Skeeve

Why not contact BMC & ask? Might help to have some relevant stats to hand, like what the max OAL can be and what size hole you need to mate up w/ the Guzzi intakes...

A Tonti frame or a replica Tonti frame. It could be unique to this bike. Tonti designed his (eponymous) frame with the motor from the original "loop" frame Guzzis in mind: if you replace the loop generator with the smaller diameter (but longer OAL) one from a particular FIAT car engine (iirc), then the loop motor will bolt right into the Tonti frame. Since the new QV engines have reverted to the original loop format in all pertinent respects, I'm certain a similar trick would work. Either that, or they're running it w/ total loss electrics & just put a bigger battery in the same space the alternator used to occupy so that they could squeeze it all into place in a Tonti frame. Fairly normal for a race/track bike to run total-loss anyway, so that's what I'd put my money on in this instance.

Dunno if it matches the clutch master, but the Jackal came w/ a single front disc. Guzzi sold a dual-disc kit for it @ one point, with a 2nd disc & new master cyl... maybe find a shop who did the upgrade for a customer & still has the original kicking around in spares?

The Guzzista wears motorcycling gloves & boots; the Harley rider wears (bi)cycling [fingerless] gloves and cowboy [? "Punta"] boots...

Maybe set up a group buy for all those who think reducing 1# of rotational mass is worth the $? If EBC has never sold any stateside, perhaps we could make the point that offering them to the participants of a V11LM group buy at say, wholesale + 10% isn't in fact competing with any of their vendors? Find out how many they're sitting on & clean'em out of the warehouse: it's win-win. Yes, without a doubt it would be better if the V11 had a lighter rear wheel, but like you said, little things add up...

There are no "Buell dealers," internet-friendly or otherwise. You're looking for a Harley-Davidson dealership, and one of the major appeals of that brand is that you're never far from one. [Which is quite the change from Guzzi, eh? ] They're all going to sell at full retail, but the Buell pegs are cheap enough [another feature of H-D: the actual, functional parts are cheap, it's the useless chromed gee-gaws that are pricey...] that you'll spend more on shipping than any on-line discount you might find, so why bother? You're in Denver, there's probably a Harley dealership within walking distance of you... Remember, if you want to make the Buell pegs fit w/o altering the stock brackets [so you can return the bike to stock at some future time, should you so choose] then you'll have to fabricate a few spacers & bushings to do the trick, and you'll have to file or sand off some of the Buell pegs to make them fit in the factory mounts. AFAICR, it's two "top hats" [flanged bushing] & a simple spacer per side. Sorry, I don't have the dimensioned drawings any more, they were on a knapkin [er, "serviette" for the Brits out there: "knapkin" means something totally different to them, & isn't used to wipe your hands after a messy lunch...] that went on to serve a higher purpose.

The stock fork springs max out at about a 150 lb. [70kg] rider, iirc. If you weigh more than that in full kit, or expect to carry a passenger ever, you need to replace the stock fork springs. The stock fork springs are the weediest looking things you've ever seen; if you straightened them out, they wouldn't be even as long as the forks [unlike most fork springs, which seem to have enough coils to be longer than a bike with trailer when straightened out.] New fork springs are going to be less than $100 last I checked, and you can get almost exactly where you need to be w/o having to fiddle w/ extra preload spacers [which are just a kludge for not having the correct springing anyway...] Best o' luck

Don't forget you'll have to use anti-seize on all those connections where the ss fastener will be threading into aluminum...

[AOL] D'accordo! [/AOL]

Well, given that it is an official Piaggio press release, I'm thinking it's a go. Probably a quick "must keep up w/ BMW's new wasserboxer!" thing to keep from losing sales for those potential buyers who set too much store by the spec sheet; by announcing this, those buyers may hold off until the Guzzi product hits the street, instead of just jumping on the new Beemer when it comes out...

The downside [if you'll pardon the pun] to the extended Buell stalks is that they have a kink in the stalk, so your Guzzi now has droopy "antenna." They fit, but you'll have to change the mounting bolts from your stock Guzzi mirror [iirc, the Buell bolts that come w/ the mirrors are SAE thread...] The advantage of the extended mirrors is that you can now see more than a nice shot of your shoulders when checking the rear view!

