[PlayJurist]

I'll talk in bullets to keep this brief.

- I hear the ticking more from the right side (top?). The noise stops once the bike is warmed up but it occasionally comes back after ~30mins of hard riding (i.e. hard acceleration, not high speed).

- The bike (M50) is ~15 months old w/ < 3k miles

-Mentioned the tick to the dealer during first service (last year), they didn't hear it. Now they do and it's a few months past warranty. Their response was "engine job," and hinted it could be "several grand" if a partial rebuild is necessary.

- Another thread mentioned the possibility of an incorrectly sized cylinder causing scratching. That sounds like a long shot (could they have built the bike with the wrong part?!?)

- The bike has been with them for several days. They also mentioned "it's unfortunate we don’t have another m50 to compare it to, the noise could be a common thing, but you mentioned it comes back and that concerns us so we are going to check the chain." Thus far they made slight adjustments to the valves and they said it lowered the volume of the sound.

- Another symptom, after riding for a bit I will occasionally here a “putt/puff” sound from the exhaust. It’s usually just a single burble ever few mins or so.

- It seems they aren't very experienced with this issue (for this bike anyway). Second, I'm scared to know what the bill will be. In NYC avg hourly rate is $85. I have never taken a bike engine apart, any idea on what sort of price range I should be looking at?

I posted an audio clip of the sound here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe0i9tesw7ked1h/Tick.m4a
The recording starts on the right hand side of the bike and I carry the phone over to the left, shortly after the noise goes away. It's not the loudest I’ve heard it tick (or the best recording) but I'm curious what everyone thinks....
I’m basically looking for any relevant and useful input.

Thanks

 

[Easy Rider]

-Mentioned the tick to the dealer during first service (last year), they didn't hear it. Now they do and it's a few months past warranty. Their response was "engine job," and hinted it could be "several grand" if a partial rebuild is necessary.

Not a good situation.
I don't suppose that you have the "tick" noted on the service invoice from last year, do you ??
You should be negotiating for warranty work since you reported it BEFORE the warranty ran out.

Their "several thousand" is probably correct......if you have to pay for it, it is probably no worth doing.

BUT if adjusting the valves made a difference, you probably should not even worry about it.
Solid lifters are just noisy sometimes, especially if the engine hasn't run much.
At 3K miles, it isn't broken in good yet.

A change in brand/type of oil might help.
A lot of owners like Rotella T synthetic.

 

[PlayJurist]

I'd love to negotiate the warranty work, unfortunately I don't have much leverage in this situation. (open to suggestions)

Hindsight is 20/20, when I mentioned the tick originally it wasn't as severe (and it dissapeared for good after warmup). At the time it would have required leaving the bike there to cool and finding a way home. So in short, no - they didn't hear it, and it wasn't written on the invoice.

RE: the valve adjustment making a difference, this is what they said, I have yet to see the bike since. Also, the bike had an oil change last week. The switch was made to synthetic Motul 10W-40. No difference was noted :-/

I appreciate the response.

 

[TNM50]

Did you have the valves adjusted at 600 miles? If it is not the valves then I would just say screw it and keep on driving it. These bikes are great but they are low end cruisers and don't hold their value all that well unless you find a sucker who don't know bike prices to buy it. It also sounds like these guys are incompetent to begin with like most garages/shops these days and I am not even sure I would want to leave my bike with them. Take it somewhere else, preferebly to your local independent bike mechanic.