[THEFERMANATOR]

I take it your alarm doesn't work? How about the reservoir on the engine? Is it empty? I know the early YAMAHA's had an upgrade on the oil injection pumps as a few lost the powerheads due to failed pumps. If you got a noise then chances are your going to need to tear it down to find out what is making the noise. From your description best case scenario would be a scuffed piston, this would cause your tick which would actually be piston slap. So then you would have to decide is the engine worth putting that much money into to rebuild it? I can go out and take some pictures of what a YAMAH with a failed oil pump looks like, it aint pretty. And the cost to repair that 250 was more than I could re-sell it for after building it. It sounds like at this point a compression test is in order, and then pull the heads to see what it looks like inside.