A big scare that's probably nothing really is here already.
Might be something like a one in a few thousand chance your bike will suffer this. Call me a cynical old bloke but I see a bit of Honda (car) and BMW (m/c and car) service strategy being applied here.
Happened in less than a hundred bikes that are two to three years old if I read it right. Many more times that number of engines from that era of production could have run out or gone low on oil by now. How can they tell what really damaged the face of the follower and cam lobe? And many of the 6,214 units said to be affected are very likely well past the sort of mileage than any dirt at assembly or problem with the metallurgy would have shown up by now.
Safety issue - risk of dangerous staling I read?
You could lose the whole valve lobe so the valve never opened yet the engine would still run and have enough pull to get you out of a situation. And lets face it the noise for a long, long time before this happened would be so horrible and loud you would have it investigated long before.
But just in case you had better be taking it to Suzuki for all its servicing.
And the only way they are going to know for certain is to check the clearance and then lift your cams off the followers to see the surfaces. Which is what they would be doing to change a valve shim in any case. Dealers will simply say it gets checked at the service - so be sure to bring it in to us for a service.
Now the dealer is already doing the work and being paid for it by you the customer. So all Suzuki have to do is quickly send out a cam and followers from local country stock now and again which cost's them next to nothing. And that's if its real and not just a groundless scare based on flawed data in the first place. They have no evidence if its dirt, metal or even something else?
