Skeeve

We don't have an equivalent to Reboot Spares stateside, but we're lucky enough to have several great dealers. You might try calling Moto Guzzi Classics in Long Beach, they've been quietly selling off their old stock on eBay, but might have yet to uncover an old crossover. Other than the usual suspects [MGC, MI, MGNOC classifieds, etc.], just keep prowling eBay & hope to get lucky... of course it helps that you're here on v11lm putting the word out so you've got friends keeping their eyes peeled for you.!

Back to front: Whichever email address they list on their website for customer service. Maybe because I didn't get my cans direct thru them they don't want to deal with me? Whatever... Regardless of your misunderstanding of my post, 14ga stainless weighs pretty much the same as 14ga stainless, barring exotic alloys: 308, 310, 316: it's all going to weigh roughly the same per sq. ft. in the same gauge. The reason Staintunes weigh so much less than the stock cans are twofold: they use lighter gauge materials in the construction, and they have less internal baffling. Less baffling means more noise [tho' in the Staintunes case, not so much less that they're untenably loud, thank goodness!] and less weight, lighter gauge materials, regardless of whether it's 304, 308 or 316, means lighter weight. All other things equal, more lightly built parts will fail in service before a part built more robustly. Moto Guzzi, being the original motor vehicle manufacturer, has to meet requirements for their exhaust system by the governments of the countries in which they wish to sell said vehicles that no aftermarket supplier is compelled to do. Among these are requirements that the exhaust system not fail in service for 5 years from the date of sale. Guzzi, understandably averse to paying for warranty replacements for some vehicle left outside in a salty, wet environment for its entire lifespan, makes an exhaust system that is worthy of Timex... Apparently, you've got a hard-on for Staintune exhausts, & believe I've said (written) something derogatory concerning their products. Nothing could be further from the truth. I invite you to go back & reread my posts with a clear head & stop beating a dead horse. Failing that, I invite you to duel with me: you can bring your Staintune can & I will use one of the several stock Guzzi cans I have lying about, & you can flail away at me w/ your Staintune. I promise to in no way to seek to do you harm w/ my Guzzi can; I'll merely block your attacks. After your Staintune can is a beaten, wrinkled mess of crumpled stainless, I'll dig a grave for it, bury your Staintune [or any other aftermarket can you may so choose to use for your weapon], and pound the post for a nameplate over the grave w/ my dinged but otherwise pristine Guzzi can. Those things are anvils upon which your puny aftermarket can will be shattered!

O.K., I should have qualified my comment that Staintunes are the exception to the rule. No qualification needed on the comment that they won't outlast the stockers tho': as high quality as they are, outlasting the vehicle or no, the Staintunes just aren't built like the tanks that the stock Guzzi cans are [& thank goodness, or there wouldn't be any point to them! Can't be lighter w/o using lighter components...] Staintune still doesn't answer their email tho'... No crisis there, either: I'll just have to fab up my own heel guards to replace the one that got lost. It is a shame I'm going to have to destroy all that lovely polishing work by getting them bead-blasted tho': it's a much more sustainable finish for a real-world, non-"show" bike.

Heh. Yeah! Here's an idea [but I'm too lazy to do the math myself. Sue me:] Take a tread depth measurement of the z6 when new. Calculate the chord of the width where the measurements were taken. Compute the nominal depth of the tread at the center of tread given that chord, and what the center depth would be when down to carcass when the tread depth measurements are retaken at later intervals, ie: a tread depth of 1mm would have the center tread at zero, time to replace tire even tho' the belts aren't peeking thru yet. [Note: most of my riding miles are commuter miles, so I just buy a new rear when I find it cheap and keep it sealed in a plastic garbage bag to limit out-gassing of the plasticizers in the rubber, & stash it in the garage. When I run the tire to the point where you can see that you've run out of tread rubber & are getting into the carcass rubber [different colors; pretty easy to spot if you look] then it's time to change out for the backup on hand. But that's on a commuter bike that only sees

