Doh!!!! I was fixing the valve cover gasket leak and checking the valve clearance today when I noticed the cam end cap on the right exhaust side was cracked all the way thru! I gotta replace the whole head in order to fix it don't I. The end caps are machine matched to the head. Any other ideas or anyone have a head for sale in the orange county area? Oh yea and when I checked the clearances on the valves I couldn't even fit a .0015 feeler between any of the valves. Suki's got 22k on her and I'm sure no one has done the valve adjustment before. But I guess that's pointless now if I'm gonna have to replace the head. Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, you "should" replace the head. And I'm not recommending it, but somebody here had the same problem. They just found another cap though and bolted it in. If you think about it, the cam chain holds down the cams and the caps are just there so they don't "skip" when opening a valve.

I suppose that could work. The end caps are aluminum and the cams are hardened steel so technically the cams shouldn't have worn much. And if it did fail with just a replaced cap then I'd most likely only be out the same head replacement. Possible piston damage  but not very likely. Does the dealer sell the end caps by themselves? If not does anyone have one they'll part with? Your bikes all have four u can spare one.

The reason you replace the caps with the head is that the caps are bolted to the head and then both are bored as a unit, to ensure that everything is straight and true. You can't buy a cap as a seperate item from suzuki for that reason; the caps come with the head.

I have heard success stories from people buying caps off of ebay and simply bolting them on. If I were you, I'd price out a replacement cam, cause damage to the cam journal is about the worst thing I might expect from the attempt... The head is technically scrap anyway at this point, due to the journal damage.

If you want to get very detail oriented, you could check the cam to cap clearance as well, to see if things line up correctly with the replacement cap.

Buy a full engine from ebay/wherever instead of the head...extra parts for free and less hassle.

I'm keeping an eye on eBay Craigslist and here. Gonna need to do something cuz she's my only means of transportation at the moment. She runs perfectly fine but that's just a ticking time bomb. And soon I'll probly be having to make a weekly 300 mile trip to work. Haha and 17 miles of that is dirt road. It's gonna be an interesting winter. Temped to sell her and pick up another one but Id hate to be that guy.