Pressureangle

Remember, nothing is obvious from a distance. Just trying to help.

If you left the old plugs in, it will take some time for them to clean up.

I had mine done recently by the local WP performance center, which fortunately is only a half hour away. For less than $400 they came back renewed, bushings, seals, cleaned, and hydroblasted. They look nearly new, and they were criminally stained when I took them in. I looked into refurbishing them myself, but I didn't want that particular educational experience at that price, and they needed to be cleaned up better than I could do myself.

That's a wonderful sentiment, but not really applicable in much of the country, or a meaningfully long voyage.

You're precisely correct, and it's been so always, since WWII. Americans fell out of love with motorcycles, and into love with money; a racetrack is a huge investment with little return, and difficult to populate not in the least part because of the cost of liability insurance, the U.S. being the captain of Litigation in the world. It sucks, it shows, and it isn't going to change any time soon.

Probably not, though on a carbureted bike it could throw off the idle mixture a little if the carbs aren't well synchronized.

Here's my opinion, feel free to disregard it. If you're getting 40mpg, your 'driving' mixture is quite-good-to-lean. If your plugs are black, it's rich at idle or isn't ridden long enough when warm to clean them. Mine had the dreaded '2800/3200 rpm stutter' and intermittent idle stall until I replaced the cam chain with a gearset- then these things, completely unexpectedly, disappeared. At the very least, be certain your cam chain is adjusted properly. The stock adjuster must be attended manually. For my time invested, I'd at minimum replace the stock tensioner with a Valtec, or adjust the stock one properly while awaiting a set of Caruso cam gears. Edit; got my bikes mixed up. The '97 has a spring-type tensioner, but it's woefully weak and I believe allows enough timing variation to confuse the ECU at idle and in the ~3k rpm range.

So now that I'm confident in my Sport's front end, you'll have to give it a test ride.

My first road bike was a KZ400. It had a soul. It's just that soul was reminiscent of the slaves who built the pyramids. Honda Hawks seemed relevant at the time, but their soul was part of the Honda hive mind. EX500s (the 80's ones) had the most obnoxious exhaust tone ever to come from a spark plug. Perhaps the newer stuff isn't so bad. I'm not persecuting them really, they just leave a bad taste in my ears.

Don't discount the possibility that it's run rich so long that your intake valves are so fouled they interfere with airflow and thus richen the mixture, particularly at low RPM. Run a pint of Marvel Mystery Oil through with a tank of gas and see if it doesn't help. In any case, it won't hurt- it will clean any deposits from the intake and combustion chamber. It's very wise to familiarize yourself with the tuning software, but you can probably find someone locally who either knows it, or is familiar enough with other tuners to help out sufficiently.

What Lucky Phil means, is that if you take the manifolds off the heads you don't have to deal with the misalignment caused by the angles of the intakes from side to side. Slip the rubbers on, slip the manifolds in, bolt the manifolds back up last. There are probably gaskets for them, but I'd not be afraid to use Yamabond or equivalent.

The EX500 is the most soulless motorcycle ever built. Can't argue the handling, though. They were like flies on the racetrack. He describes the 1100 Sport at 7:10.

So who has the highest quality TB boots? I should probably replace mine also, though they're not leaking they are ugly.

There are two particular peculiarities to "American V-Twin" (H-D of course) engines not shared by any other modern motorcycle engine; one cylinder cooling in the hot air of the forward one, and roller bearings everywhere except the rocker arms. The cylinder arrangement causes the rear cylinder to run much hotter, but also receive far more oil from the crankshaft than the forward cylinder, as the windage from the crank causes the oil to climb the crankcase wall until it finds the rear cylinder with little left for the front. Roller bearings do not tolerate deposits, nor skidding; if they skid they flat-spot. So film strength is paramount here. Additionally, the rod journals oval when overspeeded to the point that the side clearance goes negative, creating an enormous pressure point. So both heat and film strength are paramount, even if it's only in these particular, localized places under unusual conditions. It makes sense. Obviously, the test is a performance test without regard to composition or price.