Relevant posts are old because Guzzi hasn't produced any new spineys for almost 5 years now... The stock "carbon" exhausts are CF sleeves [instead of the poorly anodized black or natural aluminum sleeves] on the standard heavy guage stainless E3 rated stock cans that came on all of the Sport derivatives from 2000 forward. Look up my contributions to the thread on modifying the stock cans for pix of the insides. Condensed version of the thread search: Aftermarket cans will save you wt. [the Aussie Staintunes weigh approx. 1/2 the stockers: the stock cans weigh out at approx. 10# (4.5kg) each; the Staintunes are 5.5# (2.5kg) apiece.], and of course, will offer higher noise & flow rates. Of course, the tradeoff is longevity: no aftermarket system will last as long in regular use as the heavyweight stocker... Modifying the stock cans extensively is pretty much a non-starter unless you can do the cutting & TIG welding yourself: there's just not enough performance to be derived from the hassle to justify the expense of paying someone else to have it done. Truly a project for the hobbyist "because I can..." mentality. The best option for the stock cans is to remove the beauty cover at the exhaust tip [that camoflages exactly how small the actual exhaust pipe diameter is!], and using a fairly small drill bit [1/4" or 6mm], wiffleball the end of the can concealed by the beauty cover, and then replace said cover. This will net you a slight decrease in exhaust back pressure & increase in "music" w/o becoming completely obnoxious, but won't significantly increase the exhaust flow. Before you go getting new cans, remember that you can't make significant changes to the exhaust system w/o updating the ECU to those changes; the V11 spine frames run their EFI in open-loop mode. That's a whole other thread search [which is left to the reader to perform. ]

Hey, Jaap: can you block this Wenzi110 'bot? It's spamming all over the place, & I keep stepping in it... I'm going to have to buy new shoes if this keeps up!

How disappointing. Best of luck w/ the pump search!

The SV headlight has decent coverage up close, but poor output for distance. I've never gotten around to wiring up a direct line to the battery & dedicated relay setup for it.

A different reflector would do the trick...

Huh? The RFID in the key is likely hard coded [since they're so much cheaper & easier to make that way]; when you "change the code," you're reprogramming the ECU to recognize the new RFID in the key. Here's an idea: program the ignition to recognize your Mobil/Exxon "EZ Pay" RFID key fob, and then you can use cheap regular key blanks instead of the expen$ive blanks w/ an RFID in the head... Stinkin' RFIDs are the biblical "number of the beast" we're allowing ourselves to be tattooed with...

#1: Because the host of Top Gear is notoriously anti-motorbike, by his own admission. #2: Because bikes' only advantage over cars is acceleration & cost; if you unfairly handicap the bike in this comparison by choosing a model that costs 1/4 what the car does instead of a higher performance model that only costs 1/2, well, you can figure on getting smoked. And this is the only car that can match bike acceleration figures, but the simple expedient of a design that is entirely based on matching motorcycle power to wt ratios! #3: There is no #3 #4: The Atom is a go-kart on steroids; I like it!

The Bellagio is a Tonti frame [well, the swingarm is updated, but the front half is still a Tonti, much like the CalVin. But yes, putting the V7 Classic Cafe styling on the Bellagio rolling bits would be a big win for Guzzi. Of course, they'd have to bring it Stateside for my forecast to come true...

Laminar lips have nothing to do w/ the weather, and iirc originate from the States, where we know a lot about wind [being mostly full of hot air ourselves... ] Basic idea is to eliminate flutter in the airstream coming off the top edge of the shield to allow for reducing helmet buffeting. There's other ways to do this, primary among them being a vent at the bottom of the windscreen to bleed pressure from the high (front) side of the screen to the low (back) side: this is seen on the new Norge for instance. The laminar lips seem to work o.k. but look a little odd: if your helmet is either above or below the dirty air stream coming off the windscreen then the lip is superfluous, but if you're experiencing constant helmet buffeting then the lip is pretty dang special!

This sounds like an interesting tale in itself. Care to start a new thread & give us the details at length? "Tales from the Crypt(ic)" or something like that?

Figure out what the going rate is for a regular v11 LeMans in similar condition, then add on the cost of all the Ohlin's boingy bits. The silly paint job you can add or subtract for as you wish [but the seller is probably going to expect a premium for it.] There, now you've got your price!

Yep. They came up w/ a spiffy name & can sell Berryman's B12 for $1 more a can... Whatever you want to call it, it does a good job of cleaning out the old passages...

