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Someone asked me if I was going to Mandello del Lario, instead of the South'n SpineRaid, for the Centenary Celebration . . . Showing up at the Seventeenth South'n SpineRaid, with 200.000 km on my Sport, IS my Centenary Celebration!

My location Russia (Moscow)

I've experienced casting porosity quite a few times over the years with Italian motorcycles so why would the V11/V10 be any different. I thought I'd do a piece on dealing with it in the case of the Daytona engine, specifically the cylinder head. It's of course of no real import to anyone here V11 wise but may be of general interest. My original V11 engine had an issue with the oil drain back gallery in the l/h head apparently which the original owner had rectified with a sleeve. I've not had the opportunity to look at it but it has never leaked in the 10 years I've owned the bike, so I'll call it fixed. The issue with the Daytona engine arose a few months after I got it running with an annoying accumulation of a small amount of oil on one of the r/h cylinder fins. Originally I put it down to a leaky rocker cover gasket but a careful evaluation found it to be from one of the rocker cover attach screw blind holes. Four of the cover retaining screws are on the "wet" side of the cover o-ring and are blind holes to the external part of the head. Several of these holes had been over drilled at the factory by a very small amount and broken through to the head exterior. Oil was seeping down the thread holes and working its way to the outside and eventually to the edge of the cooling fins. Great, simple fix. Either seal the screws on fitment of the rocker cover, which is a bit of a pain or somehow seal the bottom of the holes. I took the latter path and screwed a 6X4 grub screw down to the bottom of the holes sealed with Loctite 242. This still left me with 12mm of thread engagement which was plenty. Here's a totally inadequate image of the screw hole with the grub screw in the bottom. Unfortunately the leaks persisted. I suspected it may have been from the spark plug drain gallery vertical wall. The vertical walls of this area of the head form an internal pair of drain "wells" with the head drain galleries at the bottom of these rectangular wells. Measuring a spare head I calculated the wall thickness here to be around 3mm which is pretty thin for a sand casting. I also recalled a brief thought flash through my mind when I was painting the heads that I'd better get paint up in there or I might end up with an oil seep issue. Funny the fleeting thoughts that come back to you in hindsight. I've long suspected that one of the primary reasons for the Italians painting engines going back 35 years of so was to preclude these porosity issues. Here you can see in this damaged spare head the drain wells and the spark plug drain gallery exit between the fins. One well has a red sealing coat over the area that forms the roof and vertical wall of half the plug drain gallery and the other roof section and vertical wall section is unsealed. I wanted to test the sealer in the oven to makes sure it would stand the local heat in the head. I painted on some dye check developer to these vertical walls inside the plug drain gallery and sure enough the tell-tale signs of porosity seeping. First image the r/h head and the second the l/h. The dark round patches in the white developer are the tells. So the challenge is how to fix this without pulling the heads if possible. Pulling the heads is a pain. Apart from the actual work involved you then need to go through the retorque process and reset the valve clearances etc. painful. Part of what I did in my professional aviation career was to come up with insitu technical solutions to to keep aircraft out of the hangar flying an earning a dollar so I put that hat on and had a muse. The typical way to address porosity issues is to clean the component, heat it up which will usually bring any trapped oil out of the casting and then drop the whole thing in a warm bath of loctite 290 wicking grade and let it soak for a few hours and wash it down and the porosity is sealed. Not possible here of course without pulling and disassembling the heads. There are commercial variations on this process that immerse the component in a vacuum chamber and then a pressure chamber of 290 or variations on that material but once again not insitu. What I eventually came up with was a vacuum system using a brake bleeding pump and home made rubber seal. I sealed off the spark plug end of the plug drain gallery with aluminium tape and connected my homemade seal to the vacuum pump at the outer end to create a 27 inch vacuum in the plug drain gallery. The outer rubber seal was made from an old piece of rubber thong sole. This would hold a vacuum quite well with a few pumps every 3 or 4 minutes. An image of the aluminium tape used to seal the plug drain gallery at the plug hole end I then devised a rubber plug to seal the drain hole in the bottom of the head drain wells. A little tricky as with the head rocker gear support installed the hole isn't visible without a mirror. Here's the plug. Here's the plug installed on the head on the engine with the drain well filled with 290. Some of the images are from "proof of concept" experiments with my spare damaged head on the bench. Painting on the internal sealer insitu was a fiddly job with the rocker arm supports in the way but with small brushes bent to various shapes quite doable. So the process now was to fill the plugged drain well and fill them with solvent and pull a vacuum in the plug drain gallery to draw the solvent through the porosity and clean out residual oil. Then dry out the drain well and repeat the process with the loctite to seal the porosity. I inserted a small piece of paper towel inside the plug drain cavity on both occasions with the solvent and the loctite to get an indication if my process was sound. If you look carefully you can see a light green tinge to the paper, so the solvent and loctite were migrating through the porosity. So repeat for the other head area and the jobs almost done. I wanted a little "belt and braces" assurance so in addition to the loctite sealing I also coated the well areas with Glyptal internal engine sealer as well. That's the reddish coating. So I can claim a complete success I'm happy to say. Nice and oil tight. Next time I'll listen to my small internal voice a bit more closely and do the due diligence on those areas I know intuitively could be an issue. Ciao

"...support is a little skimpy..." LOL I ride a Moto Guzzi... Ah hain't skeert none. Florida has 3 MG dealers and 5 RE dealers.

