Skeeve

Maybe use Oilite [or whatever that sintered bronze stuff is called that specially developed for low pressure, inaccessible bearings...]?

I still think there has to be a convenient method of running an internal siphon from the dead zone side to the fuel outlet side of the tank... It might be a pain & 1/2 to get in place & functioning, & even harder to reset if run totally empty, but I really do think there's a workable solution to this fiasco of unusable fuel...

Actually, since there's little hope of such brilliance escaping the confines of the factory before 2010, it would be more correctly labeled the "MGS-10," since the "-01" in the original's nomenclature was a reference to the year of the concept bike first seeing daylight, 2001. I can live w/o the added displacement; something in the 1000-1200cc range is perfectly adequate to my needs. Let's just git'er DONE!

This place Vintage Bike magazine is running an online poll of "what's your favorite marque?" Right now, Moto Guzzi is lagging far behind, at only 3%! Go make a choice [it doesn't have to be , but I kinda suspect it would be if you're hanging out here at v11LM.com & reading my post! ] and post back here when the %age score changes! Ride on,

In reverse order: Neither truly silly nor just plain stupid, altho' likely you'll get a bunch of flak from Ratch' for considering it in the 1st place for the PITA vs. negligible benefits of the project... Well, if they're the "lay flat" type of battery, then mounting them at an angle is usually fine too. Yes, heat off the engine will shorten battery life. My guess, is it will cut it in half at most. Think how much longer our car batteries would last if we didn't keep'em in hot engine compartments! OTOH, the battery under the back seat of my old Beetle didn't last that much longer than one mounted in an engine compartment. Go figure... The extra storage is about enough for a sandwich, so not much to get excited about there. And moving the dead wt. forward, while worthy, isn't enough to make the project an easy greenlight for me. If you've got a v11 LM, then mounting it way up front in the fairing would make more of a difference, but only moving it from the seat to the tank area isn't likely to be noticeable: about like riding around w/ a full tank of gas vs. near empty. Save yourself the trouble and just keep your tank full all the time? Anyway, we'll all want to see pictures when/if you go ahead w/ this project! Take lots!

Are you sure it's coming from the gearbox and not the final drive? [Hard to diagnose sounds over the internet, anyway. ] Best of luck; hopefully Pete or Greg will weigh in w/ some likely suspects...

After a quick trip to the hardware store for some completely unnecessary but suitable additional materials it's back to work on the seat! Since the voids we're looking to fill are so deep, I decided to add some space filler in prep for the next step, in an effort to keep the weight down. Now I have a lifetime supply of this stuff, but at only $4/can, I can afford to palm it off on my brother to fix the crumbly mortar in the brickwork of his house! The instructions for use need to be followed closely, and say to "only fill voids half full as product continues to expand during curing." Now, it comes out looking kind of like clumpy cottage cheese & didn't really fill evenly, so I got a little carried away, pushing the goo around to try & fill corners, etc. (which just created holes requiring more goo) . 5 minutes later when I took this pic, it had expanded slightly beyond the point I expected... ...& I had already had to scrape some of the extra off with an index card as a spatula as the product expanded. A closer look while still fresh. After letting it sit overnight to cure, it looks like this: and it's very apparent that the instructions are correct! So, I can't stress enough reading ALL the instructions for use & safety before using this stuff! Well since there's too much of this stuff now that it's cured, what to do? Luckily enough, it's easily trimmed with a single edged razor blade [available in the same place as the can of goo, if you don't already have some laying around from your last housepainting project. Like so: A closer shot: Now, as for the clump of goop in front of the buttress or divider, well, that's going to be such a thick area of coverage in the next stage that it doesn't make sense to trim that flush, it's fine as it is. Of course, you might get more carried away with it than I did, in which case, you'd want to do some trimming. YMMV, as they say... TTFN,

Thanks for the 1st hand testimony! That sort of info is priceless.

