tick tick tick

[Heinno]

Hi All

I have had a 98 tourer for 2 years now and love the bike a lot. I have 115 000 km on it.

Recently I started to notice a tick tick tick sound when the bike is running. It happens on idle as well. The tick tick tick goes faster and louder on acceleration, but seems to go a way at faster speeds (or I can just not hear it)

I had the valves adjusted and the timing belt as well. Any idea what this might be? Waterpump? Petrol pump? Pin-hole exhause leak? It seems like it is comming from the left side of the engine close to the rear of the valve covers, but it is hard to tell.

Any advice welcome, thanks!

[Bobbo]

Do a search for PAIR valves.  You will find a wealth of information.

[Ricky-D]

I feel the most obvious, and the first thing to check, would be the exhaust headers for leaks.

A piece of garden hose makes a good tool to listen for exactly that kind of noise.

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[Michvalk]

Fixing the pairvalve ticking is easy! Turn up the stereo

[Patrick]

Has the bike been de-smogged ?? If not, the pair valve assembly could be the culprit.. A vacuum line/cap or an exhaust ring/gasket could also do it.. Most of the time its an exhaust ring and they can a son-of-a-gun to make quiet.. But, that said, some of these monsters will just tick, its one of life's little wonderments.. No matter how hard you try it just may keep ticking.. A friend [ Glenn I think] thinks it could be the oil pump chain or some such  internal thing..

[ptgb]

I'm betting exhaust gaskets.

Do you know if when they change the rear tires, do whomever does it, remove the exhaust?

We had a ticking on the wife's 03 Standard... right-side middle exhaust gasket. Changed them all out.

[Daniel Meyer]

Check the vacuum lines right where they attach to the manifolds. They tend to split there and sound exactly like an exhaust leak.

[Thunderbolt]

take a short piece of hose about 2 feet long and hold one end at your ear and move the other end from cylinder to cylinder when the bike is cold and running, you will probably find like I did, that one of the cylinders has a leak between the exhaust gasket and the exhaust header.  Mine leaked because the screw clamp holding the cover over the Cobra exhaust would not let it seat properly.  Readjusted clamp and retightened everything, all is well.

[GOOSE]

heinno....first check the caps/hoses that attach on the back side of the intake manifolds for cracks/etc..  second, look at the base of each of the intake manifolds, and look to see if there is any staining from gas....if so then you may have an o-ring that is crapped out....if that is the case then replace all 6 of them.  third, check the exhaust pipes where they bolt to the heads...you just took the cobra 6 into 6 pipes off, and went back to stock pipes if i recall.....if you didn't change the exhaust gaskets when you changed pipes then you probably have an exhaust leak here.  good luck to you friend, john.

[CajunRider]

Just for sh^#s and giggles, check to make sure your spark plug wires are seated well. 

You'd be surprised how much noise they can make when arching across a loose wire.