Here's the stretch of road they're talking about: Test route

That'll do it. Or you could go for the easy fix & just wear earplugs [you should anyway or you'll end up a deaf ]

Answering in reverse order: Generally written RC for Rockwell C scale [A, B, C scales are progressively harder, with overlap; iirc, 100 RB is about 20 RC.] Then there's other [usually older] standards like Brinell, etc. The Rockwell scales all use pretty much the same procedure, an anvil is pressed into the test material under a set pressure & time, & the resulting crater is measured. The only real difference is the test anvil: hardened ball, diamond point, etc. As far as how "close" in hardness the materials need to be, it's going to depend upon the application. Ideally, you want them as hard & smooth as you can get: the harder the surface, the less prone to wear it is, and the smoother the less chance to catch on another surface sliding by. But the harder something is the more brittle it will be, generally speaking. Carbide cams & lifters would disintegrate in a few thousand? hundred? dozen? miles w/ all the hammering they take. Steel can be case-hardened, which will leave a nice, malleable core underneath a hard long-wearing face. The lifter's Pete spoke of being so soft really aren't all that soft: 39 RC is about the temper of high-powered rifle actions/barrels. But that's through hardened, which would be strong but still tough. The lifter face, being a surface that would be exposed to a lot of pressure and sliding abrasion from the cam surface, coulda/woulda/shoulda been cased up to a hardness matching that of the cam, say high 50s [softer than the cam so they wear before the cam, and tougher because they aren't quite so hard to take the hammering against the cam face.] Note: IANAE [i am not an engineer], this is just the sum total of a lifetime of making inquiry into how stuff works and a few welding classes*. Ride on! * - My friends were always amazed that I took welding classes, apparently thinking that was too "blue collar" for someone of my refined character. I was always amazed at their amazement: new & better ways of playing w/ fire? OF COURSE I would take welding classes!

You're confusing galling w/ wear: steel on bronze will (generally, barring special circumstances) wear the bronze.

It's definitely fake, and WSJ is a far better source than Wikipedia, altho' I'll admit I like using Wiki for getting a quick briefing [frequently all too brief] on a topic previously unknown to me. Wikipedia is a quick ref on a topic [and frequently flat out wrong, as I've had opportunity to correct for myself, so I know better than to use Wikipedia as a foundational source.] BTW, post #3: close'r down, Jaap!

Counterpoints: A) Sue me, I misunderstood the description of the functioning of the pressure regulator: my understanding was that it was intended to add fuel at high air flow rates, not low flow. My bad. Evening out the pulses from the two cylinders by merging the respective signals into one average signal doesn't change the fact that the combined signal is still valid. Note that there's no delay as there would be w/ a flow restrictor, just a reduction in both frequency & amplitude, which were the faults listed with getting the signal direct from the vacuum bleeds. BTW, the bottle under discussion is pretty dang small, so I don't think your complaint about "bulky set up" is completely valid either, but yes, it will occupy some of the space under the tank. Like I said, I've got a 2003, so this discussion is less than pertinent to me. I'm going to bow out now, & leave it to the '00-'02 guys...

Accepted wisdom is that there is enough slack to mount controls about 1" higher & farther back [ie, about 1.5" of available slack]; fortunately this rather minor change is usually enough to make all the difference in rider comfort. Haven't done it myself, just parroting the info gleaned from v11lm over the years...

I believe it was noted the 1st time this came around in the forums that the entire topic is rather pointless for the updated [non-"chin pad" tank] models as the pressure regulator is located inside the gas tank? While the prospect of having the equivalent of vacuum advance ignition for the fueling circuit is appealing, since we don't even have that for the ignition side of our heroically kludgy ditch-pump driven 2-wheeled conveyances, I'm not going to lose any sleep over cobbling it together somehow. That said, as far as smoothing out the vacuum fluctuations, running both intake manifold bleed nipples to a common "boost bottle" sized tank would go a long way toward evening out the pulses while maintaining full amplitude of the depression, I should think. Still, I don't think that since anybody has complained of their fuel map needing richening at redline, so this whole matter is even more academic than the superiority of urethane cush drive biscuits over the stock neoprene tidbits. Whaddaya want for nothin'?

Just did a quick Google to see if I could find a cheaper source than the $21+/can of the Harley texture paint, & got no joy. However, I did come across PJ1 Hi-temp Wrinkle Black engine paint at about $10/can and found one image of what it turns out like: It's the valve cover, posted w/ the info that he used 2 medium coats & baked it in his oven at 200F to get the wrinkle to develop nicely. Obviously, the latter half of the recipe is not doable for an in-frame case painting, but the judicious application of some radiant space heaters might turn the trick. Don't know how close a match this is to the real thing tho'; seems like the Harley paint may be worth the extra dosh just to get a good match, but if I was doing a total strip down rebuild of an engine, then the PJ1 might win out for doing the complete job. I'm just glad I've got an '03, so this is primarily an academic exercise for me...