PJPR01

Wow…what fun to see!! Out on the Scura, met a friend with a new Toy! Very tidy, efficient looking and gorgeous bike! Great to see one in person…am I envious? Just a little bit!! Scura running like a charm, very spirited 140 miles today and clocked 41 mpg…quite happy with that! Of course…I’m not selling the Scura!!

Fewer bikes on the grid will certainly increase Bagnaia's chances of winning, probably many of the other riders on the grid will be happy Marquez is not there chasing them down...less carnage hopefully on the turns. Maybe some like Moto 2 riders will get a chance to practice with the GP riders and play with the big boys. As long as it's good weather, racing is always a blast at COTA to watch...Turn1 or Turn 15/16...

Nakagami was a 1 man wrecking crew last season, I"m really surprised he didn't get more sanctions as it seems like almost every other race he was taking someone out. It seems that Marquez has lost his cool head completely...I love watching him race, but this last race was a disgrace for him...complete disaster. I look forward to seeing the races in Austin as we go almost every year...somehow I think the King of Cota's desperation is causing him to make really bad decisions. I hope he cools down by the time we see him at COTA, if he races.

3 kg is the recommendation on overall weight for this configuration. One other item I found useful was to get slightly longer screws to get more purchase on the mounting. Carrying a rear tail bag with a few essential goodies makes for a nice setup.

Update: All fixed! Finally had some time to get back to the project, have been busy at work and riding the Tour of Texas and other activities so the Scura was sitting waiting for attention. Anyway, a few weeks ago at Gstallons recommendation I took my fuel injectors to get reconditioned...that was excellent advice and both were in need of it, but the left one in particular was quite under performing vs. the right one. All of the other items, wires, coils all checked out nicely with no need to replace but I had bought spares anyway just in case. At any rate, after all kinds of fun cleaning the throttle bodies once they were off, sorting out stripped screws on several of the mounting spots, putting in new hex head screws where appropriate, I got it all re-assembled, set the new TPS adjusted properly at 157 mv fully closed with throttle disconnected, high idle screw loose and idle screw backed out (TPS measures 4.78v at WOT w/o linkage connected) and the tuning began again. What I found: The air bleed screws needed to be set differently from left vs. right and in all of my previous attempts I had kept them identical as per all of the prior write ups. Playing with each of the settings and watching the results on the Carbtune, despite cleaning the throttle bodies thoroughly and the bleed screws as well, there's some inherent mismatch on the throttle bodies, that with an extra 1.5 turns out on the RHS vs. LHS, they balance perfectly at idle without the throttle body linkage connected and it idles beautifully and no cough either. I managed to set the idle screws at almost identical levels as well w/o the linkage connected using a feeler gauge technique Gstallons had recommended. Once the connecting rod was reconnected and dialed in until just one or two threads were showing from the locknut vs. the plastic cup, the bike maintained its balance at idle and was perfectly balanced also at 3k RPM's on the Carbtune. Well...off on a test run we go, around the block seems perfect, so let's go for a longer run. A 100 miles later on a cold Houston day, and it's absolute perfection, beautifully smooth, not a single cough of any sort, and feels like much lower vibrations than before. Dare I say it runs better than before...I believe so. Will get some more runs on it over the next day and weeks and hopefully it stays as good as today. Big thanks to all and especially Gstallons for the time we spent on the phone...hopefully it's set and I can rack up some more miles on it now!

Hey Pascale...I thought I'd run into you on the road this past weekend, there were lots of riders out, and with 3 days of glorious weather, I clocked 980 miles in total. Managed to get 15 stops in so far, and another 4 scheduled for next weekend. Stops so far: Donie, Groesbeck, Corsicana, Waco, Gatesville, Comanche, Lampasas, Burnet, Johnson City, Fredericksburg (with an obligatory stop in Luckenbach of course!), Bandera, San Antonio, Kingsbury, Hutto, Navasota Next up: Galveston, Blessing, Edna, Cuero In May, will get 3 in Gladewater and nearby Dallas / East Texas to get to 25 stops I hope, while on my way up to Cedar Vale for our Guzzi rally there (join if you are interested...nice 630 mile ride up). Will have to see if I can take a run to Big Bend later in the year...that's a LONG haul. Fun little side note: I'm about a mile away from the museum in Burnet, and I see a white motorcycle coming my way. As it gets closer, it's clearly a white Norge. I turn around about a 1/4 mile down the road, and ride back 1/2 mile, the other guy has turned around. We stop and take off helmets, and what do you know, it's Larry who used to work at MPH a few years ago. Nice bit of happenstance in the middle of Hill Country.

Nice to see, will cross paths for sure, I'm # 844 this year. Expecting to pick up some stops this next weekend...should be great riding weather!

Looks like a compression Jiu-Jitsu snug fit. With the Texas sun, you'll get to wear a few bandanas to avoid sunburn on the neck...are you planning to wear this under the vented jacket or as a stand alone type item?

Aha..the old Renato Carosone tune! Nice version!

Super cool Chuck...nice to see you can test it right in your own backyard, very convenient indeed!! Just curious...how noisy is it sitting there in the cockpit (is that the right term to use for a non official airplane. Are earplugs required or any other special gear? What kind of altitude do you plan on flying this toy up to or is it just to go get coffee one town over or truly fly long distances? I'm totally unfamiliar with these types of setups...so apologies if these are simpleton questions!

