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No, it won't. Nowhere near, but.... if you are seeing significant scatter on the spark and can't justify the cost of a gear set there is now, apparently, a Valtek type blade tensioner available that fits the V11 donk. I can't remember exactly what the issue was with the earlier tensioner. Probably something to do with its mounting. The thing is though that a properly tensioned chain is probably as good as most people need. That isn't to suggest that Joe's gears aren't the 'Duck's Guts' and the gold standard. Quite simply they are! But they aren't the only option and it depends on how obsessed you are with chasing 'Mechanical Nirvana'.

I only designed the one plate for 'Broad Sump' engines and it fits all models. If the plagiarists who stole the design have changed it slightly it would be unnecessary. I believe, from memory, that the later plates have a slightly longer dipstick slot to prevent the stick fouling on the plate but apart from that my design never changed when I was manufacturing them.

Yesterday, i rode about 200 miles with my nephew, who agreed to leave his beloved MV F4 at home so we could go out on my Scura and my 89 LeMans 1000. I wanted to ride them back to back on the same roads, so we swapped bike after burgers and chocolate malts at Frosty Freeze in Pine Valley. The Scura has the blade tensioner, and the LeMans has Caruso's gears. I had not heard about a blade tensioner failure until today, so it makes me feel better about converting some hard earned $$$$ into £££ (USD to GBP is about 4:3 currently) for Joe's gears. As for the running of the bikes: BLADE: when I put the blade tensioner in the Scura it idled better and just seemed overall smoother. The difference was noticeable even on what was still basically a new motor at the time (only has 14,000 on it now). The blade makes some cool whining noises, but as we know noise=wear. The original tensioner seems a bit too relaxed and weak to make much of a difference when a heavy chain is slinging past it. GEARS: The gears do not make any noise on the LeMans. This is a carbureted bike, but it starts super easy, and the idle does not fluctuate. The PO said the gears made a huge improvement, especially in starting. This bike has several other mods, and I have never ridden a stock version, so that's about as much insight as I can offer. And as for other comparison notes on the ride, basically, they are both cool, but in different ways. One more thing, in case it hasn't been mentioned... if you take the timing cover off, be sure the use one of the metai gaskets (not paper) when you reinstall it. I think you can get them from MG Cycle. Not a bad idea to pop a new rotor seal in at the same time, just in the interest of preventative maintenance.

I'm no help but these mirrors were fitted to quite few bikes of that era and it's pretty common knowledge they are pretty rubbish. I had them on a Sport and 2 HiCams and in all cases at least one of the mirrors on these bikes would move when the speed got above 40mph. I lost patience with them but could not find anything really suitable that would fit and was reduced to using a single bar end on the RHS (we drive on the left here), that works well enough for me. I wonder if a damping grease might help, something like Nyogel, I doubt it would entirely cure it. It's strange stuff, unlike a normal grease it's very sticky and feels like a glue but it doesn't set of course Never tried it on a mirror myself, it's beloved by flight sim fantatics for making their joysticks and throttles work smoothly with an almost hydraulic feel. I think it or something similar must be used to make these soft closing toilet seats work the way they do. It's not cheap either, you can get it in various grades, I'd go for the heaviest available Just an Off the Wall thought, as I've got some here I might acutally give it a go sometime out of curiosity.

The gears will actually give you a bigger wet spot.

It feels like as long as the chain is in tension from the motor accelerating, she pulls awesomely. Stellar. Try to just roll along at some singular rpm and she hiccups like the St. Vitus Dance the Veglia speedometer used to do. While I would prefer to be accelerating all the time, it is not always possible. Or permissible. (Always planning my 200.000 kilometer service interval. I even noticed a little wet spot on the timing chest to get me more worked up . . . . . . OOOH! A LITTLE WET SPOT! BETTER GET SOME CARUSO GEARS! )

More accurate and stable timing signal and valve timing, maybe? Dunno, but y'all-boys had me feeling my sloppy chain the whole time riding today . . . Guzzichondria strikes again.

If you look at my how to post on installing the gears I used the metal gasket and did the front seal while I was there as you suggested. The most noticeable thing initially after installing the gears was the need to reduce the idle by 200 rpm as after the gear install it was idling high. Less friction and drag? maybe. Ciao

The blade type goes in easily if you use a small clamp to compress it against the side of the case while you install everything else. Then you release the clamp and it puts the tension back on the chain. I imagine there is a picture of that somewhere on this site... The blades have been around a long time, and seem mostly reliable, so I am not going to worry about riding mine. But I am now looking forward to installing the gears. Possible a good project for the this holiday season (assuming gears get produced by then).

