Skeeve

Playboy did an article about someone making custom "body kits" like this when I was a kid back in the 70s? early 80s? iirc. It's quite involved, what with making a body cast of the model for a mold, then doing the 'glas layup. Toughest part is getting the colors in the gel coat right [for I'd think, obvious reason! ] I wish I still had that issue or knew where to find a copy of the article, it was quite interesting from a simple craftsmanship standpoint, above & beyond the tasty Playmates they had in the section about making the body casts...

The weather is here*, wish you were beautiful**! * - "Here" in this instance is Lo-Cal So. Cal., where the money is plastic & the people are too! ** - In a manly man way, offered in a completely asexual, one heterosexual guzzista to another way. Don't try to read any subtext into this, 'K?

Nah, it was to line up the front & rear wheel tracks 'cause the rear wheel was offset so far to allow for the width of the drive belt required for the torque output. Buell should do a tasty single sided swingarm setup for one of his sprotbikes w/ the belt&pulley mounted on the opposite side of the swingarm from the wheel so he can use as wide a belt as he wants/needs w/o worrying about where that puts the wheel. Hmm, I may have just come up w/ the winning recipe for the next "Biker Buildoff" unreality tv show... Alright all y'all, now hear this: this idea is mine, & if anyone of you "customizer" scum reading this use my idea, you've got to give credit where credit is due! I want my 15 seconds of fame, g-d it!

Dilbert, May 8 2009

That bear was just dying for a pedicure! [sorry, couldn't resist... I just spent my lunch hour reading an old Far Side compendium. ]

My SV? No, the dumb thing tries to run the headlight & the starter at the same time...

And a good one it was...

Since when to progressive springs have no modulus? And if drilling the pucks [removing material] is like cutting off loops of a spring [removing material], why does that make the pucks more compliant and springs less so? Inquiring minds want more obfuscation...

On a completely unrelated topic, would routing the power for the lights thru the normally closed contact on the starter relay [which would be open while starting, right?] automagically cut out the drain on the battery from the lights while starting? [This isn't relevant to my Guzzi, I'm thinking about my SV650 commuter bike, which doesn't cut the lights for starting, making the battery prone to cold weather & age-related failure...] TIA

Another symptom of the poor grounding of the instrument cluster?

Here's a way to get your head around it: If you stick a sock up the end of a clarinet, is it still a clarinet? OK, maybe, but it won't play like one. Now, if build the f@cking sock into the clarinet it's not a clarinet anymore, is it? An RCM is all about acoustics. Stick a sock in it [or baffle, what have you], and you've ruined the acoustics & it's no longer an RCM, it's a muffler. Got it?

CalTech used to be a beautiful campus, but they've mostly outgrown that. I haven't been on it in years tho', but I grew up riding thru it on my way to jr. high & high schools... Good times. The new red building they built on what used to be their soccer field across the street looks like someone dropped a huge stack of terracotta floor tile & stuck windows on it. A real architectural eyesore... I can talk about Pasadena all week folks, I grew up there! But that's not a good slice of the Hell-A experience, it's its own little town... Altho' it's been losing a lot of its unique feel the last few years. I hardly recognize the place anymore when I go visit...

The engine & tranny are big, beefy units, that's for sure. The wheels on the V11s are seriously heavy; Greg Field hints that the Griso wheels are much lighter than ours; I wish he'd supply a simple comparo [v11 wheel w/ tire = XX+ #s, griso wheel & tire = X X #s...] - that would be a nice illustration. A/C motors don't have all the radiator & hoses & cr@p hanging off them, but that stuff's mostly hollow and everything else is thinner on a w/c motor because it operates in a much narrower thermal band, so they can be lighter. A much larger & complicated 4cyl 1100 engine can weigh less than ours, due to the smaller parts loads, etc. A lot of weight could be lost from the engine if Piaggio went thru & did a bottom up finite element analysis & redesign the whole lump, but that's not going to happen for the old 2v motor, altho' the new QV motor probably got a lot of that & I wouldn't be surprised if it weighed less than our motors despite its added complexity & parts count [& more parts = more wt, ceteris paribus.] The heavy metal that makes Guzzis so stone axe reliable carries a hefty price... in added heft! What's the expected lifespan of the CF driveshafts like they use in race cars, for instance? Stick one o' those in your CARC & smoke it!

I think the durometer of solid pucks will need to be lower; it's likely the combination of higher durometer and no room for the pucks to compress [bulge sideways when compressed lengthwise] that makes them inadequate in the stock application. That's where drilling the holes in them comes in: it makes room for them to deform into...

Well, Todd of GuzziTech fame is here, you might post over at the GuzziTech forum to get more responses. You can always visit Moto Guzzi classics in Long Beach for an inside peek at what a real Guzzi shop should look like...

That's why I'm thinking it's 72 on the Shore D scale, which equates to about 95 on the A...

Oh yes, I'm aware! That was supposed to be a bit facetious....

Cool! That was a project I was about to undertake myself. 72A or D?

"Efficient" may not describe the entire purpose effectively. These things are very effective because they're used in areas w/ heavy traffic congestion, where a breakdown causes traffic tie-ups for miles upstream. Accordingly, because a tow-bike can slit lanes to get to the source of the problem & remove it much faster, they're "efficient" in use. Not necessarily something most of us have any use for, but very pertinent in those areas [like Japan & other densely populated urban environments] that are already seeing their application.

Aha! A connoisseur... Irving's TFS is OOP and quite a hot property: I'm amazed his descendants haven't woken up to the opportunity for a reprint, as right now they're losing sales to folks photocopying what copies they can find at libraries, etc.

Yep, that was a big part of the plan when Piaggio bought out Aprillia: control production of their largest competitor, move it offshore to dilute the nameplate while raising profits, and keep Vespa at home as a luxury brand [they learned their lesson about that after the India debacle... ] Ah well, scooters are supposed to be cheap & cheerful, right?

Rather than chopping the windscreen, either get/make a laminar lip for it, or put in some venting holes at the base of the screen to bleed high pressure air in from in front into the low pressure area behind that leads to all the flutter that's creating the noise. Just a thought...

According to Ratchethack, this was the solution applied by his friend & it worked perfectly. If you noodle around w/ a search, you can probably turn up pics of it. I say, plug the spigots, then braze the x-over in place on one side, so it looks stock, but won't rattle around... That would certainly be worth a bodge point!

Not much, likely: the 1200 Sport has a closed-loop ECU iirc, so it'll automagically compensate for the lean-idle after a hard run that was the entire basis for Ratchet's embarking upon his experiments. It's already fueled leaner than the V11 engines by virtue of its later production, so I doubt you have the over-rich at startup mapping problem that plagues the V11 in cold climates that is the basis for substituting the solid brass holder. In all, I think you should ignore this whole thread...

Too rich for my tastes, but more power to you! Helps maintain that exclusivity factor on top of that you already had just by riding a Guzzi!