I seem to have a knocking when I first start my 650 that goes away after it warms up.
It seems to be louder and take longer to go away as the temperature drops.
Hard to tell but it sounds like its coming from the belt converter area.
Could it be that the belt makes a slight knocking until it warms up?
I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed this with their 650?
Thanks in advance for any help....

I should add that if I increase the RPM's the sound also dissappears.

 

I noticed that with mine also.May be the weather up here!Mine also backfires pretty loud when I get stuck in snow and use the override button to get out,also it seems to backfire when I slow down from high speeds,is this normalor is there a solution for these tidbits.

 

Someone in here already figured out what the knocking from the belt drive was from.

I forgot exactly, but they said it was normal. It might have been the electronic brake actuator. A small amount of noise is normal until the engine is warm.

If it is real loud, obviously you have a problem.

I wish I had paid more attention to the info about that sound that I read in here. Oh well, not an issue.

 

Actually the noise is coming from the front cylinder area. We found that if you slow the idle speed down until it barely runs the noise is more pronunced. After the local dealership couldnt find the problem a tech from Kawasaki was brought in and he determined the cam chain tensioner was not fully extending causing a knocking noise. As soon as the rpm is raised the oil pressure goes up and fully extends the tensioner. He took a brand new one off the floor and it did the same thing. It was determined that this is normal.
Bearman

 

So does the cam tensioner run off of oil pressure? I thought it was spring activated.
Thanks for the replies it makes me feel better to know it appears to be normal.

 

According to the Kawasaki tech the tensioner is spring loaded, however oil pressure fully extends it to the proper tension. I have seen other import cars with this same design.
Bearman

 

Everybody wants to know about the knock, so here it is. If you crank your 650 with no throttle when the engine is cold you will here the rocker arms knocking because the oil is cold and the oil pressure isn't up yet to get oil to the head, crank it with some throttle and the rpms are higher so the oil gets to head faster. This is fact for most any 4-stroke OHV engine,the bigger the worse it sounds.

 

Well im still not convinced that the knock I am hearing is coming from the engine. I say this because I can let the machine warm up for over ten minutes, without driving, and the noise is still there. Its only when I drive it for awhile that the noise goes away. So being curious I took off the converter cover to discover that the drive pully has a small amount of play if I grab it and rock it back and fouth. This could be normal due to the fact that it rides on a bushing which may have some play in it. The reason why it concerns me is because when it was new it did not make this noise and I would think it should also be a precision part.
Has anyone else taken the time to check if their drive pully can be "rocked" back and fourth?

 

PrairieDust I was talking about right when you crank it,after that if it still knocks something is wrong no matter where it is coming from and no I haven't checked my drive pully for play yet. Shouldn't the clutch on these things be lubed,my son's go cart has a clutch belt set up and it's supposed to be lubed every 10 hrs.

 

Yes, the drive pulley has a bit of play.