To rebuild or not to rebuild..

[MotoPhreke]

Ok, that's not the question.. The question is how deep do I go..

Sooo, I rode my wife's XB9 into work this morning and it was so smooth and the engine absolutely purred. The only problem with that was it made me notice that I had a bit of a knock in my XB12 that shouldn't be there.

Now, honestly I'm not sure it's a piston knock or crank knock, Does anyone have any trick to be able to tell where it's coming from..

I know that when troubleshooting certain automotive bearing issues, with alternators and power steering units you can take a long socket extension and place it on each unit and use is as sort of a stethoscope (if you will) to determine what part has the bad bearing.

I'm not sure if that would work the same on the bike.

The bike has just over 11k miles on it, but in all honesty it's had the knock since I got it with just under 6k..

I'm about to head off to meeting for a couple hours , but please let me know your thoughts..

 

[fireinxb]

Video of the "knock"? If its had the same noise for 6k miles its probably just a louder engine and I wouldn't worry about it. If the noise got louder or something recently, that sounds like cause for concern.

Me and my brother have the exact same bike, his with 14k on it, mine with 6k or so on the motor. Both motors are 07's. Mine sounds much more tickey than his, really worried me at first. Now I just dont care. I'd actually say mine runs better. loud motors man.

 

[MotoPhreke]

I'll see if I can get a video this evening.. It hasn't really gotten any louder since I've bought the bike, I originally thought it just due to sloppy tolerances in HD's motor, but since it's up over the 10K mark I may just pull the jugs have em cleaned up and put some new pistons in it anyhow..

Better to be safe, than on the side of the road broken down with metal chunks all over the insides of the engine..

 

[Builtdesign]

Choose the $10 fix first! Get some Seafoam and see if that'll clean it out before tearing it all down. There's a good possibility that the combustion chamber is caked with carbon which could cause a knock.
Btw the stethoscope thing works the same on a m/c motor, I use a screw driver with a nylon and/ or rubber handle...a straight piece of steel will transfer too much of the other random noises the engine makes.