No experience yay or nay, but am convinced the only useful bike alarm is one of the silent ones that sends an alert to your cell phone to let you know that someone's jacking your ride. Even if you spend most of your time running out to tell little kids to get off your bike, it'll at least save you from the nuisance lawsuit their parent files when they knock the bike over on themselves. Other than that, the Lo-Jack style of homing beacon that the police can use to find your bike after some thief has carted it off to the chop-shop is the only useful style of "alarm" I would consider...

Sounds about right for one of the "Telaio Rosso" tribute Greenies w/ such low miles. Some people really go nuts for the color [i'm not fond of it, personally, more of a Tenni-green fan myself] & in combo w/ the red frame, it truly does make for a striking machine. Congrats! So, you moving up to a new Greaser [Griso?]

Screw that: just contact the drag racer guys & get an electric or pneumatic shifter setup & shift gears w/ your left thumb...

Guzzi-renew has most of a Centauro motor [same mill as your early Daytona, only w/ the cool anthracite engine paint[1] & milder cams] on eBay right now, iirc [That's the ebay name of Moto Guzzi Classics here in Long Beach, CA; a shop known world-wide as one of the good-uns.] Missing the NLA valve covers tho' & has some structural damage from the crash it was in, which is probably why it had no bids the 1st time I saw it. But it may have the droids, er, parts you're looking for... There's also Reboot Guzzi Spares of the UK as well: have you tried them? Peter [not the same Pete as our Pete, but a good guy nonetheless] there never has the HiCam motors in the "new bikes for breaking" listed, so I've come to think he must always have them pre-sold: you'd have to get on the line w/ him & let him know you're looking so that the next time he gets one in, you can get a crack at it. If you're only looking for specific pieces for your motor, why don't you tell us what they are? Network, my friend, network! It may be that we can turn up a line on the particular part(s) you're seeking thru a local contact who has more than they need? [1] That was a really great engine coating, AFAICT: looked great and seemed durable [at least I've never heard of any complaints for it], so why did Guzzi give up on it?

If that fails, the next trick is to get a left-handed drill bit & an ez-out of the appropriate size. Often times the left-handed drilling will be enough to start working them loose [which is good, 'cause it's too darn easy to bust the ez-out in the small size required for these bolts.] Burning them out w/ a sinker EDM is truly the last resort... BTW, a penetrating lube like KROIL has been shown to help the process. [& for the traditional penny-pinching Guzzista, you can roll your own very close substitute from a 50-50 mix of acetone & ATF.]

Vinyl tubing [clear fuel line hose, fridge water supply line, air pump hose from the tropical fish pet supply, etc], water and food coloring [so the water isn't invisible] can do the trick in a pinch, it just takes a LOT more hose and column height vs. using mercury as the working fluid. Safer tho', if something goes awry... Best o' luck!

Sell the car, keep the bike. No, seriously! Had some friends who decided that they were better off renting a car [of whatever size was needed for the moment] & commuting to work on their bikes several years ago. They've never looked back... Of course, this is very situation dependent: they've got an Enterprise just a couple blocks [ie: walking distance, even in the rain] from them, and they live/commute in west L.A., so the ability to lane share & ride 300+ days a year really makes it work for them. In parting, I'd just like to remind you of the old adage [a bit paraphrased ;-) ]: "Bikes get you thru times of no money better than money gets you thru times of no bikes." Ride on!

Do you think those would still work w/ Manic Salamanders [heavywt. bar ends?] or would you be limited to just the stock counterweights?

Last thing first: the interconnect btw the bleed ports on the throttle bodies just helps to keep them feeling like they're in sync even when they're slightly off. Yamaha built this into the heads of some of their mid-80s 4cyl UJMs [the YICS intake], which required a $pecial tool to block off the ports from each other when doing a for-real carb balance. Just remember to block off the ports when you're doing a sync, and then reinstall the bridge & it will make up for that last little bit of precise syncing that's just never quiet achievable... As for the front x-over affecting your map: Todd & Ed & others who should know say that it doesn't really make a noticeable difference, so I'd just swap the pipes & keep using the existing map you've got. Basically, I'd say keep all your farkles by xfering them to the new bike, and decide after you've ridden the new bike a bit if it needs a new map for the PCIII or if the existing one works ok for the Ti pipes/"race" ecu on the Nero Corsa.