...and I entirely missed the part about the ignition sensing cam position, you cannot bring the ignition timing back where it belongs in any case. Ignition retards with the cam and the chain stretch. So now I am 100% pro-gear on injected motors.

Some of that has to do with insurance. I think that's the reason Harley dealers only work on Harley. But I know my local dealers will work on anything. Well, almost.. Except some Ducatis. At least motor or electronics related. But a tire should be bread and butter for them. They look up the torque specs and have at it.

I carry one under the seat in case I need an emergency top up. A downside is it unseats the valve in the wheel, so as you fit or remove it you lose a tiny bit of pressure. If you leave one on permanently, you add to potential pressure leak sources, and may upset wheel balance. Agree on angle valve stems, but Cash1000 had one leak after the thread stripped. Get good quality valve stems. I'm ambivalent on nitrogen. It is well established that eliminating water vapor and oxygen is helpful. Water vapor gives greater tire pressure changes with heat; important to avoid in racing. Oxygen causes oxidation: brittle rubber, rim rust, seal deterioration, and faster leak rate. The mandatory requirement for nitrogen in commercial aviation is valid in that industry where tires are 800% overloaded (intermittantly) in comparison to cars. This does not mean nitrogen is needed for cars or bikes. However consumer tests show a small but real reduction in pressure loss over several months for nitrogen inflated tires. This is good, but Dalton's law of partial pressures tells us that eventually other gasses will diffuse into a nitrogen inflated tire, so purging and re-inflating after several years could be needed. My conclusion is you could choose to use nitrogen if it is free, but checking tire pressure is more important.

Yep and they still leaked. Ciao

I know this much , the people that use nitrogen in tires , will continue this process . The ones that scoff at it , will continue to scoff at it .

I use Nitrogen in my airplane (Glasair III) as was having problems with tires weeping a small amount of pressure (new tires and tubes). The larger N2 molecules stopped the leaking completely. Fill with Nitrogen once to purge, then second time to pressure. Use it in most of my motorcycles including V11 Ballabio and Stelvio. It cured the 1 psi rear and .25 psi front leak per week on the Stelvio which has the o ring sealed spokes. ( had replaced the spoke nipple o rings and tires with new tubeless, but still slow weeping of pressure). Rather than chasing these very slow weeping cases, now I just use Nitrogen. I used to work for major airlines and we used Nitrogen in all tires and landing gear cylinders.

For the bikes I have not installed 90 degree stems I made one of these. Fits in your pocket or anywhere else. Dual foot air chuck end with a Schrader valve installed. Paul B

I spent 42 years working in aviation inflating tyres on heavy jets as well as things like hydraulic reservoirs with Nitrogen. The benefits are a clean, consistent quality, dry source of inert pressure. That's about it really. Ciao

I flew in to Denver and a friend and I rented BMW R1200GSs from http://tourbikes.com/ in Aurora (close to the airport and from whom I would definitely rent again). Here's the loop from Saturday, in which we rode three major mountain passes: Guanella Pass (some dirt roads) Berthoud Pass Trail Ridge Road (highlighted on the map and some photos from over 12,000 feet elevation) Then we took the peak-to-peak highway with three minor passes. Although this was not a V11 ride, I thought I'd share it with you all as it was one of the most beautiful rides I've ever done. I saw bighorn sheep in the road, moose (thankfully not in the road), elk, and plenty of deer and smaller critters. Pictures can't do it justice, but here are some from the top of Trail Ridge and one from a dirt road along the Platte River (which is currently running at maximum capacity with some flooding). The GSs were great mounts for this ride, because we did three dirt sections over the weekend. Too bad no Stelvios to rent...

It didn't. I'd say the failed tensioner resulted in total loss of cam chain control which then caused the oil pump and drive gear failure. Ciao

That's right... I learned about that AFTER installing my own. I think that could be a better method than the clamp.

Hey Scud, I heard of the clamp trick later on; At the time I'd read of a few people recommending, disassembling the tensioner and mounting the support plate, then reassembling the tensioner in place; that's what worked for me on the second attempt.

The signpost is a rusty Star Picket.

