LANCER wrote on 09/11/17 at 10:01:37:I had a knock that developed in my '96 after making a move from SC to OK. The bike sat for a period of time without being started while we were looking for a place; about 6 months or so. During this time some rust developed on the rings and cylinder wall and when I did start it (I neglected to squirt some oil on the piston in advance) the rust caused the piston to yank sideways and damaged the piston slightly. It would start and run but in the slow range you could hear the knock while in the upper range it disappeared. I rode it for a little while hoping it would work itself out but of course it did not.
When I pulled the head & cylinder. The head was fine, the cylinder needed a little clean up but was ok. I just had to replace the piston thankfully.
Sounds pretty similar to my situation. I hadn't ridden it in a couple months, heard the sound and then stuff came up and I hadn't ridden it for another couple of months and the sound got much worse. I let it sit for another month and a half and decided I wanted to ride it again before I have shoulder surgery and can no longer ride for over 4 months. And now I came to the conclusion it is not going to get better by itself.
So my project for this downtime that I will be out of work is going to be sorting this out. If this is going to cost me any significant amount of money I don't think I will fix the bike. As a student who is usually broke, I just don't think it is worth it.