Hello world! I have 2 guzzi V11 LeMans (2002) & V7 (2017)

Here is an article on motorcycle travel in Peru written by Florian Neuhauser for Roadrunner Magazine in 2011. I had thought I had seen a more recent travelogue in that magazine, but perhaps there are some helpful insights here: https://www.roadrunner.travel/magazine/read/november-december-2011/page/50/ [edit: Actually, a web search for Peru and Roadrunner Magazine brings up several articles by them. Here is a preview of a 2017 article:https://www.roadrunner.travel/magazine/read/march-april-2017/page/114/ ]

As an owner I'm a bit biased, but Suzuki DR650s have a great reputation for that type of touring as well as the Himalayan. I know Royal Enfield support is a little skimpy in North America not sure what it would be like in Peru compared to Suzuki, fwiw. Either way. sounds like a great area for an adventure tour.

I assume you've seen Itchy Boots? A Himalayan has been most excellent in her travels.

buon giorno, grazie per la mia ammissione . Mi presento, ho da poco acquistato dalla concessionaria Guzzi di Parma Guareschi la tanto attesa e sospirata V11 Tenni numero T0061. A breve provvederò al ritiro. sono felice possessore anche della Griso Tenni. buona strada a tutti.

Soooo.... Life takes odd turns, doesn't it? I've not left the plan to attend the IoM races in the relatively near future, but I have done some investigations on something with less politics and logistics. So, as I have a friend in Peru, I think I'll go there. Entry for people and things is *relatively* easy it appears, although at this moment they're still applying COVID lockdowns at least in Lima. I'll plan for some time after that eases- no sooner than next week lol. I'm sure some of you have been there. Has anyone ridden there? If you could have any bike there, what would it be? It's hard to get a grasp on the roads other than that they appear to be suitable to a horde of Chinese <250cc 'sportbikes'. I didn't see much dirt, but of course that isn't very touristy when selling your country. I was thinking a RE Himalayan, but then the distances between things I'd like to see are 2-3 days each way, so maybe 24hp isn't going to cut it. What's the speed limit? Is something dirt-road compatible mandatory? My knees are not up to 4 hours of hiking. What's the best season? I tend to like it warmer than most, although anything above 60ºF is cherry as long as it's dry. Anybody?

I have no experience of Peru, but how about a Yamaha XT225 Serow? Low seat, light weight, rugged and reliable. https://www.loisontheloose.com/ Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

https://www.magzter.com/stories/Automotive/Cycle-World/HIMALAYAN-IN-THE-MID-WEST Edit: whole article here.. https://newsakmi.com/automotive-news/bikes/a-3500-mile-royal-enfield-himalayan-summer/

My friend in Rome does motorcycle rentals and tours all over Italy..he is a Guzziesti but He has a few of those Himalayans he rides and rents ..He was just telling me yesterday what a great little bike they are and how dependable they are, He says if I ride one for a day or two I'll " have to have one"..."Not for Serious off road he says but excellent for dirt roads etc..and if you go down one tooth in front they have some spirit".

Have you watched "Long Way Up" ? Ewan McGregors latest motorcycling documentary....It came out a couple months ago..Has some great footage of riding in Peru ....Happy Riding!!

Sorry, with the plate installed and before you fit the sump insert the dipstick and mark it level with the plate lower surface then remove the stick and drill a hole. This way you know exactly when the oil level is at the bottom of the plate which is full. Ciao

Nice video. A good thing to do once you have the plate installed is to drop the dipstick in the hole and mark it level with the bottom face of the Roper plate, remove and drill a 1.5mm hole in the dipstick as your new "full" mark. Ciao

Just think me old and in my ways, and not incredulous to available technology or ones use of it. Keep in mind, I don't lead rider groups but DO yield to the ones who do, and their judgement and generous sense of responsibility. While you may have intended this as a tech device query, it jumps out at me as a philosophical question. Sorry I can't help with devices, but on a motorcycle I don't use anything electronic. I look at a map and head the direction Of intent. I might get lost? ?... Don't threaten me with a good time. I am precisely where I intend to be. Wandering. I might find a treasure of a town, my next good meal or a new friend, or the answer to what I've always wondered about. To each his own but we all jump on the bike for different reasons. For me it's discovery. To be honest, the only occasions I have been "misdirected" I was following group tour leaders using GPS devises. Always simple software map mistakes, always easy to correct, and always comical. We always had a stop and a laugh. But still... the fault of devise "confusion", be it old software or changing sat reference. An aside... Once my young nephew, on a trip with friends, found himself in a very small Ohio town gas station with a worn through rear tire. His buddies had to leave him there to deal with it. He phoned me to please come get him with a trailer. I said no. A 5 to 6 hour round trip for me. Not for a tire. Take a deep breath and look around you. This is your adventure, live it. I googled a nearby B&B for him and he walked to it, had a good dinner, met some kind people, spent the night and was referred to a local lawnmower/powersport repair shop that had a tire and installed it the next day. Most of you here wouldn't need this advise, but he did. And he was better off for it. My point is, think back to what you did before GPS. Use what you did then. Your wits, a paper map, the sun, and the offerings of strangers. It was easy. Ok... look at the blue dot when you need to. The greatest pleasures are the simplest.

So, I could not order as the shipping is only to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, and Italy.