Here's an interesting image of a 1 year old blade style tensioner failure. Nasty collateral. Ciao

I built a '85 LM1000 a few years ago, using a Web 86b cam and conical beehive valve springs with about 110# seat pressure and ~280# (?) over the nose of the cam. I used a Valtec tensioner in that, and it clocks over at 1000 rpm just fine, in fact the timing shows no fluctuation and I have to say I have no inclination to change it to gears. Just yesterday I started and timed my '89 Mille GT after having replaced the stock manual tensioner with a Valtec, again although with all stock valve gear and cam the timing is extremely steady. By appearances, the good tensioner does everything you need to cure the idle glitches. That said; This Mille GT appears to have been a fairly well-loved and well-kept bike most of it's life, if not perfectly maintained. The cam chain had about 3/8" slack on the manual adjuster, and contributed to crap idle and valve noise to the point I looked for a broken piston skirt. Now it ticks at 700rpm if I want it to. Here's the rub-the distributor bolts were stiff enough to make me think it's not been moved since the factory timed it, and after installing the tensioner I moved the timing somewhere between 5º and 10º to bring it up. That's a huge amount, and assuming it was ever where it belonged means these chains stretch a lot more than I would expect. Even if you bring the ignition timing back, the cam timing remains retarded to whatever extent the chain is stretched. On an engine with a 'big' cam (any of these Guzzi 'sporting' models) the idle quality and low-speed drivability hangs precariously on that timing to the extent that 4º is a very significant change. So you see there are two primary issues to consider, spark scatter and spark/cam timing. With a tonewheel and sensor, scatter apparently becomes a much larger problem, possibly due to simple ECU confusion. D'oh. I do love a succinct answer, which this is not.

This is very interesting for me. I know my timing chain is sloppy; when I point a timing light into the little inspection hole to see the flywheel mark, I can see the mark jiggling up and down. Since I have to fix this sometime, I have to ask whether you think a new chain and tensioner would achieve the same improvement as a gear set? I expect that it would be a lot cheaper.

AFAIK the one and only plate fits V11, 1100 Sport, Daytona and Centauro

Our local Firestone store here in Vancouver (on Commercial Dr) charges $5 Cdn ($4 USD) per tire to fill /purge/fill motorcycle tires. It used to cost a lot more but very reasonable these days. I use it on my car/SUV and it stopped very slow weeping of a couple of the tires there as well. Have it in 7 out of my 11 vehicles (8 motos, 2 auto, one airplane). So far the ones I have filled have lasted 3 years (that is the oldest one I have filled) or until I replaced the tire without measurable loss. What I have been doing is if one of the vehicles starts losing pressure that needs attention more often than once in 6 months, I go get nitrogen in the tires.

Hey Mister, I am fortunate enough to work at a Ducati/Triumph dealer, & the SS is just a little sweetheart. I personally prefer the matte gray one, even though it is not available with the upgraded suspension. As for the "cold shoulder" you may have encountered on your travels, the majority of those folks, if given the chance to experience the "little one", would change their tune promptly. Pity...they are missing out on so much. Same is true of our thundering V11's. I love mine more every time I ride it. If I had more garage space, I'd have another one....

And that's Precisely how the universe and life operates. Einstein's theory of relativity or as he himself explained it for mere mortals " “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.” OR, at 67, 10 minutes cleaning header pipes seems to take a day but at 37 it's done in the blink of an eye. That my friends is relativity. Ciao

p6x, I do not think there is any benefit in nitrogen filled tyres. Never used it myself but if the opportunity arose I would not bother. On the other hand have installed angled valve stems front and rear. 90 at front and 135 at rear and yes both facing away from the side stand. Rob

If it costs nothing, it hurts nothing. It was dealership gravy in the RV industry, and I got rather disenchanted with the unethical propaganda they used to sell it. They charged something like $25/tire 15 years ago. If it's free and convenient, I'd use it myself. There is no downside.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/12/arts/music/byron-berline-dead.htmlLocal Blue Grass and three Time National Champion Fiddler Byron Berline passed away. He owned the Double Stop Fiddle Shop in Guthrie OK and hosted a Blue Grass Fest here in the Fall. Double Stop was his technique playing two strings at a time. One of his most famous tunes was playing with the Stone's on "Country Honk" an album version of "Honkytonk Women". He was also a member of the Flying Burrito Bros. I was fortunate to see him perform "Honkytonk Women" at the Guthrie Fest. He said that was the first time he played it in a show. The article mentions that he sang chorus on Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and performed much on the "Billy the Kid" soundtrack

And to think that the springs were given so little thought back in Mandello. But - that's exactly why we are having this talk! The one thing they should have copied from Ducati is a desmo shift mechanism.