Why Do Similar Bikes Have Different Valve Adjustment Intervals? Is It Necessary To Adjust Valves? | ANSWERS

Two frequently asked questions about if and when to adjust valves.

Mechanical valve lifters should be adjusted every 30k miles and many recommendations about this issue are totally bogus. These hokey recommendations are made by the marketing people, not mechanically astutue people. Extended valve lash intervals are a joke (at least if you value your engine. The recommendation about determing valve lash audibly is downright laughable to be honest about it.
The quiet valves are the ones that can kill your engine’s top end quickly, not the noisy ones. In a perfect world they should be inspected at 1000 miles intially and every 30k after that, but this is seldom ever done.

Now to address your potential looming problem. Adjusting the valves fixed the problem; for now. However, microscopic valve face/seat damage due to tight valves will have already happened and any fix may be short term only.

An engine that is missing due to tight valves will cause those tight ones to burn a little and it does not take long to do this. Once adjusted the engine may appear to run normally but that microscopic damage will worsen over time due to exhaust gas seeping past those damaged areas. At some point it will become a full-fledged leak and the engine miss will return. At that point it’s valve job time.

I would advise having a compression test run in about 10k miles unless the engine miss returns before then but basically adjusting the valves after the fact is akin to closing the barn door after the horses ran away.