Leaderboard

I am in New Mexico at time of typing. On the way to Santa Fe, I did History of Coryell County Mural, Historic Comanche Train Depot, 12th armored division memorial, Buddy Holly Center, Old Pete Mule Statue. So we have two commons, Gatesville and Comanche. All five done Guzziless unfortunately. So I maxed out the "no motorcycle" option. I am not going to upload them just yet, in case I do them later. I am waiting for the spring break to end to get back in the saddle. My next destination will be Alpine, Marfa, and the McDonald observatory, or so the three most Western stops. I am not too far from Texas, in Alamogordo. I think NM is also a fantastic playground for Motorcycles. It is definitively a small world! I have bumped into people from the past at the most unlikely places. I have laid out my "loops", but have no firm schedule. I am however planning to get to 50 if the Guzzi cooperates. I think that I have fixed all the known issues (grattacapi as we say in Italian), leaks, starter, tank breather, odometer; no more show stopper hopefully.

As long as they are micro relays... the only requisite is that relay #1 (#23 on the schematic) has to be SPDT where all the others are SPST. The physical difference is SPDT has 5 pins and SPST has 4 pins. A SPDT (5 pins) can be fitted in all positions, but a SPST will not function in position #1.

Looks good on the Dodge

Even with a heated jacket, this is my chosen limit (5ºC/40ºF). Not because I can't get comfortable, but more that I don't think the tires get the memo to also relax and get to work. After two of my (expert riding) buddies had traction loss crashes in near-freezing temps, I realized my Swedish car would light an ice warning at 38ºF/~3ºC. I figured the Swedes know quite a lot more about ice on the roads than I do and adopted the new limit for riding safety.

I read something once, that warming up is not so necessary. If one takes it easy for the first 10 minutes or so, that is enough. And it saves fuel, which is better for your wallet and better for the environment. The Japanese bikes I have had all played along very well, and the V11 seems to be ok with that too. My V35 Imola is a different story. It has a phase between "choke is ok" and "I'm warm enough now" in which it is inclined to stop running if I don't keep it revving. In summer it is not much of a problem, but in winter when the temperatur is down around 3°C (yes, I do ride it sometimes in those conditions...) it can be a bit critical. Letting it warm up for a couple of minutes is not a bad thing. If I were prepared to invest some money in the carbs, I might be able to sort that out too, but I have most of the parts and the notion to put together a 350 4-valve motor, which would need bigger carbs, so I'm living with that for the time being.

G'day folk's Well life has conspired to keep me off the green one for the last 6 bloody weeks.....Argghhh! Finally, an opportunity arose to get a ride in turned up when asked to help out at our Dandenong branch last week.So not only did I eagerly volunteer, I didn't give a flying fornication what the weather was going to do or even if it snowed on Friday.... I'm taking the bike! So up a wee bit earlier in case of trouble starting her,I'm togged up and ready to go at 5 am. Ha ha no sign of any snow and a nice cool morning! Hit the starter and bingo she fires right up! I expected some bother after 6 weeks but warmed her up well as I normally do and pulled out the driveway and through town to the Freeway on ramp.Just as I feed in the power to get up to speed, she just loses all power and dies! So Brrrr Brrrrr over to the side of the road and what the....I turn everything off and try to re-start but all I get is d,d d, d,d d, d,d,d and no go! Weird and just as I'm about to get off and call the wife I thought I'd flick the kill switch a couple of times and try again.BINGO she fires up! Great so off to the servo for gas and she won't fire up again! Another flick of the kill switch and she fires up...Phew! I decide I'll keep going but she's running ok but just not quite right.Can't put my finger on it but give her a bit of the ole Italian tune up a few times when I'm certain Mr Plod's not looking and by about 50 or so Kay's she's coming good! By the time I get off the freeway at the other end she's back to her old self again! She stalled when warming up after work but quickly back to normal and I had a so so ride home. It was only due to traffic on a Friday arvo of a long weekend but I did enjoy a few brief clear patches. After that wee taste I decided I'd take the bike again Saturday to see Dad after we'd done the weekly shopping. She fired up ok but I think she took a little bit longer to warm up and idle ?? Not sure but she was all good on leaving the servo again. Now about this time the cloudy overcast morning gives way to a bright and sunny clear 20 degree wind free day and I hit the brilliant twisty bits between Drouin and Lang Lang! Both of us ( me and the bike ) are running well and we have the road to ourselves....! It was just one of those rides where everything goes just right and made even more enjoyable as it'd been too long ! I was babbling away about it for ages when I got to Dad's but my brother's an ex- rider and knew what I was on about! I could see the wistful look in his eyes and left the subject alone from there. Twas a great catch up but more of the same lay ahead on the way home again.I didn't quite have the road to myself this time round but we still had a bloody great ride home. I'm sure as hell not leaving her sitting idle for six weeks again! ( touch wood ). Cheers Guzzler

The Magni looks great on the Greenie. The bars are little low for us geezers.

