Skeeve

Good opportunity to at least establish a baseline, altho' dyno-to-dyno repeatability is almost nil...

Good to know, Pete, thanks! I take it that the spigot hole in the cases will vary depending on whether it was an 88mm, etc. bore? Not an issue in this case, since the OP is only looking at replacing the heads...

IIRC, they're both 4v small blocks, so the only significant differences btw them would be the displacement? Monza 500cc & Imola 350cc? Good question, but the small blocks don't seem to get a lot of traffic outside their own little Yahoo! groups & such...

Well, it would if the govt. would let the manufacturers tune for efficiency, that is! But in this bureaucracy-driven instance, it would just mean that they were constantly running too lean for good power...

Maybe someone w/ a copy of Guzziology will chime in; I don't know if the stud spacing is the same for the early square heads vs. the v11 & Spot/Sportis. I do know that the valve sizes are different, w/ smaller sizes in the LMIII than our more evolved/higher output motors. So even if they will fit, they won't produce as much h.p. as the proper v11 heads.

Accelerated wear on the left side of the front tire is normal for all countries were you drive on the right; vice versa for left-side drive countries. This is due to several combined factors: the way motorcycles steer, angle of the road due to road "crown" for drainage [high road crowns typical in places w/ a lot of precipitation], and the fact that speeds are higher for left turns than right [vice versa for LH countries]. Nothing unusual here, nothing to see, move along, move along. BTW, if you try to set up your route so that they're all right turns [or as much as is practicable], it will help even out the wear. I try to do this as a matter of course, since it's legal to turn right on red lights here, so I don't get trapped waiting for a green as often as I would if I were waiting in the left lane for a sensor that has been purposely adjusted by the numbskulls in the city engineering depts. around here to only register a semi-trailer hauling a load of rebar...

Shades of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Beyond the Eighth Dimension! I say, go for "Bob Bigboote'"

Since you don't care which you sell, you just want to get the most $$ as fast as possible out of a quick sale, I'd do the trade [making your friend happy] and turn around & sell the Bonnie [making your wife happy] and pay down the cc bill w/ the cash from the sale [making you happy] and don't look back. Especially if you're not riding the Guzzi, it doesn't make sense to hold on to it...

Well, the power was sh!t everywhere but at the one, resonant rpm that drag pipes are designed to favor, that is...

That's the way I read it. As you say, all alternatives have their own set of compromises, but it's fairly well known that the tele fork as instituted by BMW back in the 30s didn't really threaten the other front ends available at the time [leading/trailing links, girders, etc.] until sometime in the mid-60s when the dirt bike revolution came along and pretty much dictated the fashion for years to come. When it comes to light, long travel front end suspension, the tele fork is king! Of course, on a road bike, the long travel is less of an issue than the lightness, and neither is as important as low unsprung wt., ceteris parabus. As for the whole "fork dive" issue, the J4 brands all came up w/ their own variations on a theme back in the 80s, met with disappointment, & reverted to just normal operation (interestingly enough, spending time thinking about their approach instead of merely engineering another way of accomplishing the same thing as the competition leads one quickly to the realization that they were finding solutions for the wrong variable! ) Any way, there are few front suspensions that work as well on-road as a properly engineering updated version of the leading link arrangement seen on Guzzi racers of the late 40s/early 50s. Go figure! Of course, there are always alternatives like the Parker? front end Yamaha used on the GTS1000 [another vastly underrated machine that just couldn't find a market because of the difficulty the mass market had w/ its looks. Oddly enough, hidebound traditionalist & confirmed Luddite that I usually am, I always thought the GTS looked great. Too bad I didn't have the money to vote my wallet at the time!]

3M Super77 spray adhesive. The reason the Guzzi oem adhesive fails w/ regularity is probably due to their not choosing the 3M product... Minnesota Mining & Materials' products are invariably pricey, but in my experience, invariably work as advertised.

Another 2 weeks and it will be the 3 year anniversary of my "accident." Subhuman cretin intentionally popped his door open on me as I was lane splitting; take it from me, AIM FOR THE DOOR! Unfortunately, I didn't, I went for the gap btw his door and the car next, thinking that he'd pull the door closed again (ie, he opened it just to pull it closed & set the latch properly, door only half-shut situation.) That wasn't his objective, I was: after all, I must not be allowed to "win" the race to work! Anyway, the responding officer was a cruiser cop, not a motor officer, so the cretin only got cited for some inane traffic infraction instead of vehicular assault. Sure wish a CHiPpie motor had been on the scene: that asshat would likely have been cuffed & carted off, as befit his actions! He was d@mn lucky I was pinned against the vehicle next to his and couldn't reach him when he popped out & and said "See what you get for driving so fast!" (I was doing about 15mph, btw: he'd waited until the light turned green and traffic had started moving to ambush me): if he'd been where I could reach him or if I'd been able to turn around, I would've whipped off my helmet & clubbed him with it. Ahhh, just as well I guess. The karma police will get him eventually. Rat b@stard was judgment proof; I had him investigated & he'd declared bankruptcy about 2 months previously & had everything in his ex-wife's name [they still lived together, having just been divorced shortly before the bankruptcy. Interesting, wot?] Carry as much insurance as you can afford, kids. It's a nasty world out there, & they're out to get you...

