bad motor, bad headers? help!

[Scoobydoo]

On my way home from work today, my bike was running just fine....Then all of a sudden my bike basically pooped on me....barely got it home. I was driving in the city and all of a sudden i started hear what i thought to be a really bad sounding car....Since i was in the city I assumed it was the piece of crap ghetto car beside me making the awful noise....When i turned, i noticed the noise kept following me and getting worse and worse.....Then, it feels like i lost 75% of my power and the motor sounded SOOO loud. I was able to get it home, but it was really loud....I had to keep the rps around 5000 in order to keep the bike from stalling out. Am i safe to say that this is just the headers coming / came loose or did i blow the motor?
Bike is a 2001 Katana 600. Just turned over 20,000 miles.

Any advice and knowledge i would greatly appreciate.

Thanks!

Scooby

[steves]

Er, time to take the plastic off and take a look i'd think.

Pull the spark plugs.

[squiggy]

Er, time to take the plastic off and take a look i'd think.

+1



I had something similar but my issue wasn't gradual. I was on the freeway, everything was fine one moment then bam, a very load engine noise and loss of power. Had to strip the body off to find out the threads in the #2 spark plug were striped in the cylinder head.

The noise was exactly like an exhaust noise, like the exhaust headers fell off.

[Scoobydoo]

Okay. Thanks for that info. When I get off work tonight, i'll go home and rip the plastics off and check the spark plugs.

[Scoobydoo]

Just wanted to let you know Squiggy, you were right! Sparkplug stripped from the head! Wasnt that bad of a fix at all! Thanks for the pointers of where to look!