metallic 'pinging' in the left cylinder...

[Semper Gumby]

Hi Bill;

My '80 has 58,500 and seems to be idling the same.
it looks as though '80 is a strange year to buy parts for.
I need to find out the month my bike was made..?

Thanks!
Victor

Yes you do!  Mine is a March 1980 - old style (Yesh!)  

BTW - you need to start keeping an eye on the exhaust valves by seeing what feeler gage you can put in before you torque the heads/adjust the valves.  Keep a written record of the gap.  This way you can see if they are closing up or not.  Once set they should hardly move at all.  When the exhaust valves tighten up the idle RPM starts to float higher than normal. (Advancing the exhaust valve timing!)  Ignoring these indications will lead eventually to trouble.  My heads/valves lasted to 73,000 miles before overhaul.  I think Rob got a similar amount out of his.

Also - its kinda shadetree but if you want to if you have a lot of end play on the rocker shaft, when you undo the head bolts to retorque the heads you can use (really large set of plyers) to squeeze together the head bolts reducing the shaft endplay.  I think the gap should be .002"  Excessive endplay can make the valves noisy.

The latest issue of Airhead published a good maintenance interval sheet if you don't have one.  The only beef I have with it is that the spline lube comes every 20K which is OK for nickle plated splines but not for the early splines.  At the moment I'm doing mine every 10K (yuck).

TTFN,

[tagordon]

Do we have a conclusion to this story? I am very curious to hear the outcome.
Troy

[MrRiden]

CC_Vic
PING

[CC_Vic]

I'm out of town without my ride but will be working on this later this week.  
Thanks
Vic

[CC_Vic]

Rich, Bob, Justin, et al;

You guys nailed this-it was the rocker arm bearings on the exhaust valve was causing this problem in the left cylinder. I replaced the needle bearings and adjusted the valves and all is well.
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. This took a back seat to a number of family matters over the last few months. Luckily it’s still in the 70’s and sunny in the NYC area.
Be well and Thanks again
Victor

[Bob_Roller]

Glad to hear from you, at least it was a relatively straight forward fix. If you get the time, it wouldn't be a bad idea to remove the other 3 rocker arms to check on their condition as well.