Sorry! Been goofing off the last two days [original vidiot; occasionally, I get OCD on a computer game, in this case, Civilization II on an old Mac that I was prepping to flog on eBay. Oy vey! I need a psychiatrist's help! ... I'm heading to Loewe's right now to get some additional raw materials necessitated by the unique design of our beloved v11 seat; a bit of a change in my experience w/ performing this stunt on previous seat pans w/ markedly less relief to their topography... BTW, I did a quick&dirty weigh-in on my wildly imprecise digital bathroom scale [only accurate to .5 lbs ] and the bare v11 seat pan is somewhere btw 1.5 & 2 lbs.; I'm thinking closer to the 1.5 lbs than 2, just from heft. I'll do a weigh in after the mods to the pan are made so we can determine how much of a drain on performance all this is...

Hmm. Never much cared if the balance is off a tad at idle. Always balanced at idle ['cause it's easy to do as a 1st step], then rolled slowly on the throttle to bring the engine up to 3k rpm ['cause above this rpm the mercury tubes are bouncing around too much and at full throttle there's little difference between 100% open & 95% open...] and balance there as closely as possible. Go back to idle and see how far things are off & halve the discrepancy. Double check at 3k rpm, & if within reason, Robert's your mother's favorite brother. [Or in my case, my dad's younger, only, brother... ] Whatever. The key is that the carbs [on bikes w/ those] or throttle bodies are balanced & pulling the same vacuum in the rpm range where the engine spends the most time/fuel! Obviously, few of us spend all of our time idling, & it will take many hours of idling to equal 5 minutes of runtime at full throttle. Because an engine with unequal vacuum on the cylinders is quite literally working against itself. As an example, on my old Yamaha XS Eleven [former VP of the XSives & have the patch to prove it! ], I would religiously keep track of mpg. It would avg. 32 for a month [big, inefficient engine on a bike w/ lard that makes our v11s look svelt!] and then wham!, drop to 28. Rebalance the carbs [a 30 minute operation, mostly because you had to remove the tank & hook up a remote fuel supply] and mileage immediately returned to normal. Yes, I could have spent time fiddling w/ the carbs to get better mileage, but gas was only $1/gal back then, so why bother? The XS still got double the mileage of my truck & outdid most cars, so I wasn't crying about it... Anyway, balancing at idle only resulted in a minor improvement to 30mpg on that bike [i try to avoid routes that result in a lot of stop'n'go idle time: I'd rather turn right on red & keep rolling on an alt. route than sit around waiting for a traffic sensor [b]negligently adjusted not to recognize motorcycles[/b] & hoping for a car to come up behind me while praying the BDC driving wouldn't ram me from behind... ] That's my experience. Balance at 3k rpm is more important than idle, but you may need to sacrifice a little at the higher rpm to get an even idle. They're both important, basically.

Bad enough that Piaggio is calling this the "V7 Classic;" they really ought to reserve the "telai rosso" color scheme for the big blocks!

Ouch! At that scale, the engine would need to be making 150+ hp to be "competitive" [ie, 2 lbs/hp for aero motors.] No wonder they used the smallblock to drive those Israeli drones!

Absolutely beautiful welding; I looked at it & said "that was done by a machine; it's too regular & perfect for handheld!.." Gorgeous work.

I was wondering about that. So the RSV rims are forged instead of cast?

What do you mean 'Verts aren't special? Ooooh, you're going to be in SO much hot water w/ the 'vert contingent over @ Wildguzzi forums: you'd better hope none o' them lurk on here! Seriously, your Convert is so quiet because of the fluid drive taking all the rattling back & forth of the flywheel, gears, u-joint, caused by the mighty ditch pump's uneven firing pulses out of the equation. [but you knew all that, you just didn't bother to stop & think about it... ] Heard a Ducati 696 go by just the other day while I was walking & thought to myself: "So that's what my SV would sound like w/o the water cooling jacket around the motor." Quite a racket, in comparison, but still darn quiet compared to the old a/c bikes of my youth. We've come a loooong way in re: noise management!

