Gunge and Schrapnell

Sympoms 

My trusty DR600 has begun to make some alarming noises.  Well, one alarming noise actually.  It goes tickety, tickety, tickety in time with the engine and is independant of anything transmission or loose and floppy like a loose number plate or clutch lever.

This bike is brilliant.  Me and my Missus have had some really lovely times with it.  It cannot be allowed to die!

Initial diagnosis

I stuck a screwdriver stethoscope on various places and confirmed it's to be heard almost everywhere inside the engine, although reassuringly louder at the top to middle.  There's enough compression for me to stand on the kick start all day when the valve lifter mechanism is disconnected.

A history of malpractice

I'll confess that because the only thing this bike has ever done is run, I have been as lax at looking after it as my predecessors.  I've maintained and changed the oil and filters as necessary, but little more.

Testing and investigation

To put matters right I tensioned the ballancer chain, checked the cam chain tensioner, spark plugs, re-set the tappets and did an oil and filter change.

Indications

Well the results were interesting.  The plugs were perfect, as was the cam chain tensioner.  The ballancer chain was as slack as a tart's knicker elastic and the tappets had closed up.  This is the point where you have to get a good grip on your sense of reason and not let the imagination run away, well I do anyway.  What makes tappets close up?  Deteriorating valve seats?  Valve train support, proplems?

I turned my attention to the oil and carefully drained it into a very clean container.  I set this up to filter through some coffee filter papers, aided with a drop of white spirit so that it didn't take all day.
Whilst I was waiting for that, I dropped off the sump and cut up the oil filter and had a bit of a look.
 

Oil filter cut up and unraveled, coffee filter paper on the left, white spirit for rincing on the right and no, those screws are from an old radio cabinet, not the Suzuki!  Yes my workshop got dirty.

I used a couple of nifty tools to go with the magnet on a stick my wife found for me in Liddle (of all places!) on sale. Magnets on sticks are so useful!  I pulled apart an old hard drive and popped out the lovely rare earth magnets and glued them onto some M4 rods I had lying around.  These I swiped over the filters and sump to try and find bad things.  My heart was in my mouth.

Ex-hard drive magnets on sticks.  Very handy tools.

In all I found seven tiny pieces of magnetic metal between the sump, filter and the old oil.  I don't know if that's all that bad as I doubt if anyone has done anything nice to this engine in a long time.  Is this terminal?  Is the bottom end breaking up?  I have no references yet.  Everything I have read says if you find anything you should drop the engine and fit a new bottom end immediately.  Before I do that I'm going to try a few other things.

What I did next

I gave the poor thing some very superior oil (all the cheap stuff was out of stock!) and put it all back together because I needed it to go to work.

The noise is still there, but it does sound like it's not in the bottom end.  I live in hope.  On the positive side, it sounds like a BSA, it's really smooth running and it goes like a train!  Next Sunday I'll pop off the rocker box and see if there's anything to see.

Hold your breath for the next installment!  Actually don't do that, sometimes it takes me an age to add a post.