Scratching my (cylinder) head.

I feel like I've spent enough time working on this engine for how little I've spent riding. Yes, I can hear hordes of Norton riders laughing hysterically (and weeping, too) as they read this, but I'll stand by what I've just said.

So, when I took the cylinder head off the other night, I went at it with little ceremony and tore off all the many, many parts that need to come off before you can get to the actual head. That, in and of itself is annoying, but lifting the head off while keeping the pushrods from falling, trying not to nick anything, looking for any spare nanometer you can get to clear the cylinder block is absolute bloody drudgery that made me really hate this bike in the moment.

Anyway, once I managed to get the cylinder head to one side, I took a look at the cylinder block and noticed something I wasn't expecting:

Not the usual oil seepage by the oil return passage at the back of cylinder 2, but what looks like blow-by to the left of cylinder 1.

A compression leak? Is that the noise I was hearing? Could that mean that there is actually nothing wrong with the head? I'll still check everything of course, but if I can't find anything obvious, could this be the culprit?

Perhaps all of this happened because I didn't re-torque the head (which I should have done, but didn't do, don't ask me why), or maybe I got the torque settings wrong on the wrench, or maybe still I messed up something else I'm not even aware of.

Still, the thing to do now is to proceed with exploratory surgery on the cylinder head and figure out what's what. Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath...