Skeeve

You've got a Ural?

That would be a "circular arrow" symbol (for turnover; it would look similar to the traffic sign for "roundabout ahead") w/ icicles hanging off it, wouldn't it?

Well, as everyone else has pretty much already provided the list [Ducati, Moto Guzzi, Scott, Honda, Triumph (only obvious connection, due to Sheryl Crow's song "Steve McQueen"), AJW, Titan (Harley Clone)], the only real question remaining is "what motorcycle do the hunters ride" which is actually the easiest of the quiz, since it only be the inimitable... ROKON!

So park the bike in gear; kills the "rolls off sidestand" problem in its tracks... Get a bike alarm w/ a remote & one of those "stop barks" dog collars & wire'em up to your bike so that the alarm de/activates the dog collar, and the dog collar shocks anyone jostling the bike. Hey, I just came up w/ a marketable product! Gimme back my idea!...

Bernoulli never sleeps...

Regarding point A: Didn't the change to plastic adapter occur after Aprilia took over Guzzi? It's purely conjecture on my part, but my thinking goes along the lines of: Guzzi has the new & improved replacement for the 1100 Spot/Sporti mostly sorted & ready for market, Aprilia buys out the company & puts everything in motion to produce what can be produced & get turnover/cashflow/any other tasty-good financial terms happening. As Aprilia's finances tighten due to spending too much on MotoGP, they start looking for cost savings anywhere & everywhere and switch to the plastic housing. point B: No reason to foresee breakage problems of the part: the plastic was almost certainly plenty strong during assembly before it went thru myriad heat cycles. By the time reports from the field started coming in that it was an unsatisfactory switch, Aprilia was already going into receivership and the new 4 valve was in the works anyway... why bother changing it now? C: Why do you find it hard to believe that the plastic doesn't work as well as the original brass part? If for no reason other than longevity, I'd rather it was a cheap galvanized steel part than plastic; it would still conduct heat better, and at least you wouldn't need to worry about it crumbling on you if you ever needed to remove it... [NB: I'd still rather have brass, or hey, how about this? Aluminum.... aaaahh, now there's a radical idea! ]

