I see they haven't got any better....It seems to me that the dealer is incompetent. I would be very surprised if valve guide wear is the cause of the top end rattle. One (of very few) areas where the UCE improves on n old British singles is that the oil feed to the top end is pumped up there directly from the oil pump feed, rather than being a hit and miss dribble from the return to the oil tank. Consequently the oil supply is/should be massively improve, enough to warrant an oil seal on each valve stem to keep the oil from dribbling down the stem and burning. On old British singles valve guide wear was not a particularly big issue, there being a degree of clearance between the valve and guide. top ends were not particularly noisy. (NB Triumph twins were a different matter as the geometry was wrong, so the rocker arm pushed the valve stem sideways as it operated, accelerating guide wear and creating a noisy top end). The UCE valve guides are unlikely to wear before the rocker shaft holders, a well-known problem with the iron barrel models and not unknown on the UCE models.
Although the oil feed to the top end is from the feed side of the pump it does rely heavily on the oil seal between the outer and inner t/s covers and on the relatively small oily that gets feed through the barrel and head gasket through to the oil galleries in the head feeding each rocker arm. These have been known to partially block; either that or the o ring oil seal is leaking because it was badly seated. In my opinion it is a stupid design. I can think of no other manufacturer that has the main oil feed rely on a joint between crankcase sections.
If the dealer has indeed replaced the lifters (Why? There's not much to go wrong with them apart from being blocked) he will have had to have spit the cases as there is a slew on the inside preventing their being removed from the crankcase. Could he have mucked up this job in reassembling the engine, causing a partial blockage or reduced flow to the top end and ruining the cylinder head? Valve guide renewal is hardly a big task - it was almost a maintenance thing back when we did top end inspections on our old Brit singles.
BTW to me the UCE is more akin to a sixties unit construction single like a BSA B50 than it is to say a pre-unit B33. It has little in common with the earlier RE iron barrel and was introduced in 2008 as has been said. Wikipedia is talking out of an orifice other than its mouth..
Glad I sold mine anyway. Good luck.
Topic: C5 Classic...Normal Engine Noise? (Read 11757 times)