right bit of an update for those who are interested

popped round my m8s house on saturday and had a look.

took the tank, airbox and carbs off and took the CCT out. had a look, made sure it was freely moving which it was and reinstalled. put everything back together making sure all pipes were properly connected and done up.

no change to the noise so i started tracing it with a screwdriver and err my ear

traced it to the very top of the engine, left side particularly.. no im pretty cofident it'll be the tappets/valve clearances.

i reckon ones loose on the left side.

so, next opportunity i get im going to pop back over, take the rocker cover off and check the clearances.

all a learning experience for me too but i've had a good read of the manual and it seems a pretty straight forward thing to do, especially on the older engines that just have adjusters rather than worrying about replacing shims

 

yes usually anytime you remove the cams its good to readjust the valve clearances......just asking but you did torque all of the cam journal bolts yes?

 

yup everything was correctly torqued back up, but as you've guessed we didnt double check the valve clearances after putting the cams back on.. our bad

just gotta find a w/e we're both free to do it and hopefully he'll finally be back on the road