This will be an ongoing documentary of my attempts to remedy the gross shortcomings of the stock seat. Note that at no time to my hands leave the ends of my arms, nor do I say "Hey presto!", wave a magic wand, NOR DO I MAKE ANY CLAIMS WHATSOEVER that by following along my path you will achieve some higher nirvana nor even a more comfortable perch. What I do claim is that I will be following steps that largely duplicate those same steps that I have applied with some success in the past to other motorcycle seats, including some of the most notorious factory-issue torture devices known to modern motorcycle-dom, ie: the seats of a Suzuki SV650 and that of a 1986 Honda GL1200 Goldwing. Background & underlying (if you'll pardon the pun) philosophy: Modern motorcycles get a lot of criticism from the motorcycle press about how uncomfortable the seats are, how necessary aftermarket seats have become, etc. At one point, I was working on my motorcycle [the afore-mentioned SV: this was pre-Guzzi] and wondering "Why is this wonderful bike such a PITA on long rides?" I started thinking about how much better the old "bench" seats were on the classic bikes of my youth in the 70s, despite the lack of modern materials. In fact, practically all the "ancients" had to work with were some pieces of pressed-steel for the seatpan, a bunch of springs & horsehair for padding, and some old hide of the Naugha-beast laying around to cover it with... Yet while there were complaints of "the seat's too wide" or "too tall" or what have you, besides "seat is hard & you'll get tired of it on long rides," you rarely-if-ever read write-ups that opined "After an hour my butt hurt so bad I got off the bike and had wandering teams of cricket players beat on it to make it feel better..." like you're prone to do nowadays. I then thought further about how that all seemed to change in the late 70s and moving on into the 80s as the seat pans started changing into injection- or vacuum-molded bits of thermoplastic. After looking at the smooth underside of my SV's seat, I thought: "Where's all the reinforcement? Plastic is weak; there has to be something making this platform stand up under all the wt. of my passenger & me..." And it hit me: ALL THE ANCIENTS HAD TO WORK WITH WERE SOME BITS OF PRESSED STEEL &etc... Have you ever seen sharp corners in a steel stamping? NO! And those old seat pans were mostly flat, flat, flaaaaaat. And if you look at the underside of a modern motorcycle seat, it looks smooth too. But thermoplastic (like modern seat pans are made of) is weak & flexible in flat sheets; where's all the structural reinforcement? Why, it's on the other side! [This is very apparent on an SV seat btw: nice waffle pattern on the topside of those seat pans!] So what? The manufacturer fills in all those nooks and crannies w/ nice cushy foam and no problem, right? Wrong! What's the purpose of the foam? To collapse under the pressure of your weight and conform to your backside, evening out any pressure points. But if that foam is homogenous, how is the 2" layer over here supposed to behave the same as the 1" layer over there, resting on a reinforcing buttress? Newsflash: It CAN'T! O.K., end of philosophizing, let's get on with the show! Before we go any further, I just want to apologize for the (complete lack of) quality of the pics attached to this post. I started tearing into the seat before I thought of recording the process, and realized that the only camera I had around was the incredibly craptastic one built into my cell phone. At some point I may supply pics taken with a digital camera of greater merit, but don't get your hopes up... This is the enemy: The v11 seat has some unique features compared to many (if not most) other motorcycle seats. There's the recessed nuts for mounting the pillion cover/bumstop: There are the rivets securing the "grab strap" [Note: while it may in fact be a legal requirement in some jurisdictions as a "passenger safety" issue, the strap across the v11 seat in reality ONLY serves to secure the seat cover against the step in the foam underneath; the strap is far too tight & poorly positioned to be of any use to a pillion...] Also note the plentitude of staples securing the cover; you'll need to remove those. I used my pocketknife, but a small, thin-bladed screwdriver could also perform satisfactorily: The seat strap is riveted in place; you'll need to drill out the rivets. Fortunately, they're only aluminum pop rivets, & a power drill makes short work of them. I used a 23/64, iirc, but it's not a critical dimension: just eyeball a drill that looks like it's the same diameter as the rivet head protruding above the washer surface; that pretty much guarantees you'll drill out the shaft of the pop rivet before getting all the way thru the head. And the pop rivets Guzzi used have hollow shafts, so the drill mostly guides itself [this means they're easily dealt with by a hand-held drill, rather than requiring a drill press, tho' you'll need to pay some attention]: Peel away baby, peel awaaayyy... [w/ apologies to Led Zepplin... ] The stock foam is attached to the seat base at the edges w/ some very gummy glue; you'll need to patiently pick at the edges where they wrap around the edge of the seat pan, working your way around the perimeter. Of course, this is only important if you intend to reuse the stock foam: if you're just going to chuck it & have a qualified upholsterer work up a new seat on the old pan for you, then just remove the cover & rip the foam off in great handfuls! After this is done, you end up w/ this The foam (set it aside for now): Behold the source of our riding agony! This picture is worth some in-depth scrutiny. First off, notice the many rather sharp corners and odd plateaus defined by those corners and recesses. Now, oddly enough, that plateau that is pretty much at the center of the seat, with the rather semi-circular front? That serves no real purpose! If you put the seat back on the bike, & look at where it the cavity formed on the underside of the seat by the semi-circular portion this plateau rests when the seat is in position, you'll realize that the Guzzi engineers were probably trying to make room for a bigger tool kit or the back edge of the ECU, but they missed it by a mile! Moreover, that round promontory is going to behave like your much-larger-than-you-prison-cell-mate, & bang up against your bunghole all the time. Hmm... Look at what Guzzi did to the passenger: Ouch! Those mountains at the edge of the seat aren't going to promote greater understanding & rider-sympathy in any passenger I know! Notice I reversed the nut that secures the internally-threaded recessed nut/stud that the seat cover bolts to so that you could see how MUCH wasted space is used to convert the pillion's portion of the seat into a modern-day product of the Spanish Inquisition's favorite torturers: If that nut is 1" across flats, then there's at least 1/2" of "too much plastic" going on here! [Old joke: "Are you a glass is half-empty or glass is half-full person?" "I'm a production engineer: you've simply got twice as much glass as you require for the job!.." ] Retrieving the foam, you can kind of match it up w/ the pan to see where there's protrusions of excess foam that match up w/ hollows in the pan and vice-versa, but in come cases, there's an unfilled void! And if we make changes to the voids in the surface of the pan, than clearly we'll need to change the configuration of the matching foam surface. [Again, this is assuming reuse of the material. I'm cheap, & poor besides, or else I'd just send this all to Rich Maund & let him sort it out... ] One last gander at the seat foam for now, and you can see that it has one glaring flaw in that convex curve [going from left to right]; I don't know about you, but my backside is mostly convex, ill-equipped with any sort of matching concavity to correspond with that convex curve in the seat foam, so right there, someone in Mandello failed to do their homework! Of course, this may have been purposeful, to make it appear like there actually was enough pillion real-estate available to transport more than a midget or child, but I suspect it was more a matter of "stylistic integrity," and in fact it does make for a very smooth and appealing line to the machine, esp. with the spiffy bumstop covering up the wholly inadequate pillion perch! Call me a purist, but the v11 is no race bike, and if I can't carry a passenger for 5 minutes w/o hearing complaints, then it's failing to meet requirements, and maybe, just maybe, some of the style will have to be sacrificed for greater functionality [yeah, I know I'll never make it on the custom bike circuit... ] On the other hand, the passenger actually gets a more even & thicker foundation than the pilot, despite getting shorted on actual seating area: That's all for now folks: more to come later as opportunity permits! [iow: "don't hold your breath!"] Ride on,

