How to adjust valves on Kawasaki Brute Force or Prairie 650 with Video

The Kawasaki Brute Force 650 or Prairie 650 is a twin cylinder power house. To properly maintain these torque monsters the valves must be adjusted at regular intervals according to the service manual. When the valves get out of adjustment specs you may see symptoms: Hard to start, Backfiring, Runs poorly, Clinging tinging chattering pinging noise from top of the engine. Recently I had the opportunity to perform the valve adjustment on a 2013 Brute Force 650, but this also works on the older Prairie 650. If you're new to this adjustment check out this info and decide for yourself if you want to tackle it with the help of the How To Adjust Valves Information and Video I'm providing.  The valve adjustment is similar to a single cylinder ATV as you must always find top dead center on the compression stroke.  I'll take you through the valve adjustment process on my video, but first lets discuss valve clearance settings or specs.  There is much talk out there on what folks are setting their intake and exhaust valve lash at on these 650 engines.  From my research it ranged from .004 mm Intake to .007 mm Exhaust to what the Owners Manual suggests for the 650 Brute Force at .10 - .15 mm Intake to .20 - .25 mm Exhaust.  Valve chatter when these 650 engines are cold is pretty normal, but annoying and I choose to go with the setting: .005mm Intake and .008mm Exhaust which nearly eliminates the valve chatter and sharpens the engines power up, but in exchange will likely have to be adjusted more often.  As you can see in my video I had to perform the valve adjustment processes twice on the front cylinder to get it right.  I found the front cylinder to be the most difficult just due to lack of room to wrench and low visibility. I located the actual information for the process over at nyrocatv.com, just click on this text and it will redirect you to the Tech Tips.