Well I found that nut. WooHoo

All I can say is that I am extremly lucky. The nut was sitting between the Cam Chain & the front Cam Chain guide. I am still at a complete loss to understand why it didn't jam anything. I guess the F*ckup Fairy was being kind to me.

 

WooHoo.

 

You must have made a sacrifice to the grease gods. They especially appreciate parts left over from a rebuild.

 

Or you sold your sole to the devil

 

Happy endings are good.

 

Congratulations for finding your nut, bet that was a relief!

 

Well it doesnt seem that I am that lucky afterall.

I have re-assembled the bike, reset all the clearances and the very loud valve noise is still there. (although not as noisy), and there is a noticible lack of power.

When I when to put it all back together I noticed that when the locknut fell off the valve clearance went all the way to 5mm!!

If the clearance was excessive than surely all that means is that the valve is returning into the head harder than it should, but that shouldn't cause a bent valve. So what would be wrong? I know the piston isn't holed as it isn't blowing any smoke.

Any ideas?

 

Take a compression or leak down test, the valve could have been bent when the fault occured, even if it will not later hit the pistion when the lash is fixed 5 mm.

 

I'm a bit late chipping in here, but a local mechanic told me about a couple of guys he stopped in on one time who were doing some top end work on a bike. One of them had accidentally dropped a small crescent wrench down into the guts of the motor. They used ropes, pulleys and the garage rafters (and probably a few too many beers) to hoist the entire torn open motorbike completely upsidedown. It was at this point when the mechanic walked in. They jiggled the upsidedown bike for a bit and the wrench dropped out.

I'd think if you were running with 5mm lash you'd need to pull the head (or at least a leak down test) to check for damage. Bummer. I just did my valves and used a cheap-o beam style torque wrench to tighten the adjuster locknuts. Had you done this? I'm going to be paranoid for a while now after reading of your unfortunate situation.

 

It's imperative to use a fitting and calibrated torque wrench when locking the adjuster nuts, anything else is russian roulette. Setting them to loose and they will work loose, to hard and the threads in the head will be weakened. If you havn't the proper tourque wrench, it's better to let a shop do it. I bought a proffesional wrench, and even if it costed more than i will think of, it's cheap compared to a ruined engine and pays itself the firs or second time it is used compared to shop prices. I would definitly recheck the nuts with a proper tool if unsure of previous settings.

Forgot to tell that i feel sorry for your situation Trips when i was preaching tools. If the compression or leak down test is OK you may have got some other problem around the engine. I the engine leaks, it is probably just to replace a valve and grind the seat.