Many years riding 2 up on my Norge...but my wife is not as long legged, more like 30 inch inseam I think...34 inches may be a bit cramped for a long trip...but for a few hours, certainly not a problem. Definitely look to get a good seat as the stocker is painful for both rider and passenger. I have a Corbin with a backrest so it provided some good support...handles on the side are great for holding on. I've never thought about lowering the rear pegs, but possibly a Knight Design 1 or 2 inch drop might fit as well like they do on the fronts. Many of us have upgraded the front pegs to Goldwing 1800 pegs for the driver, 1/2 inch lower, and wider...more comfortable than stock. Bike is fantastic, but you're going to find that the stock shock is really not suitable for 2 up riding...you'll scrape a fair amount. I ended up years ago upgrading to a Wilbers shock, and it made a world of difference in terms of handling riding 2 up with gear.

Interesting...a friend with a Stelvio just installed PR 6's here, he couldn't get PR5's! Ironic! Although it seems like there is no PR6 GT version which we like especially for the rear tire to get more tread life in the center. I don't know if it's true or not, but several other riders claim they like the 6's better than the 5's from a durability perspective...will be interesting to see. I'm still riding PR4's on all my bikes, hope I can keep sourcing them!

And watching Charlie Sexton play alongside Dylan just makes it even more enjoyable!

Thanks Speedfrog! I'm guessing that's quite a bit smaller than my Norge panniers..will have to find the specs on them. Less gear...travel light (er)!

Well, that's cool to see they are expanding the offerings. Center stand looks reasonable...Side cases are just as expensive for a new V100 as they are for a 2008 Norge! I wonder what is the liter capacity of those side cases... Bike looks really good!

It will be great to see a new V100 in person. A Guzzi friend currently riding a V7 Racer here in Houston has a V100 in Green ordered from AF1...will ride up I hope with him to see it when it's ready to be picked up. He mentioned March as a possibility...let's hope so! Will make for a good excuse for a ride to see a new bike and visit with the folks up there. I may end up tempted to place an order!

Oh my…quite delicious! Feeling a bit peckish now watching this!!

This is one of those cases where I probably should have not touched the TPS since I didn't have any issues, no cough prior to deciding to check the TPS setting...it was the 1 step I had never done in the Tank Off Checklist...but unfortunately when I set it to the recommended 0.157 at full close, and buttoned everything up again, that's when my cough appeared for the first time. Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to solve it with checking everything again. Last night I checked again some items and I found an interesting item that may have been overlooked before and that was the left hand side spark plug wire wasn't entirely plugged in all of the way to the ignition coil, so I'm wondering if that will help once I get it all buttoned up again.

Thanks G…Yes the filter was replaced a few years ago…all flowing smoothly. I installed not long ago a new fuel downspout as well, new fuel sending unit, new valve gaskets after a valve adjustment, I mean everything was running great with no issues or leaks or coughs until I decided to mess with the TPS setting just to see if that would make it run even better. It’s got a new TPS potentiometer now, soon new plug wires , and hopefully reconditioned injectors once I find a reliable place near by. I wonder if somehow cleaning the housing of the TPS allowed some gunk to clog up something but I don’t see how as it looks like a closed unit. Anyway…more patience…while I’ve got everything off I may install the clutch line extension described by Scud a while back as I have access to it easily enough now with tank and air box off. fun fun fun!!!

Hendrix, Crosby, Dylan...imagine if they had done a concert together! Psychedelic!!

Thanks Randy/Pressure, I'm going to check again every electrical and fuel related connector as well after another conversation with Gstallons. After taking off the tank, airbox this morning I did find that the thin rubber venting tube from the bottom of the gas tank was pinched in hard behind the starter, completely flattened, so will make a new one. Will be taking out the fuel injectors and getting them cleaned/reconditioned as well as cleaning the throttle bodies until they are pristine with a new Colgate soft brush toothbrush and some cleaner. Also have a new set of spark plug wires coming just in case. Hopefully will make some progress in the next couple of weeks once the parts arrive. Much appreciate all the ideas and help here from everyone and special thanks to Gstallons for spending time on the phone with me as well.

Thanks again Docc…Yup I did that again as well this morning before our session with GStallons and still sitting at 0.157 fully closed and all items disconnected, high idle screw loosened and not touching the idle cam, and 4.78 at WOT.

Spent a good hour with GStallons today, we made some good progress, and the bike will idle stably now, but anything beyond that and it's still not operating well. After our session today, I did check the resistance on my original black plug wires and one is at 4.50 and one at 5.00. They are only a couple of years old as well. I also tried one of my new red NGK plug wires that I had made a while back, and both of those have similar resistance at 5.10, so as far as I can tell, with checking the wire resistance by themselves and also while hooked up to the coil (testing ground on the coil and positive end at the end of the plug wire), I'm not seeing any major discrepancy... Now I'm wondering did one of my ignition coils possibly go bad...in all of this work with the TPS...seems unlikely but who knows at this point. Spark plugs look good, still nice and brown, not sooty after letting it idle for about 1/2 hour today (with fan on!). I may have to rip the tank off and methodically check for any blockage in tubing anywhere or anything may have become disconnected...frankly I'm just mystified how this TPS can cause such a change in running behavior, but I guess the bike is very sensitive. Thankfully my CARC bikes don't have this setup...they're much easier to set electronically and balance the throttle bodies.

It’s coughing up a storm. Just for kicks I put new plugs in again…now it’s racing, instead of stumbling at idle…bloody schizophrenic Scura! I’m going to leave it alone for a day… Thanks both…will call G in the morning after a good overnight cooling down!