Yes. Too much typing, esp. when everyone knows what we're talking about. Think of "choke" as shorthand for what we-all-know-what-it-really-is...

Fine, we don't have a "choke lever" on the bars. And Brits don't carry around "electric torches" either, since a torch is a stick w/ an open flame at the end. Have you got any other mono- or bi-syllabic term for the little lever on the left handlebar that functions like a choke did on a motorcycle w/ carbs that's just been started & is having trouble ticking over on a cold engine? 'Cause we're using that little knob, lever, whatchamajigger like it was a choke lever, so it just kinda pops out that way when speaking or writing about it, even tho' everyone already knows it's a "fast-idle widget."

Plastics [for the most part] are mostly poor conductors [of electricity, & therefore by roundabout physics, likewise heat.] They are, however, very cheap to use in quantity production. Think how happy the Aprilia bean counters were to replace the original brass part which must have cost at least $.50/ea with a plastic substitute that ran at most one-tenth the price? Note: accountants are very rarely qualified to make engineering decisions. That doesn't stop them from doing so frequently on the basis of "corporate solvency." IF you ride your Guzzi long enough, the air in the gap btw the sensor and the aluminum in the head, and the plastic housing, will all eventually come up to temp and the sensor will begin transmitting the correct (or close enough) value to the ECU. Take your Guzzi on an all-day trip, burning thru several tankfuls in succession. Keep track of your mileage [don't forget the odo reads in km, even on an mph speedo; there's a thread around here somewhere dealing w/ that odd disparity] each tankful, and watch it magically rise as the engine eventually heat soaks and everything starts working like it should. But since you say you already filled the gap w/ thermal paste & it had no f/x, I'm thinking your problem lies elsewhere. Did you check the continuity of the wires to/from the ecu to the sensor? What about the duff sensor issue? Your situation seems odd, since this issue has been adequately resolved in the past by the course of action already recommended, so if this hasn't worked for you, we need to look for another source for the problem...

