Checking valve clearances

I'm a little confused at what position the cam lobes should be in when checking valve clearances.

Should it be when all the valves (all 4) for a single cylinder are pointing directly away from the followers or should it be when the cylinder is at TDC on the compression stroke which I believe is when the lines on each sprocket are pointing inwards in line with the head like this:


and the punch mark on the primary drive gear lines up with the mark on the crankcase like this:


Because when it's at TDC the valves may all be closed but the lobes are definitely not all pointing up:


A bit confused because the Haynes manual says to do each cylinder at TDC but then has a picture with the cam lobe pointing up. :?

 

That's what I thought. So that means you need to turn the engine over for each pair of inlet or exhaust valves? In other words you can't do both inlet and exhaust valves for a single cylinder in one go without turning the engine over in between. Not sure if that makes sense. Hard to explain what I mean.

 

Hmm, right but check out my picture above. That's with the cylinder at TDC but the cam lobes aren't all pointing up. So do I just have it in the wrong position? Do I just need to turn the engine a little more and there will be a point where all four lobes are pointing up?

 

When I did mine and on the R6 I turned the engine over until the lobes were pointing up for the ones I was about to check, if memory serves you can do a pair at a time (it was a while ago). Meaning not all the lobes will be pointing up at the same time, you have to keep turning the engine over.

 

Yeah I think the valves are fully closed in the pic but to be sure I just rotated each pair of in/ex valves until the lobes were vertical.