Hitchcocks Forum

So after previous issues with my newly purchased 2001 Enfield bullet 500, I decided to take it to a garage and let them have their way with it.

3 miles later, and im typing this from the side of the road.
Poppy the bullet broke down, feeling as though she were out of petrol. Switching to deserve got about 3 miles more out of her.

After filling with fuel, she starts but refuses to stay that way even with throttle, dropping revs constantly with no more than 15 revs altogether.

More worryingly, a very loud click now emanates from roughly the valve adjustment area on each revolution, even when not running.

Any ideas?

Ralph

"Try A New Spark Plug & a Fully charged battery"..

Some of us in the Past had Unusual fuel type Symptoms due to contamination of the spark Plug , New,Cleaned, or? By Bad ethanol Fuel? or some Thing...But a New Spark Plug Worked wonders till the Next time.

And battery, I have gone for miles with a bad carb/Engine..But only yards with a duff battery.

Good Luck..

Do you know what the garage has done to the bike?
Are we talking a service or was it a specific fault they were fixing?
The click could be an adjuster which wasn't tightened and has worked loose giving you none, or little valve operation, likely exhaust which is choking your engine giving the symptoms you describe.
Any tools with you? If do set TDC on compression, as you would when starting, take off inspection cover and check the pushrods are free to rotate but have no up/down play, adjust if so. Hopefully that will be all it is.

As an update on this, the garage had just fitted a new kickstart pawl.

Seems the click was likely the return spring, but was still clicking after kickstart had disengaged. Managed to get it back to the garage and will see what they say today.

Thanks all

Sounds like a bent valve to me. I had this last year when my Lightning decided it didn't want to play any more. The engine didn't want to rev. It wouldn't idle and there was a loud 'tick' from the rocker box area.

Sounds like you're right Barry! The garage just called saying it was something to do with the Exhaust Valve, but still need to look into it.

Is this a major job, in your past experience?

Fixing the exhaust valve isn't that much of a problem (It took me an afternoon to fix). The question is: What caused the exhaust valve to fail? In my case, it was a main bearing failure, which caused the oil pump to fail. This in turn caused the exhaust valve to sieze and bend. If your oil plug bolt (sometimes called the quill bolt) is intact, it's likely to be a bad valve or loose valve guide. It the oil plug bolt is broken.............