XJ 550 died yesterday...

[XS 500]

I was out riding my girlfriends new XJ 500 (1981) yesterday. It sounded very nice, went smooth and so on. After a hour on the road I speed up to 80-90 mph at 7000-8000 revs, it was flat out but the headwind and since we where two it didnt go faster or rev higher. When I let of the throttle down to 4000 revs it started to sound like it was short of fuel, misfiring and "jumping", I then shifted gear and went up to 6000-7000 and it disappeared, after a minute or two I went down again to below 6000 and now it was no problem at all.

We then went to a friend and when we came there it sounded a bit strange, not the smooth idle we experienced before. There was also a knocking sound from the top part of the engine, with a wrench as a stetoscope a friend concluded that it came probably from the camcovers. We turned it off and then on again, and now it didnt start as easily as before, but still started. We put in a litre of oil since it was rather dry (it had been oil in her before) and then checked the plugs. Some little oil and the exhaust smelled a bit oil, not blue smoke though.

After the bike had sat at idle for a couple of minutes it simply died. And after that was impossible to get started again.

What on earth has happened??? I did not go over 10'000 revs although I was up at 9'000 a couple of times on the twisty roads.

Update: It almost fired today but I didnt want to push it, but I tried once and it almost fired. So it seems not to be completely dead.

Update 2: I fired it up and rode 5 km home. Now idle seems to be ok again, it started quite easily and after returned home I shut it off and fired it up again a couple of times. Seems like its working fine now. I still have that bad noise though that wasnt there before... So still... HELP!!!

[XS 500]

Anyone???

[jordanscycles]

id check your valve clearances, excess noise from the camshaft can be caused by too much valve clearance. it's pretty easy to do.