HELP! Knocking noise.

Well sitting at a light, I noticed this horrible knocking noise, then, I noticed it was coming from my bike. The sound seems to be coming from the top front of the motor and does not seem to get any louder or quieter with acceleration.

The bike is an 02 with approx 6k miles and has not been ridden hard and has had all the recommended maintenance. Last oil change was about 3k miles ago and about 9 months ago. The oil looks fine and does not seem to be contaminated with any metal or anything.

Any ideas?

[Hotmailrules]

You can try changing the oil with a good fully synthetic oil. I usually dont go 3K between oil changes on my bike because the double duty in the tranny wears it out faster than in a car. If you do that and the problem doesnt go away then at least you have eliminated that posibility.

[Diego]

It's true that the sound of Triumph engines changes with the age of the oil, but if it's a loud knocking, that's almost certainly not the cause. Several difference problems can manifest this symptom. Best have your mechanic check it out.

Feh, just listened to it again and its almost for sure a loose valve, so Im gonna check the clearneces and see what i can see.

[jnicosia]

don't sweat it, my 05 triple knocks like a pinball stuck inside it's just a loud engine. I looked into it as well it's waist of time just get loud pipes. The only real quiet engines are hiondas even those knock from the cam chains. thats what your hearing anyway so don't go nuts over it.

For anyone that cares, we seem to have solved it, one of the hoses on the secondary air injection system had slipped off and i guess it was causing some kinda weird compression issue at the exhaust port(i.e. an exhaust leak) which is more than likely what was causing the noise. The hose was all gunked up and right at the reed valve was gunked up so we cleaned that out and hooked it all back up correctly which seems to have fixed it.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone disabled this system? If so how did you go about doing it? Some kinda plate to replace the reed valve assembly?

[ This message was edited by: fonebone on 2005-07-30 20:16 ]

[Diego]

Excellent diagnostic work, fonebone. That's not a very common one, but it can definitely cause a knocking sort of noise.

I'm a little surprised, though, that you didn't have a Don Martin-esque description of the knock for us. I imagine it went womething like this...<blockquote>
Mechanic: Mr. Fonebone, would you say the engine sounds more like "flubbadubba-DINK, flubbadubba-DINK" or more like "rattatatta-KRUMP rattatatta-KRUMP"?

Fonebone: Here, let me crank it up and show you.

Engine: frappa-rappa-PLIK frappa-rappa-PLIK frappa-rappa-PLIK

Mechanic (eyebrows elevated to hairline, toes of shoes curled upward): Potrzebie! No wonder you feel exhausted after riding. It's your air injection.</blockquote>

Or maybe it wasn't exactly like that...

[crashmasterd]

On 2005-07-31 05:18, Diego wrote:
.<blockquote>
Mechanic: Mr. Fonebone, would you say the engine sounds more like "flubbadubba-DINK, flubbadubba-DINK" or more like "rattatatta-KRUMP rattatatta-KRUMP"?

Fonebone: Here, let me crank it up and show you.

Engine: frappa-rappa-PLIK frappa-rappa-PLIK frappa-rappa-PLIK

Mechanic (eyebrows elevated to hairline, toes of shoes curled upward): Potrzebie! No wonder you feel exhausted after riding. It's your air injection.</blockquote>

Or maybe it wasn't exactly like that...

{Crash, giggling hysterically} I love that. Why oh why don't we have Ray and Tom Magliozzi (AKA The Car Talk Guys AKA Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers) for Motorcycles?

Car Talk

[AndrewTriumph]

I have a 2000 s3 and at 10,000 miles I heard the same thing and I had to get a new rest pin (piston rod too.) And $ 2000.00 later my bike was back to normal. FASTER THAN S**T! Mechanics say I let it get low on oil.I doubt that, but what can you do? I hope that isn't the case with your bike. Take it to a dealer and have them ride it. They will know right away whats wrong with it.