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We have enough nuts here that no bolts should ever come loose . . .

Yes but you're entertaining as hell. Frankly, after spending most of the day changing the fluids on the EV. Then missing a pan bolt, I feel like I must be nuts too.

Unless you're a Guzzi guy. Ciao

Of course. Not that it's a bad thing. Guzzis are about as "mechanical" as a bike gets. There is just something about them. but.. of course I'm preaching to the choir. Chuck, deacon Church of Guzzi

In the harsh light of hindsight I'm really quite mad aren't I. Ciao

Hello, V11 aficionados! This thread is about me and my Greenie. Good days and bad days. A steep learning curve, maintenance, and later on some tuning and styling. I bought the '00 V11 Greenie on the last day of August 2019. A friend drove me from Gausdal to Stryn, and I drove home on the bike. My first trip on a Guzzi since I sold the V65 Lario in 1995. 300 km in cold weather, rain, and sun. I enjoyed every moment, every curve. Right now I'm doing the long overdue winter maintenance. There are quite a lot of things to fix, inspect and enhance. I have a long list. I will be grateful for every comment. Flickr album is here

Got me.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Moto-Guzzi-Custom-VALVE-COVERS-Big-Blocks-Square-Fin-Heads-1100-For-A-PAIR/143441407414?hash=item2165c62db6:g:QZoAAOSwxORdzNUx

I've actually done some fairly thorough testing on this and generally with the 2V engines even running them hard on a rolling road while holding the rocker cover on by hand until they were scalding and then whipping the head off and finding TDC immediately the gaps would remain virtually unchanged on squarefin motors with the alloy rocker covers and would close up *A bit* with roundfins with cast iron rocker carriers. The only time I know of the clearances close up enough to cause problems is on engines run with the mid nineties 'US Emissions' clearances of two thou inlet and four exhaust on the squarefins. If engines are run really hard with these clearances in hot weather for extended periods the will stall if they come to a halt quickly, indicating, one would guess, that the tappet is riding the cam and the exhaust valve is being held off its seat. In 'Normal' use it isn't an issue. With the roller tappet 1200 8V's the gaps will definitely open up as the engine gets hot and gets bigger the hotter it gets. If you look at the construction of the heads, valves and camboxes it is self evident why.

Personally I think Hondas are the quality yardstick for mass produced motorcycles and have been for many years. I was killing some time at a shopping centre about 4 or 5 years ago and was looking at a CBR1000RR parked there. The one with the Ohlins suspension and was impressed with its build quality. It was always Honda then Yamaha then Suzuki and Kawasaki quality wise for me. I did own an RC30 for a while in the mid to late 80's and that thing was on another planet compared to my 1000 Hailwood replica that I also owned at the time. More bar ends alas Ciao

LOL.. nothing against Hondas as such, they are some of my favs like the V4 VFR800 98-01 model, but there are soooooooo many of them. Sort of takes the individual part out of it.

No docc not you, and your test did show useful results with regards to engine temp for clearance adjustment in that it doesn't need to be stone cold. I was commenting on GuzziMotos post about the clearances closing up when the engine was hot, which they do however its running hot. So he's right thats why if the clearances are too tight cold you will burn a valve due to it being held off the seat when hot and not cooling. I've seen valves being adjusted on a running engine docc, very messy. Ciao

Yes they always leave the mirrors off. Most road gear detracts from the look. The overall idea is to make the ugly stuff "disappear" as much as possible by either dimension or colour. If thats not possible then make really high quality and a "feature" Ciao

Oh, I have to agree. Every time I see "designer photo shoots" of sexy bikes they don't have ANY mirrors. Certainly no registration tags and usually no turn signals/"winkers." Minimal lights and instruments, even. Don't get me started how I think my Tekno panniers look like Cindy Crawford in muck boots and a slicker . . .

Here's an old shot of my bike. Mirrors are still the same, high quality, discreet, useful and dont add a foot to the width of the bike. Ciao

As a blanket statement valve clearances get tighter with the engine at operating temperature, however doccs test was a little flawed in that the engine isn't running. The valve temps on a running engine are wildly different to a warmed up engine sitting stationary for 5 min while you get the rocker cover off and measure the clearances. Also different materials expand at different rates. My VFR750 Honda during warm up had valve noise that went from silent to tappety and back to quiet again as the head and valves all expanded at different rates. So measuring valve clearances with a warm engine doesn't actually tell you what the valve clearance is running at WOT with the valves running red hot. In that scenario you wont have more valve clearance than cold and thats what you set the clearances for,valve and head temp running at WOT at peak torque. Ciao

And, here, I thought my wee CRG quite sweet. More like *tassles* on Cindy Crawford. Sure, "objects are (waaay) closer than they appear", but you can still tell it's a cop car when the blue lights come on!

Very nice bikes except for the hideous bar end mirrors. Why the hell people run these I have no idea,they look bad and just add width to the bike you dont want. Like putting big rubber ears on Cindy Crawford. I ran a single bar end mirror on my Hailwood Ducati back in the 80's and was never happy about it but you couldn't buy nice std mount aftermarket mirrors back then and the Ducati mirrors were cheap rubbish. You can now though. look at the Rizoma mirrors on my bike, beautifully made small and discrete but still useful, almost perfect. Ditch those things, no excuses for flappy ears on a bike these days. Ciao

I like the older Rush, but had not heard the song you posted - nice one! Here is Numb, by Gary Clark, Jr. - a recent favorite of mine. BTW - How do you embed the play window? edited after I figured out how to embed.

could you imagine bouncing off the seat onto the back tire ?