New in Town

Discussion in 'Europe' started by Spot, Jan 16, 2015.

  1. Spot

    Spot New Member

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    Ollo everyone,

    I recently achieved one of my ‘life goals’ by acquiring a 2004 6th generation VFR (RC46).
    (Relax, I'm not gonna start using pronouns like ‘she’; I love bikes but I'm an engineer so it still gets classified as a bike.)
    I haven’t got a 4aynes manual for it yet…
    It has the usual fan issue but otherwise appears ok. I plan to undress it and check everything when the weather improves.
    My first priority is to get it serviced and have the valves checked. Is this a straightforward ‘feeler gauge, screw and lock nut’ job that I can do myself or should I take it to a shop?
    Please recommend Garages in East Sussex for servicing etc.

    I hope to spend many hours here!
     
  2. Rollin_Again

    Rollin_Again Member

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    Welcome aboard and congrats on your new to you toy. How many miles/km does the bike have on it? Valve check procedure on a VTEC engine is much more labor intensive than a non-VTEC engine and I would estimate between 5 and 7 hours of labor assuming that you are very mechanically inclined and have done it before. If you don't have experience with valve checking I would probably recommend taking to a shop to have it done. With that being said I have several friends who work for Honda service departments and every one of them has told me that the valve checks are usually a waste of money since the majority of VFRs they check are in spec and the cost to have it done in a shop is very costly. I also have lots of friends with high mileage VFRs that have never done the valve check and never had any issues. I personally would never do it since the cost to have it done by a qualified shop is not much less than buying and installing a used replacement engine in the event that the engine suffered a catastrophic failure. If you are qualified to do the job yourself you will save the high cost of having a shop do it but I wouldn't waste your time with it unless you are seeing performance issues or the bike has over 50k KM and you plan on keeping it long term.

    BTW....If you need factory service manual it can be downloaded from the VFRD forum site since I believe the download link on this site is broken.
     
  3. Spot

    Spot New Member

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    Thanks for taking the time to respond Rollin_Again, I'm very grateful for your wise words.
    Apologies for the late response, I'm studying for a degree and it's a real time eater!

    I hope to add something of more value once my final exams are taken care of.

    Many thanks :)
     
  4. Scubalong

    Scubalong Official Greeter?

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    Belate :welcome:
    Thanks rolling for filling in my Shoe :wink:
     

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