Hitchcocks Forum

I have a Bullet Sixty-5 with a bit of a weird problem. The seal on the sender side of the oil pump while riding. I determined the cause of this to be that the rocker bearing oil channels had been obstructed by small metal filings which had created to much pressure in the oil lines, causing the rupture. With that solved I would like to find the source of these filings, in order to prevent this problem from resurfacing and ensure that these filings don't cause any more problems in the engine. The thing is I don't even know where to start looking for the source of these. They are fairly large, roughly 1/8 of an inch square. As far as I can tell they seem to be aluminium, as they don't attract a magnet and are silvery. Any suggestions on what to look for would be useful.

Its time for the motor to be completely striped and examined.. bits of metal of any size floating around means something is breaking up..

My guess would be main bearing spinning in the alloy, closely followed by big end on a lose weight and get thin regime..

How come your not asking why your engine is making a rumbling noise or knocking under load..

Sorry to be a party poop..

Dont want to be the bearer of bad tidings but they are likely to be from your big end bearing.
The material is "white metal" its non magnetic & looks like aluminium, drop your oil out & check
the strainers. I put a roller bearing big end crank when my bullet did much the same thing.
Also check both the oil pumps as debris may have damaged them.
regards Bri e

I completely agree with loco builder bri. I have seen this with a friends bike. You are lucky the oil pump spindle has stripped yet. I would stop running the bike until repaired.

The bike certainly won't be running any time soon. I figured this was going to be a tear the whole engine apart kind of problem, I was mostly just wondering where to start looking for the source of the flakes. I didn't hear any rumbling under load, there was however a pretty persistent ticking at idle and with a neutral throttle while riding, which I assume was caused by the lack of oil in the valves.

I recently helped strip a 500 Classic which was only just making a bit of a rumble. The mains were complete toast! It's amazing how these engines will run with quite major damage sometimes and not complain.

Probable failed/leaking Oil-pressure relief valve inside the timing side of the crankshaft: Block it off.


Big end bearing failures skyrocketed post 2002 with the reintroduction of the timing side OPR...



Maintain as high a level of oil in the tank at all times to minimize aeration of the oil and oil pump cavitation.


While you have the motor apart, check the piston-rings closely, IF any of the rings are tight in the ring grooves, REPLACE the piston!