Can't figure out what's going on. Sounds & runs fine on short trips, but if I ride for one hour or sometimes only 7 miles, top end gets very noisy. After it warms up to operating temperature oil pressure is at 12 psi. Recently replaced S&S oil pump with TP Smart pump & noticeable increase in oil pressure, but still have the same problem. I noticed when I rode it yesterday I had traveled about 7 miles and it got very loud. I checked oil pressure gauge, it read "0" I rooled the throttle, at 2,5k rpms psi went to 2 psi. I shut her down, waited 15 minutes started up & no noise, headed back home and got noisy again & psi dropped again.
Let me back up here, when it first started, I found a bad lifter, replaced all 4 and solid push rods for adjustables. Thought it was fixed until I rode for one hour, then got noisy, that's when I installed an oil pressure gauge. at strt up psi was 25-32, when warmed up to op. temp. dropped to 2 psi. Thats when I decided to replace the oil pump. I have adj. push rods, and replaced oil pump, don't know where to go from here. If any has experienced this, & has resolved the problem, I would greatly appreciate some advice on the fix.

 

Just curious what kind of oil are you running? The oil pressure sounds in the ball park to me. Gauges are not overly accurate. Have you cleaned the tappet screen? Is it overheating for some other reason - timing, gas, etc. Does the idiot light stay off or is it disconnected? Are the lifter blocks aligned correctly? You need a special tool to do that. Sounds like you are not getting oil to the top end for whatever reason. Just a few things off the top of my head. Let us know, we're here to help. JMHO, YMMV, etc.

Bob

 

I agree that you should check the screen first. pull it right out! double check your oil line routing to make sure it all goes where it should. Look for a kinked oil line or an oil line that seems soft because it might be collapsing when the rpm's go up!
If you have to, pull your rocker boxes or at least 1 of them & look for oil! Pull your filter off & spin on a new one. Make sure you have the correct type oil filter on the bike!
keep us posted!
hatch

 

And if the obvious above doesn't help, did you mic the lifters and tappet block bores? Easy spot to loose oil pressure at as things get hot. Also, you put in adjustable pushrods, are they correctly adjusted?

 

the only place your going to loose oil pressure is at the rocker bushings or tappets,lower end is mostly oil volume,not pressure.like moog said,mic your tappet to bore and check your rocker shafts/bushings.(prolly need to go .005 OS on your tappets)

 

Running S/E synthetic 20-50, did ckeck the screen, it is clear of debris, the only time the oil pressure light comes on at about 7 miles of riding, where before it just got very noisy. Timing is good, only use 91 octane gasoline, as for the lifter blocks alignment I would think they are, I had a performance S&S authorized dealer replace the lifters, (had Jims, 1 went bad, he replaced all with HD "B" lifters) but noise continues.

 

I went a step further and disconnected all oil lines, blew them out to ensure there was no debris causing a oil restriction. Oil lined were old and very hard with wear/signs so I replaced them all when I replaced the oil pump. Oil filter is new, and with the TP Smart pump I can run twin cam 10 micron oil filter without a problem, but does have the evo 40 micron currently installed. Next on my process of elimination is as prodrag1320 suggests. Thanks for the tips, will keep you posted with results.

 

Get rid of that full synthetic. My bike hates that stuff. It makes all kinds of bad noises from the top end when I run that stuff and the motor heats up. Go back to regular HD 20W50. 2PSI when warm at idle isn't really that bad. Spec is "at normal operating temperature and engine speed of 2000 RPM, oil pressure should be 12 to 35 PSI." If you have that, don't worry about the rest of it.

 

How many miles are on your engine, Be it orig. or rebuilt. Have you had any engine work done just prior to the noise starting ? I can't really agree about the syn. oil as I run amsoil 20-50 in my bikes, One being a 92 fxr with 14,000 orig. miles and it's very quite. No ticks - rattles nothing. It sure sounds like internal tolerances that are at there max limits and when warmed up are beyond so it gets noisy and the oil bleeds away. {lower than normal pressure}

 

Well last year all the buzz about syn oil, I decided I would run it in my 40,000 + mile evo. At first I thought it was good stuff. After about 3000 miles, once it got hot, the engine would make all kinds of noises. Switched back to reg 20w50 and runs quiet again. As Dr. Hess says. "My evo does not like the syn stuff either.