[Maturin]

Very odd things can happen out of the blue. Riding home after clearing up my wires at my dealer - the cable between ignition coil and battery-plus was chafed through and replaced - I once recognized a sudden boost of valve train sound.
I was just entering a city after going fast along a country road. When I closed the throttle and rolled into the village the valve train rattled as if was devoid of all oil. I stopped immediately to look for leakage or other signs of damage, but there were none - besides a soundtrack that would have suited to a pre-war model with open valve springs. The sound was the usual valve´s ticking, but much, much louder, as if the valve´s clearance was grossly misadjusted.
The engine´s power however seemed not to be impaired, so I went on carefully as it were only 10km home. Prepared for sudden "booom" that will end my motor´s life in a second, and accordingly thrilled, I reached my garage without any incident.
Oil level was well, so I called my dealer I just left there 2 hours ago. After I described the problem he promised to collect the bike with a trailer. Fortunately he was around my home collecting another bike the very evening, so I didn´t have to wait a long time for the diagnosis.
Three days later I got the result: they told me that the axial clearance of a rocker arm shaft was too big. The mechanic used Yamaha shims to adjustit it correctly and had no idea why that happened, and he hadn´t seen that before. Asked about why that could have happened he told me that possibly there was a flaw in the cast and a fin broke away.
In the last couple of month I had some trouble with my dealer about incorrect maintenance issues and high bills, so I´m not 100% sure that it´s correct what they told me. I probalby have to go to another dealership in the future, unfortunately the next one is 180km away. A well known problem in the US, I guess...
Anyway - I didn´t experience something similar before. After the repair the engine is running fine, just like before, although I imagine the valve´s noise to be a bit loader than before. Could be an itzy-bitsy paranoia, too.
After that the dealer wanted to charge money for the collection of my bike. These guys just started to sell Victories, besides Guzzies, Yamahas and Enfields they´re allready selling, so my guess is that there will not be much time left to work things on Enfields. It´s a pity that it´s necessary to quarrel about this kind of shit and I do not intend to pay a single coin for that issue.
Apart from that it´s a happy ending, although I wonder it the mechanic was fully honest. Did anyone tear apart the cylinder head yet? The pictures in the service manual are too small for beeing helpfull. Regards
Maturin

[2bikebill]

You are describing precisely what happened to my bike before it went in for repair.
Sudden loud valve train noise. This coincided with large metal fragments coming out on the drain plug magnets, as previously reported here. Anxiety !
We blamed the metal bits on a knackered sprag, now replaced.  Dubious !
The valve train noise is still there, and I strongly suspect  there is a clearance issue in there somewhere. Bike runs fine, and the noise appears as soon as it warms up.
I no longer know what the f***k to believe.

[Maturin]

My decompressor sometimes doesn´t disengage at about 300 rpm as it should do, but instead goes on clickering up to normal idle speed, so I spoke to my dealer and we agreed to check it (within the limits of warranty, as I thought) about 3 weeks ago.
So the mechanic opened up the right casing cover, removed the generator and both of us had a look on the deco lever.
It´s supposed to work with a centrifugal governor, and although the system obviously doesn´t work very exact everything looked well. Neither fissures or missing parts, not defective feather or screw, so he put it all together again, telling me that in some bikes - like the XL-Hondas - the deco-systems do have similar failures like the RE-system, but usually never go kaputt. He had changed the oil a couple of days ealier and, so he told me, did not find any bigger metall parts in the filter or the sieve.
Afterwards I stopped with a defective battery, that was obviously not maintained in any way, so I´m not sure if the guy really put up the time to check the sieve. I suppose that´ll be my job instead. If you want something to be done, do it on your own.
Later I got a bill over 90€ for checking this issue, mentioned that above. I called the German importer to ask for his standpoint, and they generally told me that they won´t cover any issue unless there is no apparent damage. Pretty stupid, methinks, as the custumer is educated to ignore any warning sign and drive untill the bike breaks when he want´s to avoid the risk to get charged if no damage is done (yet). But that´s probably a German problem and most of you are not affected.
So both rattlings could have one cause? A rattle-riddle...