The offset is a byproduct of the angle of the shot. A trick of the eye. Remember, the camera always lies! [but does so predictably...] OTOH, the offset may be there on purpose to add some rotation to the valve in operation, to prevent it from wearing into the seat in one spot. My money is on a combination of the two... I seem to remember setting the valves on the VW w/ the adjusters at the valve stem, but quite truthfully, it was so long ago, and I was lying on my back under a dark car(1), & frankly, I was just interested in getting done with it & buttoned back up so I could be on the road, so I could be mistaken. But regardless, that's what that type of adjuster does & why it's used. (1) - Always wear safety glasses when working on your VDub! DAMHIK

That's the idea. It's actually part of the adjuster screw [on a VW, you just replace the stock plain adjusters w/ those from an a/c Porsche], and valve lash is measured between the end of the valve stem and the flat on the end of the ball-end adjuster. In answer to Dlaing's note: yes, roller rockers are another solution to the problem. Only, it requires replacing the entire rocker arm w/ a different unit; this ball adjusters are as stated above, more of an item that can be retrofit to an existing part system. In all honesty, I only learned about these things recently when I was doing some research into VWs [been feeling nostalgic for my 1st cage lately, a 1960 Kombi w/ the later 1500 single-port engine. I didn't really care/know about the go fast stuff back then, but realized that there would be NO WAY I would want to give up all the performance of my more recent cars if I went back to the old mini-bus, so I was looking into what mods would be reliable and productive should I ever choose to go down that path again... Fun reading, basically! But, educational, to say the least...

UV doesn't affect carbon fiber, it affects the epoxy holding the carbon fibers together. Oxygen is also detrimental, maybe in synergy w/ the UV? Only thing I know of that would protect it from UV is sunscreen. OTOH, everyday plain old car wax will protect it from the oxygen in the air. HTH

Gotta call "No Joy" on this one, Ratchet: plug reads for this minimal change in fuel burn are going to be impossible [not merely "hard" to detect, but impossible to the unaided human eye] while fuel mileage is the only pertinent datum & oh-so-easy to determine [if you keep track of your avg. as a habit, as I tend to do.] Avg. mpg jumps from 40 to 41mpg? Yippee, you got a 2.5% improvement [ie, not really worth much trouble, & easily ascribed to random variations (favorable tailwinds & the like)] - but a jump from an avg of 40 to 42? Now things start getting interesting. And at no time will there be a discernible difference in plug color btw these conditions. Plug reads are only valid for steady-state running conditions & then only for ball-park determination of carbueration (fueling, whatever you want to call it: I know our bikes don't have carbs! ); they're supremely unsuited to track the transition throttle conditions that are precisely the point of this hypothetical hookup for the pressure regulator. Ride on!

By resolving the rotating and sliding forces separately. The ball-joint enables the flat pushing against the valve stem to distribute all pressure evenly across the end of the valve stem. The side to side sliding forces are similarly evenly distributed, instead of being a point load that breaks down the oil film. So the side loads are potentially the same, it's just that the friction between the valve stem and ball-joint end of the rocker arm is reduced such that less of that load ever reaches the valve stem to put wear on the guides. Basically, someone at Moto Guzzi finally went down to the corner speed shop specializing in the old flat-four air-cooled VW Beetles where they've been in use since about the time the V7 first hit the street and took some notes...

Oxygen has its way with other finishes too, not just anodized aluminum. Can't hate it too much, since we can't live without it! It's been pretty well established by higher authorities than myself that the coating is paint. Detail pictures of crashed valve covers pretty quickly dispels any illusion that it's anodizing.

Pretty much. Only problem is the scarcity of the 1000s and the fact that the collectors have all run their prices up because of their scarcity & good looks. As people have been saying for years, "Guzzi, release an updated 1000s and laugh your way to the bank!" But do they listen? No....

We're getting help from Wildguzzi, but I didn't bother posting to Guzzitech or elsewhere, since I get the feeling that btw here & Wildguzzi, the overlap was enough to cover 90% of the other boards as well...

Andy Kaufmann was known for his ability to ad-lib, so I'm coming down on the "slid out of control" side, esp. as Sat Nite Live was truly live [& in those days, not much time delay to speak of] & the writers only gave the cast so much to work with...

I don't know if there's only one solution involved to this dilemma: the short-frame "chin pad" tanks w/ external fuel pumps/regulators are likely to be a significantly harder nut to crack than the later long-frame tanks w/ their internal widgetry [which means there's at least one fairly large hole to access the inside of the tank besides the fuel filler hole...] Of course, my own immediate thoughts are along the line of a line of fuel hose rated safe for complete immersion [check over at Wildguzzi or Guzzitech forums for discussions about Norge fuel pump failures/recalls for more data related to failures brought on by alcohol in our fuel stateside] w/ some lead fishing wt.s on each end, a pair of long bent-nose needle nose pliers, and some sort of plugs that will safely dissolve in gasoline but will last long enough for one to invert a line of gasoline-filled fuel line, insert thru the bung hole beneath the gas cap, route one end over each side of the internal hump, and then wait... A couple of hours later, once the plug material [of at present unknown composition] dissolves, voila'! - a nice siphon from the dead zone to the live side, that as long as the fuel level never drops below either end of the siphon [obviously, no spirited cornering when you're almost out of fuel! ], will automagically balance the fuel levels internal to the tank. What temp does gasoline freeze at? Maybe just filling the line (inverted), freezing the whole darn thing on a block of dry ice or in a thermos of LN3 (if you can scam some locally; I'm going to have to start nosing around the labs here @ UCI... ) would work instead of worrying about some esoteric plug dissolves-in-petrol-at-a-certain-speed-but-safe-to-burn-once-in-solution material? Hmmm Ah well, I'll let the thoughts simmer longer...

Your English is fine, it's your punctuation that needs help! Please let us know how your experiment plays out. Pics of your installation would be nice too. Keep up the good work!

Yeah, baby! "And down the back straight, it's... BEETLEBOMB! Maybe we should lighten up w/ the multiple votes? We wouldn't want to give the game away if someone there tumbles to the sudden spike of votes for a single marque...