You'll notice both bags have strap mount attachments; that's 'cause suction cups are inevitably a short-term solution [they let go.] While a purposely-designed suction cup mount would probably have satisfactory reliability[1], I think a better long-term solution would be to epoxy some steel tabs in appropriate spots on your tank and use a magnetic bag. If you pursue the suction-cup mounted bag, I strongly advise you to obtain some glycerin or use liquid soap [high glycerin fraction] on the cups; it won't dry out as rapidly as water will, and so the cups will continue holding that much longer. But it *will* eventually dry out too, & if it happens at speed on the freeway, it'll be "bye bye tank bag, it was nice to know ya..." Ride on, [1] Quality, cam-lever suction cups mounted w/ a particular tank in mind so that they have a nice, flat surface to glom onto. Ever notice how nicely rounded & almost completely devoid of flat surfaces a v11 tank is? Part of what makes them look so sexy & organic...

In a 1930s, Buck Rogers-esque fashion maybe, I'll grant that. In my eyes? It looks good, but it's still several ticks below the v11LM, which is just lovely, but is itself a notch down from the 1100 Sport/Daytona (which is still the prettiest bike ever, to me! ] But nevertheless, definitely a looker!

Yeah, yeah, I know: in fact, I've been the one preaching the "Guzzi needs to lose the 1940's hemi-head technology and get a more efficient combustion chamber like H-D did 20-odd years ago" gospel for what, the past 2 years? Hellooo, McFly! Is anyone listening? (sigh) Sorry, don't mean to go off on you. And yes, my crack about the "quoting 883 numbers" wasn't exactly factual, but it was played for laughs. Sue me! All of this brings us back to the "cleaning up the squish band" topic, since that will not only help alleviate the pinging problems many have encountered, but will also generate better fuel mileage. Hey, a mod that pays for itself! How can you not love it?

Yes, yes, I know all that. I was just making the observation that CA drivers have to live with the cr@p fuel economy year round, whereas most others don't have to for 6 months of the year. Closest place I can buy real gas is AZ, a measly 200 miles away... Chock full of the stuff that's not in CA gas any more; it smells different, like gas did back when I used to pump it in my first "real" job. Glad I don't have to smell like it all the time anymore, but I still wish I could buy it. 15% lower fuel economy for 10% lower emissions seems like a fool's trade; you wind up burning 5% more gas w/ the same emissions to go the same distance! Idiot bureaucrats...

Nope: H-D still uses the same Jiffy-stand design (pretty much) that they have since the 50s. Why fix what ain't broken and nobody else seems to have right anyway?

What he said! GMD Computrack notes that 25deg rake (& I forget how much trail; 4.25"?) is the "sweet spot" for handling; just a tad slower than the 23-24deg that most rice rockets sport today. The lowly SV650 is right at 25deg too, and it's widely regarded as a sweet handler; like the mythical Student Prince guitar, it makes even newbies feel like virtuosos... Anyway, the short frame spineys seem to fall into that "sweet spot" zone that the folks at GMD like so much [and as they make their living from frame straightening, it seems like they should know what works or doesn't], so you should be very happy! I'm willing to bet that if you keep your tire pressures correct, you'll never experience that "hi speed twitchiness" that the press stuck it to Guzzi about & led the factory to change things a tad. I had a friend working on the inside who revealed that moto journos, for the most part, aren't as sharp as they'd lead you to believe...

[Help! Help! I'm laughing so hard my ribs ache!... ]

A wise decision, weedhoppa! Your Coppa doesn't have 2" exhaust valves, so 2" headers are a non-starter. I don't much care who's pipe you're smokin', the theories all point to pipes no more than 10% larger or smaller than the exhaust valve, from what I've seen. Your new & improved pipes look O.K. Now get'em coated w/ ceramic and ride off into the sunset...

Soak it in vinegar. Doesn't do much for the book, but it does eliminate the cat pee smell!

