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No , it doesn't look cool. It looks righteous !

was that car that righteous ?

Some months ago…a request was made by footgoose for a photo of the three Tenni’s…..now the V11 is assembled…. Regards from tennitragic!

Pete, it seems we think alike. As far as I'm concerned, your attitude is exactly right.

Yes, very boring. Wouldn't want one of them at all. For sure. Really. Not jealous at all.

@audiomick, @gstallons, you guys hijacking my titanium exhaust thread with your cool Pantera's and old Mustangs?! all i had was this boring Honda for groceries...

About 25 years ago Pete a mate of mine worked for the Australian Ducati importer and they had a SS in the workshop that on pre delivery wouldn't extinguish the LOP light. They pulled it down until they found that one of the crankcase galleries hadn't been drilled all the way through. They finished drilling it and replace the big end bearing which were actually fine but did it anyway and put it back together. That Ducati went all the way through post assembly testing and running and the engine on the Electric back drive rigs Ducati used in the day for 20 min before installing in a chassis with no oil pressure. The very same friend when he worked in Warranty for a large Japanese importer was also involved in an Australia wide recall along with a team from the factory in Japan for incompletely drilled oil galleries in the heads of one of their 250cc 4 stroke dirt bikes of the day. Un crate the bike, pull the head check for damage and replace with a new head if damage found or finish drilling the gallery and re assemble and re crate. The team went round Australia pulling new bikes apart for a month or so. I've got quite a few of these anecdotes after years of knowing people at importer level for several makes, lol. Broken drill bits on computerised machining stations is the usual reason. So your hypothesis may well be true or at least worth investigating at the time. Phil

This is the second or third time I’ve heard of camchain/tensioner related failures on an MGX 21. First one I heard about belonged to the bloke who runs Wildguzzi. It I believe actually snapped a camchain somehow trashing one side of the motor. It was rebuilt and from memory did something very similar again shortly after. The story really frustrated me because ALL of the second generation Hi-Cam motors are essentiallt identical as far as the bits that spin and go up and down are concerned. The cooling system is plumbed very differently in the small port 1400 motors but the lubrication system, which includes both the cam chain tensioner feeds, the under piston cooling sprays and the cam, tappet and cam bearing feeds is all identical to the 1200’s and the MGS is the same, identical, to the other 1400’s which are all much of a muchness. Once the flat tappet fiasco was sorted out the motor was pretty much bulletproof. I’ve seen a few dropped valves but that is usually due to the valve timing being incorrect after rollerisation or lack of oil changes but other than that most problems are oil leaks and oil pressure and phase sensor failures. What made these MGX’s fail really frustrates me because nobody seemed willing to dig into it! Shops just seemed to shrug and either replace the motor or just push the bike into a corner and forget about it. Something like that would have driven me batty! Fixing it is the least of the problem if you don’t know why it failed in the first place! There is no point in just rebuilding something after it has blown up like that unless you work out why because, oddly enough, if you don’t, the chances are it will just do it again! I’d have had at it like a dog at a bone but alas I never had the chance. My best guess, and it really is a guess, is that there is some fault in the machining of the oil galleries in the crankcase in the rear wall of the timing chest. Unlike earlier motors the front main is a pressed in steel sleeve with a tri metal coating, it’s not designed to be replaced. I’m sure this system was adopted for cheapness of manufacture but the upshot is that oil delivery around that bearing to supply both it and the under piston sprays, the cam chain tensioner feeds and the front cam bearings and rocker/cambox feeds is done through a fairly complex system of drillings and machinings in the crankcase itself. The ‘Guess’ I’m making is that somehow or by something that main delivery gallery is somehow blocked or partially occluded preventing the tensioner plunger from priming properly and maybe starving the front cam bearing of oil and causing a potential cam seizure in the cambox. Sadly I’ll never get the chance to follow up on this hypothesis and nobody else is likely to want to so it will, no doubt, remain as one of those eternal mysteries that blacken the company’s name from time to time. As it is I was never a fan of the ‘Small Port’ motor anyway. Too smooth and it seemed to have moved away from the bare bones ‘Engineering Purity’ I see in the Big Port 1200’s. That’s just my own bias though. That and the fact I think the 1400’s are huge, under suspended, overweight, tubs of shite of course!

An often overlooked defect with regards to steering issues is wheel bearing condition. To check the front wheel bearings you need to get the weight off the front wheel and remove both brake callipers so you can check for movement at the rim without any incumbrancers. I had a Ducati ST2 that steered really badly and attributed it to a worn front tyre but it was shot front wheel bearings. Phil

It's a race exhaust header setup Scudd. Fast removal and install fitment and some latitude in fitment. Looks cool on a road bike. Phil

Fella in our small riding group picked up an MGX a couple years ago after a protracted search for a clean low mileage unit Cam chain tensioner failed,lunched the motor ,close to home thankfully Last I heard sitting under a cover in the back of his garage

Yes. My Z900 did that, as did my GTR 1000 and the Honda CBX 650 E. The Suzuki GSX 1100 motor was particularly good at it.

A trait of wet clutch machines

I remember taking a mates 1700 Kawasaki cruiser for a spin a few years ago and being a bit intimidated at the size of the bloody thing at first.Then when I wobbled outa the driveway looking for the footpegs behind me...It must have been a sight. I did get the hang of it after a few minutes acclimatisation but they're definitely not my cup o Darjeeling! Another thing was how such a big motor could feel like a bloody 250.....Any trace of character completely removed! Cheers

Don't know why that wasn't engineered out of it. It is a horse kick.

Yes, they are very cool dogs.

A mate of mine in Australia had a blue heeler named Harry. The mate did eventually end up having a side car for a while, in fact the CB900 with the double chair that I mentioned further up. He bought it off the other mate and rode it for a while. That was after Harry, however. Harry used to ride on the Tank of the K100 RS. PS: blue heeler... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Cattle_Dog

I always start the V100S in first gear to avoid the horse kicking. Cheers Tom.

Coincidentally, I rode a new Stelvio with PFF yesterday. I put about 30 miles on it, 60 mph down to stop and go traffic. Some 40 mph twisties too. I came back to the dealer and put a deposit on it, told him I would like to sleep on it. I took my 2012 Stelvio for a ride this morning. I'm going to call him up now to tell him I changed my mind. The new one is a great bike, but I feel that it lost some of its soul with throttle by wire and water cooling. Plus the tach is so small on the screen that I have to take an extra second to read it. The drop into first is so aggressive it feels like you got tapped from the rear. It is lighter though, and feels nice at slow speeds, except the throttle is jerky at its lower settings. I'll pass for now. I like mine better. It is the last one on the floor until new 25's come in August.

Mine is the newer wet clutch, All seems to be good.

i rented one of those large guzzi’s down near Joshua Tree a few years back, for a couple days of touring the park and other areas up north of there. I enjoyed it, preferring it over the Harleys i had way back. that said, they all fall into the same problematic category for me: they are the best type of bikes for cruising down the big highways, which is exactly where i do NOT want to be on a bike, except to connect to other non-highway roads.

I was at the MG dealer yesterday. I sat on the MGX just for kicks. I struggled to get that monster off the side stand. I couldn't believe the force it took. Not the bike for me.

Was gonna sell the BMW GSA, but I hate leaving the dog while touring and then, well

Probably. To be fair to Holger, the thing is road-registered, but he built it for track days, so I reckon he can live with the low-speed heaviness. He also wrote somewhere that he can't sit (lie) on it for more than about 45 minutes at a time. It's a toy, and he likes it.