[dhgeyer]

I've checked/adjusted the valve clearances on several bikes, including all three that I now own. The Concours has 16 valves, and it's a full day's job to strip off all the plastic and other parts, remove the valve cover, do the valves, put RTV on parts of the valve cover and/or mating parts and the gasket, and put it all back together. The BMW can be done in an hour or so. The GZ250 in about the same time or less.
I have said before and I will say again: anyone with any mechanical ability at all would be very unlikely, in my opinion, to pay to have this job done, once they have seen it done. It's really not that hard.

The advantages to doing it yourself are:

1. Less money - the tools you need will pay for themselves in short order.

2. You don't have to deliver the bike somewhere the night before so that the engine will be dead cold, which it needs to be for this job. Unless you can pretty much walk home from the shop, you'll spend less time doing it yourself than getting the bike to the shop and getting it back again.

3. The tech at the shop will check each valve to make sure it's within spec. If it is, they will leave it alone. They make no attempt to match pairs of valves, or to set them on the loose side, on the tight side, or in the middle according to your preference. In some cases they don't touch valves that clearly should be adjusted. It's not their bike. You will be much fussier. Watching someone do it once is a big confidence builder.

I only wish Suzuki (or someone) would publish a torque spec for the locknuts on the adjusters. They are a smaller diameter screw than on bigger bikes, so I don't want to use the bigger bike's torque specs. With no specs, I don't even use a torque wrench on those nuts, relying on feel. But I'd be more comfortable with a proper spec to go by. Has anyone ever seen such a spec for this bike?