Sorry to hear about the case leak. If it ain't to bad wait till winter like the others said. However a valve job won't take that long and the riding season has only just begun....IMHO i would do the vale job now, you could wrench it all yourself and just bring the heads to your indy. Won't take long...

 

one is find TDC on both front and rear compression stroke

two is once you are on TDC hold the rear wheel perfectly still

note - what you are hearing is the loss past the rings and thats normal - the compression numbers you posted are fine - you might have exhaust carbon under the valve seat face and valve seats them selves - that tends to cause a slight seepage and the marvil will eliminate that issue in a couple of tanks of fuel

what you also could use a leak down tester to use it would give you percentage of loss

have the guy tell you what the tick is first then see what happens - in the field we see more then an owner guessing

 

John's advice is very good. Many years as a Chrysler mechanic, and Marvel Mystery Oil really does make a huge difference. On real heavy carbon buildup on the exhaust valves we would pour it directly into the carb holding the throttle plate open a bit to bring up the idle to 12- 1500 rpm slowly squeezing it in knocking the idle down a bit then saturating it till the motor almost stalls. Then shutting it down and let soak for a good hour. Start it back up and it takes a while for the oil to totally burn off but after that it's usually pretty darn clean and rubbing a hell of a lot smoother....

 

Thanks John and 98hotrodfatboy. I picked up the MMO and added it to the gas tank. I'll see if that makes a difference.

 

Just to follow up I've put on about 1000 miles since I started this thread. Had my indy check it out and run a leak down test. He couldn't pinpoint the tick, said the leak down test was marginal with a little leak down on the rear cylinder, but no sense in tearing into it now since we are planning on doing a rebuild this winter.


Took John's advice and ran put MMO in the gas tank for 5 tanks and still have the tick from the rear cylinder at idle, but it still runs good. A couple riding buddies say they only hear it at idle, but it sounds good when they are riding behind me.


Thanks for your help!
Tony