valve hardness is this an issue

[Guest david s.]

Having read several posting stating that v11 valves when checked for hardness don't meet minimum standards leads me to wonder about taking preemptive action and replacing valves. I would assume there would be a few high mileage v11sports out there, I've got 17,000 on mine and everything on the suface seems o.k. Mike Rich who does headwork on MG's states that there is a significant problem with hardness. Now i'm hoping to start a real discussion on this important issue. First a couple of questions, are there any 50, 000 plus mile v11 sports or v11 Lemans out there? If you own a high mileage v11 sport do you believe or suspect there may be a problem? Now let's assume there is , am I not causing more damage by not attenting to this now? and, what are a persons options who plans on keeping their bike "indefinitely"? thanks in advance!

[Admin Jaap]

Austrian catholic priest 65000 kms without any probs! Rides it hard but trades it in for a MGS01!

[callison]

I have 57,000 miles on my 97 Sport 1100i which is basically the same engine. My valve stems were the worst Mike Rich had ever seen. My 2001 V11 Sport TT on other hand, has 28,000 and shows no signs of problems. Now it's just wait and see.

[Guest russ]

Austrian catholic priest 65000 kms without any probs! Rides it hard but trades it in for a MGS01!

Maybe his particular bike is blessed

[docc]

Pretty sure V11 Sport/LM has different valves than the 1100 Sport/Spot 1100. Smaller for one thing.

 

Have there been problems with the V11 or just the Sport 1100 motors?

 

Also is this one shop the only one in the world who's seeing soft valves?

[callison]

Well, shops see what gets sent in for repair. They aren't going to see the good ones much, so it's inevitable that the apparent ratios are skewed. The evidence that the valve stems on big valve Guzzis is sub-standard is more than anecdotal though.

[al_roethlisberger]

The valves on my 2002 LeMans were measured by Mike Rich and were "extremely soft" and "very worn" after only a couple thousand miles of use. The guides were already getting sloppy....

 

At the rate of wear(check the "dual-plug" thread for more details) I would have had significant damage/wear by the time a few 10's of thousands of miles had piled up.

 

Is this true for every V11 based bike? I dunno, but that's what was observed on my bike

 

al

[docc]

It seems with the kind of wear implied in just a couple thousand miles these motors would be blowing significant smoke on start - up.

[Guest Jeff Kelland]

I personally find this a bit suspicious. A valve is harder than the guide it rides in. While valves do in fact wear, in my experience guides wear much faster. Also, the only problems that I have read about are here. For me, I'm going to check around the exhaust valve stem when I do valve adjustments. Generally, when the exhaust guide wears out, you can see a carbon build up caused by exhaust gas leaking up through the guide. Also, if you grab the top of the stem you can wiggle the valve in the guide, I won't be alarmed if there is some movement, I would expect that, I will just try to see if I feel it's excessive. Maybe there is something to this, I'm not going to worry about it until I see something that suggests to me that my engine has a problem.

[callison]

No respectable machinist is going to change valves without checking the guides. Mike Rich did both on my Sport 1100i. Mike has done extensive hardness testing on Guzzi valve stems and he says they're too soft. I have no reason to doubt him. In the process of the valves getting replaced, so do the guides. At this point, it doesn't really matter whether the wear is the valve and/or the guide. They get replaced and fitted as a set.

 

I finally got my V11 Sport running last night after nearly two months of downtime. There is a fair amount of smoke wisping out of the right exhaust after shutting down after a two minute engine run. I'm hoping that it's just oil in the cylinder from when the bike was laying on its side. With 28,000 miles though, this could be the next dreaded valve job.

[Guest captain nemo]

Damn, I hope this is not the source of the smoke and chard plug on the right side. I have 13,000 miles on it. Don't know how many k that is.

[gthyni]

I have 13,000 miles on it. Don't know how many k that is.

13k miles * 1.6 = 20800 km

[Guest John T]

Here is a shot of one of my intake valves returned from Mike Rich.

About 3500 miles, '01 Rosso Mandello.

[al_roethlisberger]

Excerpt from V11 Forum Dual-Plug Thread ...

 

 

 

2) Apparently MG has used relatively soft valves in our bikes, and had a rather sharp guide. Mike has noticed(and warned me ahead of time) that the OEM valves he's received have worn significantly over relatively minimal mileage. He's seen bikes with 5000 miles with .005 wear, and the guides worn similarly. This is caused by the lateral forces on the valve-stem from the rocker, the guide having a very sharp top edge, and the softness of the valves. He tested the valves and consistently find them to have a "Rockwell-c" hardness of 29.5-30, where in his opinion they should be at least 35.

 

My valves' stems were worn .002 with only about 3000 miles on the clock. While not a big deal yet, one can extrapolate that as this wear gets worse, it will only accelerate, and then the guide and even the boss that the guide fits into will wear out. Result?... oil burning, poor valve-train performance, binding, etc...

 

 

As always, YMMV ....but this was the experience with my bike.

 

al

 

 

 

P.S.

 

I have the new coils mounted to their bracket, and should have them hooked up by the end of the week. I just have an email out to TLM asking if the coils can/should be operated with just one plug attached. I'm just curious....

[callison]

The answer would have to be no. When the magnetic field collapses, it induces a very high voltage across the secondary. The secondary's load is the spark plug. With no plug - hence no load - the secondary voltage will probably rise high enough to puncture the winding insulation and ruin the coil. Even hooking up a spark plug out in the air on the second lead would be preferable to operating it without any load.