Hitchcocks Forum

Hello everyone, I have a serious oil circulation problem on my bullet 350 classic (year 2007, km 9000). A few days ago, the oil does not reach rockers, I noticed it by an insistent noise like loose tappets. I disassembled the timing cover, and the worm and spindle oil pumps are perfect, the feed and return pumps are in place, all the clean oil passages, oil feed banjos and rockers holes ok.
Only thing, maybe the springs of the pumps are a bit tight. I followed the hitchcock's tech notes step by step. Everything seems fine, but the oil does not reach rockers. Then I mounted a transparent plastic tube instead of the oil feed banjo, and with the engine running, I saw that the oil only comes for a few seconds, then only air ...
Can someone help me?

Had you done any work on the bike prior to this happening like an oil or filter change or similar?

The scavenge/return pump is always as higher capacity than the oil feed pump, so when it is working properly it should be pumping oil and air (or whatever crankcase gases the breather hasn't expelled) once it has cleared any build-up of oil in the sump. You say you checked all the oil ways, did that include the drilled passage to the scavenge drain plug from the bottom of the crankcase?



A.

Hi,no particular work on the bike. About the drain plug on the bottom of the crankcase,I only check for oil: no oil in the sump drain plug....much oil in the feed drain plug. Tomorrow I ll try to check the drilled passage....if ok, what other check??
thanks

now that I think about it ... I changed oil and filter, about a month ago ....

Hi had similar prob years ago very poor oil feed to lnlet rocker, was a bodgy solder job where external pipe branches in to two, unsoldered and single pipe was over to one side instead of central new centre piece made and single pipe stopped about 3mm from twin pipes so no block to flow. mate that did it said there were blobs of solder in the pipes.indian manufacture, have to check everything I'm afraid.

That oilway in the sump drain plug is the one I was thinking of too. If you get the washer the wrong thickness, you can obstruct it.



A simple way of checking the feed pump is to take that sump drain plug out and kick the engine over with the sparkplug out. The oil that would have been picked up by the scavenge pump will now drop out of that hole.



Then we get to the helpful bit. If it's being fed in by the feed pump, it must be being pumped back out again because otherwise the crankcase would fill up with oil. So if it's not going up to the rockers, where is it going?



If you wanted to convince yourself further, you could check what volume of oil say 30 kicks pumps into the crankcase then replace the drain plug and detach the rocker banjos. You'll need a good few kicks to prime it then once you start to get oil flow back, see how much comes out of the banjo in 30 kicks. If it's roughly the same, you don't need to worry.



One thing though. How are you checking the oil flow to the rockers? Is it with the engine running? Because it can take an inordinately long time for oil to get up there by simply kicking (I'd estimate around 250 kicks once you start seeing oil at the quill bolt). If you oil the rockers with an oil can, you should be able to start the engine and let it idle for quite some time without any more oil feeding the rockers. Give it at least 3 minutes of idle if you've had the timing side cover off before making any decisions about the oil flow.



One other thing that occurrs to me for now. Did you physically have a look inside the rocker block? The engine I'm currently rebuilding had destroyed its big end. Both rocker blocks were packed solid with white metal filings.

Totally dry engine on my 350 required 80 kicks after fitting high flow pumps (and other things).

Hello, today I did this test: I unscrewed the sump drain plug, and without sparkplug, I gave about twenty kicks, and from the hole came out very regularly. Then I reassembled the plug, and I unscrewed the banjo .... but even after 50 kikcs, no oil came out. I reassembled everything, I went for a ride and the situation seems unchanged .... possible that the oil does not reach the rockers? Tomorrow I'll do another test and try to post a video .... As for the rockers, who are okay, I disassembled them and put them back in place. I have also enlarged the holes (3.5mm)

Dear stinkwheel, can we get in touch via e-mail? so I can send you video of the engine, hoping to solve the situation .... I thank you so much
If it's not possible, ok, I'll try to upload the videos here in the forum