po18guy

This just in. Found a NIB V11 air box lid on eBay. $32.95 shipped! I helped the seller out on shipping, as he was essentially giving me the lid. Now, to study it and ponder..

Imagine: 10K would net you the Norge and the Greenie. Or half a Ducati.

I see a really nice Norge on eBay. 181 miles??? Anyway, the switches are in their correct locations. This, of course, means that no retrofit is possible. Don't want to install Asian switches, so will check to see if there is any crossover.

The seller sounds like a very nice, um... mature gent. An utter shame that no one has clicked. They would be buying it, but it's a steal.

Nah, just making counter-points. I'm Scotch-Irish, which would make me a drunk, except the Scotsman is too cheap to buy the liquor. My primary belief here is that brighter, whiter light for less watts is a good thing. Having partaken of four clinical trials, I like research. Got some skin in the game. And, as Albert Einstein reportedly said: "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research." When all is said and done, and the brilliance (pun) is revealed, give all credit to docc.

And no takers??? You can part it out for that much!

No one here is really inventing anything. Rather, attempting to apply existing and advancing technology to practical use.

Well then, why not sit back and enjoy our labors and failures, or successes? The units I chose use some of the latest, tiny Phillips ZES LED chips, arranged in the exact location and shape as the wire filament in a halogen bulb. This is crucial, as the reflector neither knows nor cares how the light it reflects is created - only that the light emanates from the same position within the reflector. The problem with 90% of the early LED units is that they did not use such "filament-sized" chips, and did not locate them in the proper focal plane. This caused the well-known scattered light patterns. I believe that the LED producers have done, in the more recent designs, a remarkable job of adapting current technology to reflector units designed for the now-ancient halogen technology H4 bulbs. A light unit which is purpose-built for LED illumination can do an even better job - two of the OEM LED-lighted cars that I own demonstrate this. Most all LED 9003/H4 units allow rotation of the unit in the mount, until the best light pattern is achieved. As we see from docc's low beam pattern, it nicely replicates the halogen unit, but with greater intensity and substantially less power consumption. Hard to find fault with that. I began driving on 6V incandescent bulbs, which were about like the parking lights or DRLs on modern cars. 12V was a good improvement. Halogen was yet another step ahead, but it is now 50+ years of age and getting rather long in the tooth. HIDs had too many limitations, such as the cost of drivers and bulbs, as well as warm-up time. Like compact fluorescent bulbs, they had their day. I see LED lighting as a 21st century parallel of Thomas Edison's 19th century perfection of the glowing wire lamp.

Of note, the housing is aluminum and flows into a heat sink - in the middle of which the fan is located. The fan draws in from the back of the unit and blows out past the vanes of the heat sink. I can only say that this design is also the one used (or pioneered) by PIAA in Japan - who seem to know what they are doing.

So far, so good. Really nice cutoff on low beam. Perhaps a little left-right adj on the high and that bright spot will light up a very decent distance.

We're up to 63 watchers now, but no one willing to pull the trigger. Apparently, they do not realize that life is as short as it is.

Well, like spam spam spam eggs and spam, it's got silver in it. You can see it if you wear rose-colored glasses.

A lot of torque to feed through that MG trans. But - finally! A Guzzi with an accessible oil filter! I see that the flyscreen really is a screen. The wiring...well. I find it reminiscent of this homebuilt V8.

She'd look pretty next to the Ballabio, but I'd have to find another place to live...

2000 w/19K miles. Looks like collector-owner. Started at 4K, but dropped to 3750 obo. https://www.ebay.com/itm/2000-Moto-Guzzi-V11/123933392343?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

The world is full of critics. I know this because I am one. This bike has been aimed at a cost-sensitive market. Good for business, but bad for the bike. Honestly, in my mind, to wear he legendary name of Interceptor, it should be a true 750cc and have USD forks and dual floating discs.

And, with the ever-so-popular 270º crank, it has the classic sound of a... ...Guzzi. I wonder if they engineered some valve clatter into it?

Always had a special place in my heart for the chrome tank Oily Enfield Interceptor. From the monstrous engine w/massive flywheels, to the jaunty angle of the mufflers to the cheeky little kick up at the tail of the seat...

Since cooling is an issue with LEDs, I did a little experiment with an "Infitary" fan-cooled H4 bulb mounted in a Kawi EX500 headlight. Forget which beams I used, but after 1/2 hour and then 1+ hours, the IR thermometer read 80ºF - with no physical airflow except the fan. I think that most of the car-type LED cooling features may be intended for those units which reside close to automotive transverse engine exhausts and heated radiator air. Being fairing mounted, the EX headlight essentially hangs in the air - lots of cooling. Those in a shell or bucket might warm up more, but I just did not see the heat issue on a bike. I would have used the undoubtedly HQ Japanese PIAA unit on the Goose, but the driver will not fit inside the bucket and I did not feel like boring holes into it.

Am thinking cooled intake charge more than any velocity increase. Cool air, like me, is dense. While I might make less cognitive HP, the bike will should make more. Reciprocal aircraft engines use cooled air to great advantage. Except for carbureted aircraft. Then, heat is your friend, as ice-makers should be confined to refrigerators, not intakes. Anyway, I am glad for theories.

Might be a bit of showboating, but am checking to see if red silicone turbo hose can be run from the airbox inlets to the cool air above the oil cooler, so as to breathe "not heated" intake air. Oh, and maybe some alloy velocity stacks to cap it all off.

Cool. Will look it up.

My recent Japanese experience has been with GPz500s/Ninja 500Rs. They were hot-rodded by Kawi with good-sized carbs and reasonable cams, 10-something compression/4-valve heads and ports about as large as can be done. Young fellows are always seeking that big boost - and it just ain't there. 5%, maybe close to 10% improvement with some free flowing cans, and air filter, a slight mod to the airbox and that is about it. They run about 53-54 HP at the rear wheel on dynos and given their relatively ancient architecture (in the Japanese world) dating to about 1985, combined with a long, whippy crank and thin cases and one soon finds the limits. I added WebCam (the old Webco) 245º cams, as one of my rockers ate the OEM intake cam. So much for infallible Japanese engineering and manufacture. Guzzis strike me as being more like an air-cooled slice of Chevy/Holden V8. Basic mods can net a nice boost, but there is real HP hiding in there if one cares to go in $earch of it. Looking at the airbox on my Ballabio, I see two snorkels poking out of it, but not running quite far enough forward to be entirely out of the heated air. Daydreaming, I see some red silicone car turbo hoses with perhaps short velocity stacks capping them. Probably no real boost, but they might look very cool. Q for the cognoscenti: Is there an air filter that is a good ompromise of both flow and filtration? Very familiar with K&N, but they tend to flow better than they filter. Uni makes a Guzzi filter, but only for some of the pre-V11s.

Looks like a mid-70s BMW R90S rreplica.