Listening tool

Hello all,
This may have come up before but I thought I'd pass on a little experience I had earlier today.

I got my '11 Tenni roller-ized last week and the new sounds it makes have had me on edge.
Mr. Roper assures me the sounds are probably normal which helped put me at ease.
I was discussing this with a friend and it turns out he has a cool tool that allows you to listen to noises wirelessly.
The basic premise is like a stethoscope but you can listen to the noise without being near the noise.
The tool is made by Steelman and is called the Chassis Ear 97202. It is wireless.
Anyway, I had the bike idling and was able to touch various places around the valves, engine, transmission, and sump.
I could clearly hear the valves , cam chains, rollers, clutch and the crank shaft.
Everything sounded very clean and smooth and the crank was just a whirring sound. That was very reassuring.
It's a couple hundred dollars on Amazon if anyone is interested. The really cool thing is you could place a sensor on the bike while riding and listen (or record) the sounds while riding if that helped you.
Thought someone might find this interesting.

Tvboy

Nice. I like the old way - a decent sized screwdriver with the blade touching the affected part and the ear-bone pressed against the handle. Very old school and the batteries never go flat! Just saying...

Also saves a few hundred $$ - but I am a known tight-arse.

I learnt this method as an apprentice checking bearings on DC motors while they were running - works really well on mechanical things.

Listening to your engine while riding is a recipe for for paranoia. Get a 2 valver if you want to sleep well at night.

Interesting. But you need to know which "noise" is ok or not. 

Lots of mechanical  noises on our Guzzi's   

Oh for fucks sakes!

To know what to listen for you need to have an understanding of what's in the motor and how it works. Most people have neither.

How many people here would be willing to stand up and say "I know the difference in sound, amplified or otherwise, between a shaft running in plain or rolling element bearings."

How many of them would tell the truth?

How many of them would know what type of bearings are in their motors, gearboxes or final drives?

Stupid, irrelevant nonsense.

Fuck that noise.

Any of them.

I could maybe see its use on tin tops for finding chassis noises.

Me? I just ride the damn thing. Balls to the wall!

Oh, I have been.
What I found most interesting about the listening tool is the various engine parts sound very smooth and precise (well, the clutch not so much) and quiet on the inside. It's only clunky sounding from the outside.
I also found that the electronic ear is much more sensitive (and user friendly) than a screwdriver which I tried last night.
That tells me it might prevent having to disassemble an engine to 'see' if there's a problem.

Either way, to each his own.

^^^^^

I have one of those and use it, though, for reasons Pete and others point out -- in ways that will prevent them from getting any dream job at the State Department  -- it is mostly for my entertainment, as -- again, as the they correctly note -- I really have no clue at to what I am hearing.

Doesn't matter; it's fun, and makes me realize how confusingly complex and simple at the same time an ICE is.

Bill