No machine work to the cylinder head? Any other adjustments needed for the gasket?
No. Time and budget did not allow to get the head milled at this point. Typically only .010 is removed so it isn't the end of the world. While not ideal, this will get me some gains as the difference between the stock headgasket and the new one is substantial.
Anyway, back to the fun. Cams are done and I am happy with where I got things. After the head gasket I put the cams back in at factory settings and then set up my operation as I knew what numbers I should get so it was a way to check my setup.
To do this you need to find true top dead center and then be able to tell when/where the center of the cam lobes are. To do this you need a few tools: a piston stop, a degree wheel, and a dial indicator that you can mount in a solid position.
The piston stop is simply a piece of metal that is threaded into the spark plug hole. The degree wheel gets mounted to the end of the crankshaft, and the dial indicator gets mounted in such a way that it can measure the lift of the tappet.
Piston stop
Degree wheel mounted. Sometimes you need to add a fixed pointer (usually a piece of wire) so that you have a point of reference however this one fit this bike so well I simply made a mark just below the starter sprag.
and the dial indicator set up on the intake tappet
To find TDC is pretty easy: with the piston stop threaded into the #1 cylinder, rotate the crankshaft clockwise until it comes to a stop and record the reading on the degree wheel. Say it was 24. Then spin the crank counter-clockwise until it stops and record the number, lets say 20. (24-20)/2=2 which means you need to loosen the wheel (or move the pointer) two degrees to find true TDC. If you repeat the process, the number should read the same in both directions. You now have true TDC.
Once TDC is found, the dial indicator is set up so that it will read 0 when the camshaft isnt pushing the tappet down, and has enough travel so that it stays in contact with the tappet when it is at the furthest position. Once this is done, rotate the crankshaft clockwise until the tappet just begins to open to .040. Write down the number on the degree wheel.
Note that this says 60, but in small numbers it also reads 40. This is for when you are measuring something that is falling away from the 0 mark...or in this case, as the tappet is forced downward by the camshaft.
The reading on the degree wheel was 18.5. I continued spinning the crank clockwise until the intake valve started to close and once again stopped at .040 to take a reading, and got 43. The formula is ((X+Y+180)/2)-X where X is your smallest number. So in this case its 18.5+43+180=241.5 then divide by 2 = 120.75 then subtract 18.5 = 102.25 This is the number I expected to see so I knew I was set up properly.
According to the Kawasaki race manual, ideally I want 107.5 on the intake side so I had to make some adjustments. Thankfully the factory Kawasaki camshafts already come with adjustable cam gears on them. Now, some more math to make this easy otherwise you could keep hunting around making adjustments forever until you happened on the correct number.
That number 241.5 will always be the result of X+Y+180. Using that we can do some math: (241.5/2)-107.5 (my target number) which comes to 13.25. Loosen the bolts that hold the cam gear in place so that the gear moves but the camshaft does not. Rotate the crank slightly until the dial indicator reads 13.25 and tighten the camshaft bolts. Double check your readings by repeating the initial process: check at .040 opening and closing. My numbers were spot on: 13.25 opening, 48.25 closing so ((13.25+48.25+180)/2)-13.25=107.5.
opening
closing
According to the race manual, the exhaust stays at the factory default setting of 110 so I left it alone. I torqued the camshaft retainers one more time to make sure, reinstalled the spark plugs, and then started to put the motor back together. Now it is time for the dentists

and then some more fun in the garage.