owner but when you get some lawyers involved the bottom line will be much worse.To answer your question, yes, I decided to do the replacement no matter what. Now I see that my tappets were in the early stages of going to shit.Peter Y.
Well, I thought about the tappet removal issue and realized that I could just remove the cam and the tappet would fall out into my hand. Done. Here's what I found:so it's clear to me that my tappets were going south. Word for the wise.Peter Y.
The way I understand it, if the tappets are damaged and losing their surface, Piaggio is supposed to GIVE you the roller kit.Did you just decide to bag that and not put up with the Piaggio hassle? I think I'd put up with a bit of delay and hassle for $1,000 .... ?My plan is to have the dealer pull mine and get the deal from Piaggio .... ?Lannis
If all were perfect, what is a used tappet SUPPOSED to look like?Joe
Equal black. They start shiny like a mirror black.
Does it actually flake off or is it ground off into very a very find dust type effect?
This morning I pulled out the flats from my other head just to see if the DLC wear was consistent (one head has about 5K more miles than the other, dropped a valve under warranty and was replaced). Now I can show all four flats...clear wear on all of them. Oddly enough the wear is not the same. On each head one tappet shows much more wear than the other. I'm guessing there is more spring pressure on one pair of valves than on the other due to the shims that Pete Roper has mentioned in the past.Peter Y.
I think this is a factor certainly. Going back through the failures I've experienced in the last year there seems to be a pattern of bikes needing the 'C' kit, (Not originally fitted with shims.) tending to have more damage to the exhaust tappets whereas those requiring an 'A' or 'B' kit and already fitted with shims seem to show greater wear on the inlets. I can't confirm that with absolute certainty as I didn't record each kit for each failure but the history of pics I took and kits I've fitted seems to bear this out.Good catch.Pete