You know, I find it kind of strange the fixation with "saddlebags that can hold a full-face helmet" the moto-press seems to have. It's not like you'll be packing your helmet in the bags; you'll be wearing it! Nor do the vast majority of touring riders get to go jetting off on junkets to model introductions in exotic locales like S. Africa or Spain, & even if they did, there'd be no guarantee that the rental/promo bike you'd be riding on arrival would even have the correct type of mounts to fit your brand of luggage! So I suppose what I'm driving at is why on earth would anyone pay for moto-luggage that sticks out a mile from the side of your bike, making lane-splitting virtually impossible & ruining the already execrable aerodynamics of a motorcycle? It just doesn't make any sense. If you need that much capacity, break down & get a top box; sidebags shouldn't stick out any wider than the handlebars do...

I wonder how much it will go for? At that starting price, it would be a bargain: you're getting most of an MGS-01, with a pretty exclusive motor. But... where do you go for parts if the engine barfs? Maybe Barber will snap it up & stick it in his museum? I'm certain Leno is in the hunt, too!

This sounds like some sort of seizing, what with the gradual buildup of stiffness until they don't budge. Time for new seals? As others have pointed out, it's virtually impossible to get all the old oil out of the forks w/o complete disassembly, and the factory spec for oil "to fill" is for dry empties. So you may simply have too much oil, like has been suggested. Definitely read the links Ratch' provided, they're chock full of content; good to know even if you don't have any suspension problems!

Good to see your senses haven't completely left you & your new temptress is still a v-twin...

Perhaps logic will work: tell him that since the bike doesn't have a transponder, you don't want an RFID key, nor will he get you to pay for one by trying to bend you over & rape you for the cost of an RFID blank you don't need. Tell him you'll make him a deal: you'll pay for a normal, dull as socks standard key, and if it doesn't work you'll come back for the transponder key, ie: if you're wrong, he gets paid twice! Or tell him you don't *want* the key to work, since it's for giving to the monkeys at the car park [valet parking], 'cause you don't want them riding your bike around, but they still need to be able to lock/unlock it & push it around when you're not there... Best of luck trying to find a real locksmith.

On to the next phase! After Closeup. Seriously, not much is required, just eliminating the slickness of the original surface. A quick wash & rinse in the sink. My, look at the beads! This is some greeezy sh!t... Whatever shall we do? Enter our friend from the medicine cabinet... Don't hold back, be wasteful! There's another bottle just like it for only $1 at a 99cent store near you! Still looks wet, but no beading, water is gone, along w/ much of the oils in the surface of the plastic that would prevent anything bonding to it... Another 5 minutes, & poof! - totally dry. Just do yourself a favor and do this part outdoors during the day, so you don't have to have your windows open at night to keep the alcohol smell from giving you a headache... Of course, it only takes a little while for the fumes to clear, but be kind to your liver, it has to last a lifetime! Next installment is probably a few days away. Just put the seat pan up out of the way, it'll keep...

Sure it does. It's just that it happens so infrequently that only a fool goes out in the rain since the roads are slicker'n greased owl snot as the water lifts all the accumulated oil droppings from the cars, etc. up to the surface. It's only after the 2nd or 3rd day of rain that it's safe to ride a bike on the roads, & by that time, you're already comfortable w/ taking the car into work again, so the bike stays in the garage until the sun comes out again...

Actually, this would be one of the few instances where the CF part does make sense! CF parts are efficient transmitters of heat [transparent to infra-red?]; anyway, heat kills electronics, so a cooler alternator can only be a good thing. The effective wt. difference is negligible btw CF or alloy covers, but if it wasn't so dang ex$pen$ive, I'd go for the CF part. But given I'm cheap, I'd go w/ cleaning up the stock cover...

Lucky you! For those who want to read ahead in the class, the next step will be to roughen the upper surface [ie, side revealed when foam is removed] of the seat pan. Sandpaper wielded by hand works fine; we're not trying to remove anything but the slickness of the plastic itself so the surface has some "tooth." Power tools are fine if you've got them [wire brush on a drill, etc.], but unnecessary. Knock yourselves out... Hopefully, today on my lunch hour I'll remember to go get some needed materials for the next phase... Ride on!

That said, if you want a cat down out of a tree quickly, just turn a hose on it; they hate getting wet!