The test equipment was, if I read it correctly (not thoroughly) an actual set of Norton tappets and presumably a Norton camshaft. It's directly applicable to 'Guzzi because both use non-roller cam followers. Norton tappets have a narrower profile than MG, and largely due to mediocre quality control had cam and follower wear issues (as have *all* British bikes). So the test rig is as close to real-world testing as possible, rather than the old 'Timken test' which didn't allow for a moving line of contact nor the heat dissipation of the oil itself. The rest of the engine is similar- air cooled, plain bearings and shaft rockers, etc.

If you read the underlying thread, he explains his equipment and techniques which are much more thorough than 'usual'. What I'm trying to reconcile in my mind is how you may have a lower film strength while at the same time having a lower heat value. The only thing I can figure so far is that the oil is more effectively removing heat from the metals.

This came from the technical section of Access Norton. Compiled by Jim Comstock of Colorado Norton Works. There are a few surprises amongst the expecteds. https://www.accessnorton.com/Oil-Tests/NortonOil.php Well worth adding to our own tech section.

Give us a bit more detail? My gut reaction is that your air filter has caused a lean condition. The old rule of thumb in 'stock engine' racing was that the intake side mods required rejetting while the exhaust side did not. If you find nothing disconnected, put the old filter back in to see if it returns to normal.

FWIW the sidestand bracket is a machined forging. I looked at making them in billet, but it's a complicated form and prohibitively expensive. Improved sidestand arrangement is still in the back of my mind.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B098M3Y7VC/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Clean= Suzuki, yes. At first blush that seems simple- is it so easy? Bring the field brush to 12:00, and move the ground brush to 9:00? Of course I'll have to use the insulated Aermacchi brush plate, but that seems easy enough if I can manage the extension of the brush lead. Won't that also change the polarity of the fields attached to the armature?

The Aermacchi armature engages a planetary gear arrangement. The armature will turn in the same direction as before in any case. I considered going to +ground, and it's still not an impossibility, but I'd have to sort the ignition and return to incandescent lamps from LED.

Don't know how I missed this post... You're probably right, at this point; I'll post a pic here of the aermacchi starter fields. They're hand-wound crapola compared to the Suzuki unit. I have this Suz starter because somewhere in history someone said this works 'with some mods' or somesuch. The Nippondenso prefix is the same, 28000- and I assembled the suz motor on the bike with the Aermacchi armature (it measures the same) and it all bolted up nicely- but turns the wrong way. The Suz starter is infinitely more finely crafted inside. Since the fields are all to ground and common to the brush, I'll have to separate the leads to test them for shorts to ground. This could be the time to discover how hard it is to rewind it by hand, and add some power to it as well. But at this point, I have nothing to lose with experimentation but my patience. Looking closer at the photo, it appears there are 8 leads to the brush wire. meh

My 'Sport came to me with a lot of problems, all peripheral but troublesome in the 'trailer' sense. Once I straightened it out, I had near 15k absolutely trouble-free miles. With very little warning, it seemed to have a cascade failure. Fuel pump relay, electrical connections, starter siezure, it would run fine for a while then I'd be crawling back home or trailering home every time I went out. What it took, was a serious and dedicated maintenance to everything I could get my hands on without opening the motor. A big tube of DeOxit, new Omron relays, a new starter motor, new battery, remake all the ground and charge connections, new powdercoat and tires on the wheels, fix the steering head bearing race issue. It seemed a neverending litany of aggravation. Like I had to rebuild and remanufacture the entire bike. I excused MG because they're 'Boutique' and 'tiny'. But the real truth, I came to realize, is that I put 5 times the miles on it of any other bike I owned without *any* maintenance. Over the course of 4 years, in all weather, and often parked outside 'usually' under cover, in South Florida temperatures and humidity. I spent a lot more time maintaining all my previous bikes more frequently without really thinking about it. This only became noticeable because it went so long asking for nothing. One of my bumper sticker mottos is "Don't take half measures". This is a fine example of how I came to that philosophy.