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It was about a dozen clicks from a blank diagram to a printed piece. I just did this to see what it was like. About an hour to print out. Next will be to start getting actual dimensions.

'Busier' now. This bike is Docc's bike's illegitimate brother. Silver, bikini fairing, ran when parked... 63k miles. Nothing $4k and 2 years can't straighten out. One owner bike, some guy named Dave Blue disappeared with the transmission at Barber 6 years ago. Luggage rack too, nice add. He asked $500, one guy ghosted him and I offered $750 to hold it because I was in El Paso.

I use a silicone dielectric grease to put in the hole of the boot (about as much as you would put toothpaste on a toothbrush) in the bore of the cap and a smear around where the boot contacts the bore of the cylinder head . I use Motorcraft because it is readily available here . They are all similar so no one brand is better than the other.

They are copper core wires and yes, resistor caps. The resistor can be damaged by careless prying but in this case I’m pretty certain the problem is down to the rubber of the cap being torn. The fact it was raining when the problem arose is one indicator. Thing is when damaged the caps quite often don’t start arcing immediately. It seems to usually take about five to thirty Km for the problem to appear. Just far enough for it to be bloody inconvenient! Once the arcing happens though it’ll form a carbon track through the crack in the rubber and it’s all over red rover! Taking the plugs out and putting them in the caps and testing them against the heads is fine. You’ll still get a spark at the plug because the crack in the cap is away from the head and the spark isn’t being stressed. Electricity takes the path of least resistance and outside of the engine jumping the plug gap is easy. Once the plug is in the head the conditions, heat, compression etc. are far more hostile and so the spark looks for an easier route to earth. A nice damp crack in the boot of the plug cap is perfect! Wham-Bam-Thankyou-Mam and it’s all over bar the shouting. It’s really important NOT to ride in this condition as the uncombusted fuel from the dead cylinder gets pumped through into the exhaust where it can combust in the catalytic converter. That as you can guess is when the fun really starts!

Well, that is likely your problem. The caps are very soft and tear easily. Levering them off from the top as shown almost invariably damages them. It may not be obvious at first glance but if you remove the lead covers and spin the bike over in a dark garage you will likely hear, and probably see, the spark *Snapping* to earth between the right angle of the cap and the rocker cover. The factory supplied, at enormous cost, a sort of grabby tool that you could slide down the cap to grip it and pull it up. I’ve never seen one! Ain’t nobody gunna pay for that nonsense! The way to remove the caps without damage is to get a long, thin, flat bladed screwdriver and poke it into the cooling tunnel in the head just above the exhaust manifold. Prod around with it and you’ll feel the soft rubber of the cap. You can then hook the end of the blade under the bottom of the cap and lever the cap up, off the electrode. Once the cap’s clip is clear of the electrode tip then and only then do you grab the cap at the top and wriggle it out with a gentle twisting motion. When reinstalling give a light smear of rubber grease around the sealing ‘rings’ on the cap to make it easier to slip out next time. Now the common replacement for the rather delicate original caps used to be NGK SB05-E or F caps, the suffix letter denoting the fitment for the tip shape of the plug centre electrode. Thing is NGK have ceased production of plug caps due to lack of demand, (Everything having moved to plug top coils.) but nature abhors a vacuum and there is another mob whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head who have stepped into the breach. I think though I put a link to their site up on Griso Ghetto, (Which is probably your best source for 8V info and yes, we like ALL CARC bikes so you won’t be ostracised!). The NGK caps don’t have the right angle tops and you have to bend the HT lead over to fit it under the lead cover which looks a bit ugly but it works. If you’re lucky you may find a set of NOS NGK caps on fleabay or the like. Next up in your steep learning curve will be understanding how the W5AM ECU controls the engine and why you should never move the ‘Sacred’ throttle stop screw while tuning it!

They also need to cope with looters, including some smarty pants that disguise themselves in firemen to blend in. I am really curious to understand how they are going to recover. I just learned that even if your house has burned down completely, you still need to pay 2/3rd of your property taxes. The land is what has the most value. I was naive enough to think that because the main usage of that land, was for you to live on it, if you have no more construction, then the land would serve no purpose, especially in this kind of catastrophe, because you have lost all viability power/water/communication. Then there is the valuation of the land itself. Are people going to even want to rebuild?

