[NoVa Rider]

My mistake on the valve adjustment clearances. Thanks to Co2 and Spud for catching this!

There was already a discussion of this on the valve clearance sticky.

What threw me off was my prior experience working on cars and motorcycles. My experience is that .004 inch to .008 inch (often called '4 thou' or '8 thou') is a common range for valve clearances. So when I saw the .04 to .06 range for the RX3, I failed to look closely and just assumed we were talking 4 to 6 'thou', rather than .04 to .06 mm.

Also, when I just did my first adjustment, I found the exhaust valves were both almost exactly .006 inch, so that reinforced my belief that we were in fact dealing with 'thou' rather than mm.

In fact, the sticker on the RX3 indicates the range should be .04 mm to .06 mm. Just like the CSC materials.

.05 mm is roughly equivalent to .002 inch. I have that blade on my feeler gauge, so I plan to redo the valve adjustment and set them at a middle spec of .002 inch. Once I get a wrench to fit the upper radiator bolts, that is.

.002 inch is a tight clearance in my experience, but then this is a small displacement motor with four valves.

I've only ridden a few miles with the looser valve settings, which were close to the original settings anyway, so I can't comment on whether I was hearing more valve "tappy."