Last Friday bergs FJR was shy, it wouldn't tick for the test rider and wouldn't tick in the parking lot. It probably started making noise .5 miles down the road after bergs left the shop :lol:
'Ticking' is caused by the valve guide wearing to the point that the valve stem rattles in the bore, 4k miles is pretty early for that kind of wear. The root cause for the wear appears to be stem seals that are so tight that they don't allow sufficient oil into the guide, leading to wear. I guess it is possible that the stem seals on a few engines are SO tight that they allowed guide wear from mile 1. If I was a betting kinda guy I wouldn't bet on this. Do try listening to the motor using the
mechanics stethoscope described in this previous post.
The only way to tell that is a ticker for positively sure is to take it apart and measure the guide. The dealers have been instructed to take the headers off and look for oil in the head pipes, but it may take a while for the seals to get beat up enough to let enough oil pass (because both engines are so young). The poor mans way to check the tick is to listen with the 'scope. If you hear nothing, that rules the guides out. If you hear something that doesn't automatically mean that the root cause of the noise is worn guides but it starts the troubleshooting process.
Even if your bike is a ticker it takes a loooonnnnngggg time before anything bad starts to happen. That bad thing would be a small amount of oil consumption. It will always get you there and bring you home, there is nothing that is going to fail. Ride it, don't sweat it, and then when the riding season is done have your dealer look at it. AFAIK, Yamaha has repaired all tickers regardless if they are under warranty, if you are not the original owner and independent of miles. The only glitch in the whole process is to get the dealer to acknowledge that it is a ticker. Heck, the dealer may not even know about the problem. When discussing this with a dealer you want to be sure to say
"excessive valve guide wear" because 'ticker' is only a Forum term and not a technical description to Yamaha.
If I were to describe the noise, first I'd say the tick sounds almost like one of those electronic grill starters....you know....the battery powered ones that fire the ignitor repeatedly when you hold the button in...sounds like something along those lines but louder.
Another way I could describe it...try tapping your thumb nails together....times that volume level by 50 and do that 2500 times a minute intermittantly
Which is what a spark plug wire/cap problem sounds like and may be why it is intermittent too.
