Forum

[Daiwiskers]

Glad you have it sorted

You may just become Royal Enfield warranty man for Europe

Well done Dai

[Gexx]

Making a long story short : After reassembling the engine and fill it with the correct grade and amount of oil the ticking sound and all the irritating noises had gone and the engine run very soft.
I hope this information may help some RE enthusiasts out there. And do not believe a dealer when he tells you that a ticking sound from the valves in an UCE is quite normal!

Hi Harald, did you drive your bike a lot in the last weeks? Is it still without the ticking noise?

I don't think that your dealer is completely wrong when he said that a ticking noise is normal. The RE engines are from the "old days" and they will generates noise. Maybe one engine will have more noise than another

That the oil pump O-Ring looks compressed and out of shape is also not so uncommon. It doesn't mean that the oil pump will not feed enough oil. For sure if you would refit such a O-Ring it could be a problem.

Without measuring the oil pressure you can't be sure that the noise problem was caused by less oil

Maybe the parts you replaced were still out of spec from the beginning.

If you drive a Kawasaki from the 90ths then you can also hear ticking from the valve drive. If the engine doesn't produce the noise something is wrong.

Best regards
Robert

[Harald]

Well, the ticking noise had gone, but reappeared in a less intensity.
You are correct that an old style engine produces some noise, but the sound was not there for the first one thousand kilometres and suddenly appeared. And when the dealer states that all UCE more or less produce this noise, he may be right, too. But for me it only means that there is a basic problem with this type of engines. I am riding motorcycles now for more than 40 years and had a lot of engines that tend to produce some noise when there is a problem with play in the valve drive (Yamaha SR 500, BMW, Ural etc.) And my experience told me that the noise inside the UCE was too much to state it as "normal".

After the noise reappeared more instigation was necessary and led to a solution and a new topic in the forum.
Have a look here :
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10916

[Gexx]

Yes, some noise are normal and some not. Without hearing your bikes noise I can't say if I would describe it as normal or not

I know and drive al lot of bikes where valve noise doesn't mean you have a problem. It is the opposite...if you don't hear the noise then you will have a engine problem.

Please keep us updated how the noise will be after the next thousand km

Best regards
Robert

[Cranky]

Might be able to throw some light on this subject.

The Hydraulic lifters are only 'primed' by oil pressure. I don't have any noise on my 500 UCE 4900km. But I do have a tinkle when running on the road. I thought it was my keys rattling.

Since a converted to Carb from EFI I have used the temp sensor in the head as an oil pressure switch and let me say that the oil pressure is pretty low up there. Flickering at idle is normal.

[Gexx]

Yes, the pressure at the head could be low. But it isn‘t automatically a problem.
Other bikes could also have a low oil pressure at the head. Normally the oil pressure sensor is at the oil sump and therefor nobody knows the pressure at the head

Best regards
Robert

[Rattlebattle]

Given that the head/rocker bearing etc is a similar design to n old British bikes that usually had nothing more than a bleed off the return side of the oil pump, I think that too much may be being made of the oil pressure to the rockers. IIRC the older iron barrel models had rocker bearings made out of poor materials ( our host supplies an upgrade). Could variable quality be the real issue here and/or a partially blocked passageway to the head? Certainly my cylinder head had loads of oil in it and just turning over the engine with the head removed produced a flood of oil on the top of the barrel. Also, hydraulic lifters are fitted primarily for low maintenance, not quietness. Some American V8s had adjustable pushrods even though they had hydraulic valve lifters, on account of manufacturing tolerances. It used to be that in tuning a Harley the lifters were replaced with solid ones....There was presumably a good reason for that. Air cooled motors are bound to be a bit noisy, especially on thin, hot oil. Brit singles often used straight 50 grade oil in summer. Many had quieter iron heads, not alloy. Just saying. I don’t think a bit of engine noise is to be unexpected.

[Cranky]

The older Rolls royce were unbelievably noisy from cold. The fist edition of the Rover 3500 were so bad they were recalled with cams rounding off and the lifters turning hollow where it rides the cam and cracked, this was a serious problem on the Range Rovers. This is in the 70's.

Solid lifers or cam followers as we call them are to take more control of valve lift and did produce better torque. This though will mean gaping and more maintenance.

[Rattlebattle]

True, but on the C5 there is already a faux inspection cover. Adjusting the length of the pushrods to get the right clearance would be pretty much as easy as it can be and is a maintenance task that I've always found quite enjoyable - probably just me ........

[Cranky]

I too would prefer to adjust my tappets. Tappets were made to tap,---that why they call them tappets.

To have the valve slap onto its seat is good, the longer the valve sits on its seat the cooler it runs.