This is how it works normally. In my Parisian appartment, I upgraded to 380 Volts to install a baking oven. The utility company did the upgrade free of charge. They would amortize their cost with the monthly consumption using an energy glutton appliance. I thought it would be the same here. If I wanted to install a DC charger in my garage, Center Point Energy which only provides the lines but not the energy itself, would obviously benefit from the increased consumption. But apparently, I also need to pay for the installation. Cherry on the top, they also told me that because it would be a dedicated installation to my house, any malfunction or maintenance cost would be born by me. Not really an incentive.

dave blue? I know dave.... I can ask him, but doubt he'll have much to say. i'm quite fond of him, and his guzzi knowledge and experience transcends most living beings. is he a closet tranny thief? perhaps, but i'd guess not, fwiw.

Interesting. The velocity stack should sound even worse! Speaking of velocity stacks I've watched a couple videos of people testing different stack designs and you can barely tell the difference on the dyno. I doubt you'd notice on the track. Even a Ramen cup did fine. Which is all to say that I probably can't mess this up too badly!

We're in the fire biz (3 planes on the current fire), but I grew up in the woods with a cedar roof. Needed to replace it, and was just too cheap to get it done until some winter storm damage finally helped force the issue, and it's all metal now. i'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to replace that roof. we're not in high risk area, but have had some big ones not too far away in the last decade. Those cedar shakes from the roof, i'd use them for kindling in the wood stove whenever we'd get removed shakes after doing some repair or trim work, and literally just a little paper and a match and that stuff lit off and burned so easy. crazy. Now I have to remove my favorite cedar tree next to the house, that would go up like a torch... And then there's the issue of US homes (in the NW) vs so many old world homes that still stand after hundreds of years. "When in Rome" is the thing, and I live in a timber rich area (and actually in the forest), so there's all that great building material right at hand, but it has always seemed at least less-than-ideal to build homes that you know won't survive like something built of longer lasting materials (and as it happens, fire proof/resistant).

Regarding the rather blood-curdling sound of these Kawi triples, I am reminded of a year at the Barber Vintage Festival watching their chief mechanic and head technical person (I'm sorry to have misplaced his name) roll various bikes out front of the building and start them, giving them a proper series of blips on the throttle to warm the motor and please the crowd. Out he rolls a Kawasaki 2-stroke that some clever fellow had Siamese'd a pair together for a transverse six. What a ripping hoot! Talk about crowd pleaser!

Worth a try but I don’t think it will be long enough.

Up to probably the mid 80's when the KawasakiGPZ900 and the First GSXR750 Suzuki were released the Japanese were almost 100% focused on the US market and what was the US market focused on? Straight line acceleration. I remember those days where people would ditch their near new bike for a model that came out that was .1 seconds faster down the quarter and all every Japanese big bike owner could talk about was 1/4 mile times. Us European owners were like leapers there for a decade and a half or so, lol. Thankfully time have changed and now I'm surrounded by 25 year old wannabees in full racing leathers logoed up identical to their racing hero's on $80,000 sports bikes with one inch chicken strips on the tyres telling you how great the handling is. Oh hang on, can I go back to the mid 80's please. Phil

https://firepowerparts.com/spark-plug-cap-sb05e-replaces-ngk-8374/ Here's another one that may be a better fit- of course, I have no 8v nor this plug boot to hand, but if it was me I'd waste the money on a set to try. https://firepowerparts.com/spark-plug-cap-xb05f-replaces-ngk-8062/

Right, I forgot CARC aren't technically V11s. My kid has already penciled this in for his touring steed lol

Only 6speeders from the 1999-2005 V11 SpineFrames. Later (CARC) 6 speeds differ, especially regarding the drive shaft. V11 "EV"/ Tonti frames are all five speeds.

https://suncoastcyclesports.com/v11-sport/ https://mototech271.com/collections/moto-guzzi?page=10 Maybe you could price a used transmission or motor from salvage places like Sun Coast Cycle sports or Mototech. My original V11 Sport's transmission blew out then later the oil intake on the motor starved the engine. Both were replaced by lower mileage units, painted to match and put back into operation. Reach out to Kale for more info but it is an option.

Also, running plug caps. These are the standard ones from the factory to my knowledge

Well, I'm the ape that been servicing my Stelvio, and have for the past 60k miles. Whenever I'm removing the plug caps, I take a long allen head socket and guide it under the plug cap and pop it up, as seen in the picture below. (feel free to call me a moron if I've actually been screwing it up)

Pete , are these solid core wires and the plug caps screw in ? Also , if these are solid core wires , they will have resistors in the caps ? My red frame had a hick-up / miss and one of the caps were "open" .

