So my bike has been through a lot in the past month. It started giving me trouble one day outta the blue: loss of power, hanging rpms, hard to start, dying. I thought it was a fuel related issue. I removed and cleaned my carb, and replaced some broken jets . While the carb was off of the bike it rained and the tarp i had over the bike blew off. Water went straight down into the cylinders. I ended up pulling the head to be sure I got the water out. Whilst doing this I checked out my head gasket and it seemed fine. After reinstalling everything and and breaking one of my head cover bolts in the head (damn) I had trouble starting the bike again. I triple checked the timing, had spark and was pretty sure I was getting fuel. I did a compression test and found all my cylinders to be putting out only around 30 psi. I put oil in each spark plug hole and the compression went up to 60-80 in each. Since doing this I decided to try to see if I could get it to fire up again and lo and behold it did! But now it's making a horrible ticking noise in time with the engine while running. It sounds like it's coming from the front right side of the bike. I know the cam chain tensioner is often the culprit of weird noises but my tensioner seems ok to me. It still automatically extends. SO. What could this noise be? Is it related to my compression? What could have happened to my compression?

 

That's low compression, even with the oil. Should be around 180-190. With it running, put your hand in front of the carbs to feel if there's fuel blowing out of them. If there is, your intake valves are hanging open and the air and fuel is pissing back out the intake on the compression stroke. You need to shim the valves back to spec to fix.

 

Checked my valves and every single one on the intake side was tight. Ranging from .102 to .063. All the exhaust valves were in spec. I also noticed while cranking the engine by hand exactly what you described. Fuel and air spitting out the cylinder past the valves. Not sure if the valves have ever been shimmed on this bike. It has around 27,000 miles on it.