concave shim confusion

[menace86]

Afternoon all.

Im generally quiet on the forum, its been useful in helping me tinker and getting the most out of my zxr, unfortunately about a month ago the lady decided that she does not want to start cold. Going through the electrical and carburator guides i came to the conclusion that it should be shims, (bike stars a treat once hot and went a hell of alot better after cleaning and setting the carbs. Thank you's to each and every individual who wrote, photographed and shared their knowladge!!

The bike was sent to a shop as i have no shims here and since the joke we have as postal service is striking ordering online is useless.
Timingchain from Cradleys as been at customs 3 weeks, only took a week from them to S.A.

The meat of the matter is this now, spoken to the mechanic and he says the head on the bike takes a concave shim, not shim under bucket as the manual says. There is no bucket. Ill work on getting a picture of the valve train. I cant find any mention of this wrt the zxr so two fold question.

Anyone ever heard of a kawasaki motor with this kind of valve setup?
Would the cylinderhead from said motor be a likely fit for the zxr sub-assembly?

I would be a fool to think i know every possible valvetrain, but more the fool not to get a little more insight.
Asmuch as i understand from the description provided over the phone these "concave shims" rest atop the valve and are in direct contact with the camlobe, this makes no sence to me as there should be a position in the rotation of the cam where the lobe is not in contact with the valve, i.e. when the valve is closed, if said shim rests on the valve it would just be dislodged at that point.

Hopefully you clever fellows can impart some more of your precious knowledge or at the very least confrim seeing something like this on a zxr or kawa motor.

PS The motor id number starts z400ge, so an h1 best i could gather, frame is an h2 checked via the link provided.
Have brilliant weekends each and all.

Frans

[banner001]

all of the zxr400 models that i know of (including the H1) are as your mechanic describes, shim-over-valve, there is no bucket, and a bucket is not shown in either the manual or the microfiche.

the gap between the rocker arm and the shim is always smaller than the thickness of the shim, so there is no way it can pop-out.

as for them being concave, i dont know about that, but my micrometer head is quite large (maybe 5mm wide) so ive no way to measure the middle of the shim against the outside edge.

the shim doesnt contact the cam lobe directly, the cam rotates round, contacts a rocker, its the rocker that touches the shim, and that shim is touching the top of the valve stem.

ask the mechanic to set the shims on the loose side of what the manual states as the gaps will close up and tighten over time.