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Last model year of "the tick"

4K views 17 replies 9 participants last post by  bounce 
#1 ·
I'm glad to be a member of your forum now. I've browsed a lot of information here for awhile now, but just joined a few days ago for reasons I'm about to explain. About 2 years ago I bought my first FJR, a 2006 with app. 52,000 miles on it. I loved it immediately, except for the weird rattling sound from the right side of the engine. Thanks to Google pointing me to a thread here, I learned about the cam chain tensioner and that I better replace it right away. I took care of that and was happy again, until the trans started slipping in 2nd gear. Again thanks to google leading me here, I found out what was wrong, and that it would only get worse until it was fixed. I put it off as long as I could but finally had to tear into the thing. Again thanks to things I've read here, I determined that it was within my ability to do it myself. Well it was a long difficult process, but I got everything back together and started it up about a month ago. Miracle of miracles, everything worked perfectly! Until maybe the 3rd time I rode it after it was back together. I started to hear an intermittent tapping. Now with each successive ride, the tapping seems to be getting more pronounced and constant. The fine details are as follows: The sound is directly tied to RPM. It is present, but fairly quiet at idle, but not until the bike is warm. It goes away at RPM's above idle speed, but comes back around 2500 or so. It doesn't seem to be present above 4000. These RPM values tend to shift around some for reasons I can't comprehend. It's also possibly affected by engine load, in that it seems very noticeable at 3000 RPM in 3rd gear at cruise, but not at 3000 in 5th at highway speed. It should also be mentioned that I measured and adjusted the valve clearance while I had the engine apart. Maybe 7 valves needed adjustment. They are mostly at or near the higher recommended clearance value now. So after all that, the basic questions are: Can my 2006 be a ticker, and if not, what else could explain my symptoms? Thanks for any guidance you wizards can offer.
 
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#2 ·
Tickers were 2004 and a few 2005's from what I know. '06 not a ticker....

Could you have a noisy injector? Can you get it to tick say when on the side stand in neutral at certain rpms (like 2500-3500).

Higher valve clearances are OK, unless you got one high and out of spec. I always double check my clearances after a shim change.
Kinda all I got for the moment...... If you can hear it while it's sitting, then maybe lift the tank and see if you can pin it down. A mechanic's stethescope or even a solid rod held to the area in question and to your ear, can use a piece of rubber hose on it too.....
 
#3 ·
Thank you for the input. I was already running very long so i didn't add that I have the plastics off and I went over the front top of the motor with a stethoscope. Mainly I was trying to tell if I had a header seal leak. What I found was that the tapping was more pronounced around the #1 header tube and near the #1 exhaust port, but could be detected at least a little bit in all four header tubes. I had not heard of injector noise when I was doing that check, so I didn't listen to the injectors, but I will try that the next time I get a chance to run it. I hope that's what it turns out to be, because I'm beginning to be terrified that I've destroyed a cam lobe.
 
#4 ·
I don't know how you'd destroy a cam lobe except by running it out of oil.... but you may have a valve clearance thing, maybe not. Shame it's a bit of work to get it apart that far again, dealing with coolant, etc. but carry on with the diagnosis....
 
#11 ·
He replaced that first thing, fjroddy.
j_p_b, what you haven't told us is what all you did when you "fixed" your "slipping transmission in 2nd gear"<< that's got me stumped too. Was it the clutch or something else?
How far you tore the engine down, or what all you had taken off of it.
I'm not catching what would cause a top end noise after doing a transmission repair so we'll stick to what took place during the valve clearance adjustment. I always go to upper spec on valve clearance, that's never made any of my bikes tick.
Did you take the reeds out of the cam cover, and clean all the goobledy **** out of the AIR system and make sure all of that was clear when you had that apart?

FWIW, my '04 had a funny clicky sound at idle up to 1800rpm, it went completely away after that rpm and never came back. I don't know if my bike was what they called a ticker, but there was no signs of beat out seats, or loose, wobbly exhaust valves when I took the head off earlier this year.

This bike had a cam chain tensioner failure last fall. When I repaired the engine, I put the head off of an '05 on it, now there's no more clicky ticky tick. I'm not saying that was a problem with my '04 head, because what I did find was some very sticky reeds in the cam cover that I always thought was the culprit making that sound. I could be wrong about that. Whatever it was has not shown it's face around here since I repaired it 1500 miles ago.

You did well with your research when you replaced the CCT, I wish I would have been that adamant in my search for problem areas. It bit me on the arse even though it never gave one indication of going bad, no funny rattly sounds whatsoever. It happened at cold startup one evening and died instantly. I knew what it was and never tried to start it again until I replaced the head and the CCT. :frown2: :surprise:

If by any chance you do have a bad cam, I still have a set here, along with the matching followers.
 
#9 ·
Hipi,

As I understand it, the valve guides were too tight, depriving themselves of oil, so they wore excessively. It sounded like the valves were set too loose, even when the valves were really in spec. Aside from the sound, the defining symptom was wet oil leaking into (one or more of) the exhaust pipes. No relation to the cam chain. Slack in the cam chain might sound like you had loose marbles in there, but that problem would not sound like bad valves. The early Cam Chain Tensioners were weak, and some have failed, wrecking the engine when the cam chain slips by a few teeth. The newest CCTs will have a green dot on the housing. You do not need to disassemble anything, to see the green dot on the CCT.
.
 
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#10 ·
The tick results as the valves slapped around in the loose valve guide bores, however they got that way..... which wore on the valve seals and burned a little oil.
It did not have anything to do with the cam chain tensioner.... that was it's own issue, and yes they needed replacing with the new design.
 
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#12 ·
Trans repair is changing out a couple of gears, won't have anything to do with tick.
Reed valves in the pair system don't make noise you would ever hear.
Injectors tick, and it could be a valve noise if out of spec on the high side.
Awaiting further investigation to pinpoint the cause.
 
#15 ·
Really, you should lift the tank, and the CCT is viewable from above, and you can see the mounting flange which should have the dot. Right hand side of the engine... see the plastic cover over the slot in the frame.... straight forward of that a few inches, that slot is actually a tool access to get at it.. Likely have to lift the right rubber cover that hides the gap between tank and frame.
 
#16 ·
Thanks so much, this will give me something to do while i am not riding. Old age is catching up on me and as a result i have had a right shoulder recontruction and have another month to go before i can start riding again. This is a great site to be paart of. cheers from New Zealand.
 
#17 ·
Thanks so much for the input and questions. An update and some clarifications: I put the stethoscope on the injectors and there is some noise from all of them, but #1 maybe more than the other 3. That COULD be the source, but the sounds I'm hearing are so different when heard through the stethoscope compared to naked ears that it's hard to say when you're hearing the same sound. While I had the engine out for trans repair I adjusted the valves, so basically during the same service I had the cams out and back in, and then had both trans shafts out to replace several worn gears and a beat up shift fork. I didn't replace the timing chain or any guides. The reed valves in the valve cover were pretty cruddy, but I left them alone. They fell out in the floor a couple of times while the engine was upside down, and some of the carbon came off when that happened, but that's all the "cleaning" they got before I just popped them back in. I have my doubts that the reeds are the culprit because when I put the stethoscope on the valve cover, the tapping is very hard to hear. I'm beginning to lean towards just riding it for a few hundred miles and then changing the oil. If there's something terrible happening I should see metal in the oil, right? Thanks again for the knowledge.
 
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