S3 Engine toast?

[Stuberto]

I was riding my 98 S3 home earlier this week when I was hit by a cage not paying attention. It was relatively low speed, about 15 mph, and my gear saved my ass. But the bike went down on the left side and continued to run for 60+ seconds on its side. The engine now makes REALLY bad noises, way worse than the usual Buell valvetrain noises. Given the lubrication system on these bikes, is it likely that I starved bearings of oil for that time period and burned them up? I'm dropping it off at the local HD dealer tomorrow so that the insurance adjuster can look it over. I want to make sure that they capture this noise in their report as I don't want a bike that is going to look great when fixed but be a ticking time bomb in the drivetrain.[mad]

 

[twobuells]

You didn't say what rpm it was at while laying down so lets assume at idle. A roller bearing crank which all tube framed Buells are should live longer than that without oil pressure at idle speed. Oil pump maby sucked some air and now the lifters need to pump up?

 

[Stuberto]

It was at idle while it was on its side. I'll fire it up and run it through the rev range to see if I can get some pressure into the lifters.

 

[Red93stang]

A roller bearing crank which all tube framed Buells are should live longer than that without oil pressure at idle speed. Oil pump maby sucked some air and now the lifters need to pump up?

[up]

I have seen it take quit a while for the lifters to pump back up.

 

[Stuberto]

Thanks guy. After 30+ minutes of moving around it has quieted down a lot. Still sounds like one is a little tappy in the front jug, but not crazy loud anymore.

 

[NSEGE]

It does take a bit for 'em to pump back up.... the operating engine oil pressure is something like 5-7#... roller bearings don't take a lot of oil pressure to live, unlike plain bearings, so yeah, it'll take a bit.

 

[Stuberto]

I'll let the techs at the dealer know what happened and they can see if there is anything majorly wrong. Fortunately, this is one bill that will be paid by the other driver's insurance company.