I had planned on doing the valve check myself last month since I was going to have about a month free to get some things done. I had to move back to Branson in May and had my schedule clear for April. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I got booked for there weeks on a ship starting April 22 and had about a week to pack and start moving to Branson before leaving for the ship.
I left the bike at a dealership that has a mechanic I trust so he could do the work while I was gone. I told them to replace the air filter, and plug, and sync the throttle bodies while he was in there, as well as do the state inspection. They quoted about $630 for that. I was fine with that. Then as I was leaving the bike, I figured I would have them replace the coolant, oil, since I ran out of time, and also replace the hydraulic fluid. Since they aren't a Kawasaki dealership, they said they may need to buy a manual. They used to own a Kawasaki dealership too and I didn't know they had sold it. They got a copy of the procedure for the valves so all was well.
Later they emailed and said they would need a manual for the throttle body sync. I bought a manual since I needed one anyway. During the three weeks I was on the ship, the service manager emailed me some pictures of Ken working on the bike. It was funny, but it was nice to have them update me.
I flew back to Pittsburgh Tuesday to pick it up. As I was talking to Ken, the mechanic, he said he removed my levers, cleaned the pivot points and lubricated them. I knew he would do that. He said he also adjusted the steering bearings while he had the bike. I raised the side stand and it flipped up quickly and I realized he had cleaned and lubed it too. I looked the bike over and saw he lubed every pivot on the bike. It feels like a new bike. His attention to detail is amazing.
Total price with all the gaskets, plugs, fluids, filter, PA state inspection and the shop manual which was $75, and every other odd part he decided to replace while he was there was $1380 after tax, I was happy with that.
I hated paying for them to do work I can do myself, but I just didn't have the time and once I got to Branson, I would have no garage to work in.
I packed the bike and left Pittsburgh around 2:30 PM and fought rush hour on my way out since I live in the Eastern suburbs, and rode straight through 920 miles and arrived here in Branson this morning. It was a nice ride, and the bike ran beautifully.
I'm happy to get all this done. The bike is a 2009 that I bough new in 2010. It had a little over 32,000 miles on it when he did the check. This was the first check. He didn't adjust any of them. He did give me a shim map.
I really figured I would have a lot more miles on this by now. The first two months I had it I had 8,000 miles on it, but then I began traveling too much and couldn't ride as much. Most of my riding is done in chunks like yesterday. It's good to have the bike back.