Well, I only tell the story as I heard it. Crated, delivered at Barber, never to be seen or heard of again. I can give you the engine # if you find he has an 'unclaimed' pile somewhere. Or a different story...

I finished reading a report that owners of rental appartment in LA have increased their rate to capitalize on the disarray of those who have lost everything in the fire; because why not make money during these exceptional circumstances, by adding insult to injury. Mind you, the same happened here when we got bunch of refugees from Louisiana after Harvey...

An anecdote: I used to work at the Linde annual stockholders meeting. I don't remember when this was exactly, but it is at least 15 years ago, maybe closer to 20. Anyway, at one of the stockholders meetings they talked a lot about big investments they had made in Hydrogen. A couple of years later, one of the stockholders asked why, after the big investments, there hadn't been much movement in that direction. The CEO's answer was very honest and very short: "it seems there is more resistance to hydrogen from certain directions than we reckoned with." Linde hasn't given up. Their site today: https://www.linde.com/clean-energy I am convinced that hydrogen will come to play an important role, both in transport and in "stationary engines" like, for instance, high-power mobile generators. The oil industry is doing its best, I reckon, to slow that down as much as possible.

Problem with the direct to the battery style is the reg is always live and has a parasitic draw on the battery while parked. Combined with the ecu parasitic draw you def need to use a battery tender if parked for any length of time. Phil

Take yer time, change yer mind, no worries. Life is busy.

I keep an eye on batteries since my company has used Lithium batteries in our proprietary tools from the 80's. A long time before anybody in the public could even say Lithium in a generic conversation. At that time, we had a partnership with a battery manufacturer, SAFT. My company was funding their research for batteries with a longer autonomy, while being submitted to hydrocarbon wells temperatures. At the time, I was a tester for the batteries, SAFT showed me how dangerous Lithium was, and how difficult a Lithium fire was to put out. Anyway, the number 1 vehicle battery manufacturer has introduced a battery using new chemistry; LFP for Lithium Iron Phosphate, instead of what you typically find in cars today; Its interesting to me, because when I left my company, we were using Lithium Oxyphosphate batteries in our tools already. That was in 2015! Here's the article from the horse's mouth: CATL, the Chinese company responsible for powering 80% of the EV market. https://www.catl.com/en/news/6091.html About the Solid State batteries, and when they will become standard in cars, there are only assumptions. What is known, is that all the battery manufacturers, including CATL, are actively working to iron out the known issues of Solid State batteries, the most notorious one is their prohibitive cost, another is reliability. Today's actual target to install Solid State batteries in cars is set to 2027, although a Chinese car manufacturer has it planned for 2026. Some of the major car manufacturers, all are invested in Solid State batteries, which seems to be the next step to break through the EV adoption plateau the world is seeing today. I heard that the US is also actively trying to get a foothold in Solid State battery technology.

$100 bills !

The Australian experience (bushfires are a fact of life, always have been and always will be) shows that it is not just the building methods. Things like not having big trees right up against the house, keeping the rain gutters free of debris, a whole list of things, are also crucial.

I was referring to methods, although fireproof materials need to be in the mix. For instance, why are cedar roofs even allowed? If we continue to build like we do now, this will keep happening. One house on a street ignites, and it goes from house to house to house. Methods and architecture needs to be changed for every rebuild, and that can only be regulated by municipalities. This might not happen overnight, but the climate has definitely changed and it makes these events more intense. If we don't change how we build, this will be a rinse and repeat possibly every few years.

I drilled half of the pucks in my bike back in Mar 2018. Six drilled pucks, with the remaining cavities empty. The difference was barely noticeable, but I liked the idea of lowered shock loads on splines/gears/dogs. I have not felt the need to revert to standard over the last 6 years. https://www.v11lemans.com/forums/topic/30472-rear-wheel-for-tire-change/#findComment-286089

Buy a set for a 2000 V11 Sport. I'm not aware of any issues with muffler cross fitting between the catted and non catted bike which if is the case then Agostinis is wrong. Reliable info is hard to come by these days as all the older knowledgeable people in retail environments are being replaced by young "customer service" kids that don't actually know anything beyond year model stuff on a computer screen. My bike has Agostini mufflers, Stucchi cross over and V11 header pipes fitted to a Daytona engine in a V11 Sport chassis. All fitted perfectly without any modifications. Can you imagine asking a modern parts person whether this combo would work? They'd spit their coffee across the room and have a coughing fit. Phil