And therein lies the rub: when oxygenated fuels became mandated back in the early 90s, there were still a significant percentage of cars on the road w/ carburetors, what EFI systems were in use were often Alpha-N systems, and there were still a lot of just plain old cars on the road with marginal, dead, or no catalytic convertors. The 15% hit to fuel economy that we took was worth it in terms of clean air benefits derived from universal use of such fuels. Now, 20 years on, the number of classic cars on the road is dwindling, squeezed from both ends by a lack of kids who're interested in hot rods, government programs preventing the registration of vehicles which can't be made to pass ever-more-restrictive emissions mandates and cash-for-clunkers programs. So what classic cars are out there on the road are usually tuned to pretty tight specs by enthusiast owners. The vast majority of the mid-70s to mid-90s cars are similarly no longer on the road, having been junked years ago & recycled into new cars, which have adaptive EFI and 3-stage cats. So the upshot is, we've surpassed the need for oxygenated fuels: they no longer provide any benefit, and in fact are detrimental to our society due to their added costs [both in pump prices and decreased fuel economy from the fuel you do use...] The reality is that most of the pumps advising you that the fuel you're purchasing may have up to 10% ethanol typically were only dispensing 5% during the early years after the banning of MTBE, but as the EPA put the screws to various regions w/ problem air [like here in SoCal], the percentage of ethanol was increased to show that something was being done. Believe me, I'm a big believer in the beneficial f/x of the smog laws over the years: I'm old enough to remember when L.A. had smog alerts [of any stage, 1 to 3] about 60 days out of 90 during the summer months when I was out of school and would much rather have been playing outside rather than hiding inside trying not to breathe! I can't remember the last time I heard that there was even a stage 1 smog alert in L.A. So clearly, something worked. I just don't think it was the oxygenated fuel, per se, as most of the results had been achieved before that stuff even came along, and most of the rest of the results can be attributed to the other advances in engine management since [OBDII, microprocessors integrated everywhere, adaptive EFI & 3-stage cats], since the newer engines just burn more of the lousy oxygenated stuff to make the same power and emissions as they can get out of real gas.

That's because they really are: just styling treatments on the same bones, really. Pretty much like you had to roll your own back in the good ol' days of the UJM... Just like Guzzi with the Breva, 1200 Sport and the Norgay Yup, pretty much!

It was supposed to meet Federal standards of the time which required it to be compatible with gasoline with added ethanol not to exceed 10%. The big problem we're facing now is that the devil's own coalition of ADM and environmentalists got the EPA to require 15% alcohol adulteration of our fuel, & who cares what it does to all the existing motors out there using gasoline that were never expected to run on the swill we're going to be forced to buy now... I wonder how much of the blistering/swelling of the plastic fuel tanks we've seen reported is due to ethanol vs. MTBE [which we've since seen banned here in California, but which at one point was actually required to be used to make the special "CA-only" fuel blend sold here. And once the refineries & supply chain were set up to use the stuff, which states continued to receive it even after we were no longer getting it here in CA?] [0] The irony being, that if properly set up for it, ethanol is a pretty excellent fuel for an IC engine, supporting compression ratios up into the ranges seen w/ diesel engines, and that would lead to ERSD [Extremely Rapid Spontaneous Dis-assembly, also known as "Kablooey"] if they were used w/ any form of gasoline. But you still run into problems w/ the energy density being much lower than gasoline, so you'd have to stop to refuel more often. Ride on, [0] It was banned because it rapidly found its way into the water table from leaking tanks. The entire fiasco also led to a massive closure of old stations that had underground tanks that had seemed to work fine w/ the old fuel but developed leaks from the MTBE-laced stuff. MTBE didn't work any better than ethanol, it was just cheaper to make, since it didn't need to use food-based supply stocks...

But the Three Hondas are, apparently, only counted as one bike! That's because they really are: just styling treatments on the same bones, really. Pretty much like you had to roll your own back in the good ol' days of the UJM...

No women, no booze. Not much of a life at all! Every guy I've ever met says the same thing about working there: the job is overpaid, which makes up for having to fly out periodically so you can decompress. Only reason they kept at it was how much money they were able to bank while they were there, against one day coming back to what they consider the real world...