Hi, I have a 98'F3 and I began to hear a whine noise at the end of last season (best described as a turbo charger) when I reach higher speed. It has no correlation with rpm, only how fast I'm going (thus 40mph is louder than 20mph), for which I found out by going 30 then shifting to neutral and the noise persisted. Initially I feared it was the chain, thus I replaced the chain and sprockets (was overdue anyways). Since that didn't take care of the problem I looked into new bearings. After replacing those, there's still no improvement in the whining noise. I heard from a friend that the noise is normal for F3's and is likely due to the stock clutch plate, but to be honest I think you guys would know more about this than him.

Extra info: no whine noise when idle. Also the bike feels a little resistant to being rolled in neutral when I pull it in/out of the garage.

If it's a normal noise, I can live with that. I just don't want something to lock up and result in fall.

Thanks

 

how tight is yours chain? make sure it's adjusted properly.

 

I measure about 3/4" of give from the where I can lift it to the highest point, to pulling it to the lowest point.

 

I like my chains a lot looser than that. that is not giving the suspension a lot of room to work with at all

 

what is it supposed to be? i think thats too tight. look it up in your manual. mine is 1 3/4 inch, but thats a 929.

remember, the chain gets tighter when you sit on the bike and when the suspension goes up and down.

 

I should be home in a couple of hours. I'll give it a try.

 

with that little of slack your going to be stretching chain a lot. Im not saying that is where your whine is coming from though.

 

Have you figured it out yet?

I think these guys are on the right track. If the chain is too tight, it will put too much stress on the output bearing of the front sprocket. When this happens, you get a high pitched whine that increases as speed increases.

 

The swing arm says to keep the chain at ~3/4". Either way I put it to 1-1/4" just to see if the whine improved. It did get a lil' better, but it's still there. I've decided to just cut my losses and take it to a shop so I can get back to riding asap. Thanks for all the help guys.