See? Corvettes are meant for sliding sideways. Volvo and V11? Not so much . . .

I was guilty of some sloppy language in that last post, volts where I meant amps. It is corrected now.

only when the coil is switched off probably, but I suspect that is not something to worry about too much. The resistor serves the same function. I spoke to my electronic technician colleague about it earlier. He confirmed that the purpose of the resistor is the same as that of the diode, but that resistors are not quite as effective as the diode in this function. I didn't follow his explanation very well, though. What I think is, the switching voltage sees a coil with low resistance and a resistor with higher resistance than the coil, so most of the amps go through the coil. The spike, coming out of the other end of the coil, sees the resistor and whatever electronics might be there with a much, much higher input resistance than the resistor is presenting, so most of the amps go through the resistor back to the other end of the coil and "short out". Don't know for sure if that is right, but it makes sense according to my basis electronic knowledge.

The spike is caused by the same physics that allow a generator, an electric motor, a loudspeaker and your Shure microphone to work. Wiki article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field#Interactions_with_electric_currents Very quick summary: a current in a coil will produce a magnetic field and exert a force on magnets and magnetic objects within the field. This way round is what makes electric motors, loudspeakers and solenoids work. when a coil (or even a straight bit of wire) is within a magnetic field, a change in the magnetic field will generate an electric current in the coil (or wire). This way round is how generators and dynamic microphones work. A change in the magnetic field may be caused by moving a magnet past the coil, or the coil in relation to the magnetic field (generators, microphones...), or it may be caused by altering (switching off, for instance...) the current in a coil that is generating the field. The latter is how ignition coils work: the primary coil generates a magnetic field, the points open (ok, the ECU fires the ignition...), current in the primary is turned off. This changes the magnetic field, causing a current to flow in the secondary coil and fire the spark plugs. In the case of the solenoid, the voltage spike is kind of a "kick-back". The coil is generating the magnetic field to actuate the solenoid. Even though it is generating the field itself, current will still flow in the coil as the magnetic field collapses. As I understand it, the resulting current flows in the reverse direction to the actuating current, i.e. +Volts (much more than 12 Volt, but very low current) out of contact 85. Looking at the diagrams, the forward direction of the diode is from contact 85 to contact 86. That means, in normal operation the diode is "not conductive" to the +12V that is on contact 86. When + Volts are present at contact 85 (from the spike we are considering) the diode presents effectively no resistance, so the amperes flow down there instead of trying to go through any electronics that might be connected to contact 85. I'm guessing here, but I assume the voltage peak just shorts itself out through the diode against the other end of the coil. The rest of the discourse is a combination of "basic electronics for music students" that I learnt at Uni 40 years ago, and stuff out of that e-Hack document that I linked further up. If I got it wrong anywhere, please correct me.

That leaves us with the question, would a diode protected relay be beneficiary in position #5 in insuring no voltage spike do any damage to the ECU??

Yes indeed, @Speedfrog, you are absolutely correct in this. I stand corrected having remembered this wrongly and having failed to look at my references before posting. Welldone, sir, and thank you for your diligence! About those beers I owe ya . . .

@doccYou are right when you say: But with all due respect, I think you got the energizing of the relays arse about. Let us look at the schematic and those 2 relays in question, we agree that the top one #49, is the ECU relay(#4) and the bottom one #46 is the EFI relay(#5). For reference, Relay pin/terminal identification: 85 Relay Coil Negative - 86 Relay Coil Positive - 87 Common Contact - 30 Feed/ Line In Positive _ The ECU relay #4 gets triggered(pin 86) from the ignition switch via the kill switch. _ The EFI relay #5 gets triggered(pin 86) from the ECU pin #19 Fuse #2 is only protecting the EFI circuit from +12V feed coming from the battery. I don't pretend to be 100% correct but that's what I see.

Yes, that's why I put the title of the listing in quotes, because that does not appear to be a Magni fairing. The fairing in the ad is probably one of the other various fairings we've seen put on V11s, but not a Magni. Here is a photo of a forum member's (jtucker) silver V11 Sport with a Magni, and you can see the clear difference in proportion and form. The Magni looks much better in my opinion than the fairing that is on the V11 in the eBay listing, which is very bulky.

If the Yardbirds doesn't date us, J.C. Whitney certainly does!

For reference, a Coppa Italia on "Bring A Trailer" sold for $9,946 on 4/6/21 and had been located in Alleman, Iowa as part of a larger collection. It might be interesting to see if it shows up here at some point VIN: ZGUKTC0224M111275 Mileage: 8678 https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2004-moto-guzzi-coppa-italia-2/

This was at the Oregon Vintage Motorcyclist 43rd Annual Show. Not sure if it sold or not but if someone was interested it might be worth a call. Seemed like a decent bike. I took a look over and didn't see anything out of sorts.