Every (functioning) carb I've ever seen has a "reference" line at the edge of the carb bellmouth that feeds into the float bowl; this normalizes the pressure in the float bowl against ambient to enable utilization of the relative vacuum created by the constriction in the throat of the carb created by the slide/butterfly (1) ["Welcome to fundamentals of carbeurator theory 101"... ] Now, as to needing to balance the "ram air" pressure in the fuel tank so that gas can get the float bowl, that's a different matter irrelevant to your statement above. Anyway, the ram air theory behind reversing the heads has some merit, tho' not due to "ram effect;" it's more a matter of getting cooler, denser air from the front of the bike before it has a chance to heat up in its trip around the hot engine. Unfortunately, as someone else already pointed out, the ex. pipes kinda need to be in front on an air-cooled engine, at least 4 strokes, to keep the ex. valve from burning up. On a water-pumper, putting the header exiting the rear has some interesting advantages, so much so that when noted bicycle maker Cannondale was looking at branching out into dirtbikes, their prototype had the "reversed but really forward" engine config... Ride on! (1) -yes Virgina, there are butterfly carbs out there w/o any kind of slide at all; I think Revco builds one...

Test the sensor? Maybe you got a duff one...

Very likely. Of course, here in CA we have "winter fuel" all year round! Just for insurance, folks w/ models prone to vapor lock might want to (loosely) wrap some aluminum foil around their fuel lines to act as a heat shield. Seems like a considerable portion of the heat leading to VL would be radiant heating from the cylinder heads, and a simple reflector would be effective. Of course, for the added "bling" factor & convenience of never having to worry about corrosion, a little gold leaf on the lines would be even better! Ride on!

CA has a magic number of 7500 miles to determine whether or not a vehicle being registered counts as "new" or "used;" this is important for tax purposes as well as whether or not the vehicle is subject to all the smog restrictions then in effect, etc. In short, never try to register an out of state vehicle w/ less than 7500 miles on the odo in CA, it's just not worth the trouble... As far as your question, my understanding from Dave Richardson is that all Guzzis from '97? forward were brought in as 50-state legal, probably because MGNA (& now Piaggio) didn't want to have to deal w/ keeping track of which bikes *could* go to which dealer, vs. "any dealer gets any bike we have, in whatever order." My guess is that this was fallout from having to deal w/ the 1100 Spot, which was a 49-state bike (& naturally, had it's biggest demand in CA! ) On the V11s, you'll need to remove the hugger (rear fender) to reveal the EPA stickers on the swingarm. I have it on good authority they're all there, just effectively hidden. The advantage to bringing in a 7500+ mile motorcycle is that they're irrelevant, all you have to do is get a CHP to sign off that all the standard smog equipment is there [on motorcycles, this amounts to the charcoal canister & stock exhaust cans] and the DMV can't say "boo." Supposedly. YMMV (& almost certainly will, any time the CA DMV gets involved. ) Best o' luck!

Only part of it. The other part would be you're quoting 883 Sportster mileage figures for the 1200!..

All well & good, & thank you very much for the hard data, and lest I sound critical w/ the next bit, let me assure you it's not intended as such in any way, I just feel that I should point out a small detail... you crossed up the overall drive ratios at the very last! Easy to do in the heat of the moment; transcription errors are a particular plague of my own, so I totally understand... Let's try those calcs over, shall we? Nero Corsa [17" wheel w/ lower profile but wider tire]: (12.4*8000)/(168*4.1737)= 141.5(plus many digits) = 139mph claimed top speed Sport 1100 [18" wheel w/ narrower but taller profile tire]: (12.75*8000)/(168*4.0783)= 148.9(plus many digits) = 150mph claimed top speed By "claimed top speed," I'm using figures drawn from memory that either originated w/ the moto press or with the factory. Sue me. Anyway, I'd say that once the correct figures are dropped in, your (Edelbrock's) formula works out pretty close to "empirical" data.