Skeeve

You gots metal! Most HF stuff comes in cardboard so cheap that I only use the term advisedly, in that it's paper, and used the way real cardboard is used. Wow, a metal box. Yeah, o.k., it was really thin metal, but hey, that's a step up from cheaper-than-cheap recycled-Gideon-bible-based cardboard! I wonder if the Gideon's people know they're just supplying China, Inc. w/ paper pulp? Metal, you say? Who'd a thunk it...

It's the whole "bike boutique" thing. H-D, Ducati, BMW, and now Vespa. Guzzi is a prime candidate if the masses ever start to notice them. Ken The thing to remember is that Vespa has a whole cultural history behind it, much like [altho' in complete opposition to] Harley-Davidson. Piaggio made the decision from the outset, when re-entering the U.S. market, that Vespas would only be available from glitzy boutiques, even going so far as legally wresting the Vespa, USA rights from the guy who'd been sole support for the brand during the interregnum ['92-'02?] I may have some of the facts messed up, but the crux of the matter is that Piaggio made the conscious decision to capitalize upon their nostalgia and brand-recognition, exactly as H-D has done, only of course, in a more polished and smooth fashion, not because they're Italian, but because that was all part of the plan, as opposed to basically backing into it out of accident & desperation, the way Harley-Davidson did. The reason you won't see Moto Guzzi go that route is because they have fundamentally no brand recognition stateside! That's more the fault of de Tomaso back in the 70s than anyone or -thing else, cutting off shipments of El Dorados, etc. just as Guzzi was starting to develop a rep for building good road-munchers. But that's all ancient history now; it should be sufficient that the relative obscurity of the marque will thankfully prevent the 'boutiquefrippery' of our beloved steeds. OTOH, it means that the silly little trinkets that keep boutiques afloat w/ their obscence markups are sorta thin on the ground...

Yeah, I know. That's why I want to know if the Eklinds are good. 'Cause a good set of tools is a joy forever, but a functionally identical good set of tools and $3 is a joy forever & a cup o' Starbucks... Ride on! PS: I don't actually drink coffee, let alone waste $3 on a $.50 cup o' joe, so let's just say that it's "...a joy forever and 1/10 of a share of FUN, or 1/12 of GE, or 1/9 of GT or..."

On a multitude of occasions, the advice to 'get a quality set of hex wrenches' for use w/ the apparently Guzzi hex socket screws has come up. Enco has Eklind brand 9pc metric sets on sale this month for about $6/set. I've never heard of this brand, I'm certain that it's superior to the P.O.S. "Chicago" hardware from Harbor Freight, but is it truly of Scandinavian quality, or is it just more of the same far east dreck being sold under a fancy name? In short, is the Bondhus set worth the $3 premium over the Eklind, or is the Eklind set a reasonable price/performance option? I need your please! TIA

Translated from gibberish: ====== The newest Moto Guzzi Griso 8v, powered by the never-before-seen "Quatrovalvole" motor, will be the Queen of the fifth edition of the GMG, in Mandello del Lario from Friday the 14th thru next Sunday the 16th of September. The completely redesigned new model of the Eagle brand, from the motorcyclist's point of view, represents the most advanced evolutionary stage of the legendary V-twin cardan-shaft-drive range of Moto Guzzis. The 1200cc engine of the new 8v Griso, with 4 valves per cylinder, is in fact a completely innovative design that boasts 563 totally new parts (equal to 75% of the motor) versus the old motor w/ 2 valves per cylinder. The Griso 8v is a new technical and styling achievement for Moto Guzzi, but it is not the only attraction for GMG 2007. The extensive "Motors of Moto Guzzi" exhibit, from single cylinder motors to twins to supercharged multis conveys to you all the genius and technical creativity of Moto Guzzi. The first Griso 8v to leave the assembly at Mandello will be previewed to the world and will be given away by drawing to the luckiest attendee enrolled at GMG 2007! ====== Wow! A free Guzzi 8v, and the first one off the line! Sure hope they gave the Luigis the day off and assembled that one in a clean room: the eyes of the world are upon you & all that... certainly wouldn't look good for the lucky winner to have a breakdown leaving GMG in front of the press! Wish I had the money to go & attend: it sounds like a lot of fun, nevermind winning the bike [not likely for me: I manage to lose at "buy one get one" promotions! ] Ride on!

Any pricing forecast?

And d@mn glad of it, I am! We're supposed to be in the middle of another glacial period: crank up the thermostat anuther couple degrees, while you're at it! Brrrr... I'm a sunny skies & beach goin' sort myself. Don't need any sabretooth cats or wooly mammoths knockin' at my front door, no sirree! And lest we forget, the next time some Sierra Clubbin' tree hugger accosts you outside the supermarket to sign their latest bit of anti-human legislation, remember the correct answer is "Pave the Planet! My motorcycle needs more roads!.."

Well, maybe not electronics [delicate things that they are], but thank heavens we're talking electrical connections, and real world uses. WD40 is for water-displacement. Hitting the switch w/ contact cleaner after the fact is all well & good, but first things first: before you can cure, you should prevent. In all reality, it would be best if kick-stand switches came w/ gold-plated contacts, so the corrosion issue would be moot, but until then, hit it w/ WD40 after ever ride in the wet, & w/ contact cleaner once a year or so & all should be well... Sorry if my suggestion for WD40 sounded like using it as a contact cleaner; I suspected that there was still water in the switch after the wet ride, causing spurious grounding of the switch. Ride on,

Bike running fine dry & then bad all over after exposure to the wet screams "electrical gremlins!" to me; take all connections apart, de-oxidize or spray w/ WD40*, reconnect. Oh yeah, check your battery's ground connection first; if that's worked loose, it will produce all the symptoms you describe and is a quick & easy fix compared to tearing apart all the connections if that's the culprit... Best o' luck! * - WD40 is not a lubricant; it's basically fish-oil in a light solvent, developed to deal w/ condensation problems in delicate electrical connections. It was the 40th formulation of a water-dispersal agent tested; it worked, hence "WD40."

Regular maintenance of said cutout [spritzing w/ WD40] might be a better alternative...

Carbon fiber is even lighter & stiffer! Unfortunately, epoxy doesn't like extended exposure to hot solvents, & you really, really wouldn't want stray bits of CF floating around the engine scoring things... Seems like aluminum or steel pushrods are it for awhile; what would work much better would be nice fat thinwall hollow tubes to be stiffer yet lighter, but there're space constraints on that approach. Guess we'll just have to get by w/ what we already have... That's something that gets me every time I read it: where's the thrust washer to take up all the end forces these helical gears are putting into the cam, crank & oil pump? Yeah, o.k., so helical gears are quieter than straight spurs, but the added friction and end thrust certainly makes a simpler approach worth looking into, doesn't it? Why am I the only one thinking about this? And Pete, if you're done w/ those gears, can I have'em? I need diametral pitch measurements &etc if I'm ever going to figure out how to make some straight gears on my hobby lathe [don't worry, I won't make'em out of aluminum: that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! These aren't sewing machines or computer plotters, they're IC engines w/ big honking pistons! It's all brass for me, at least until I get the kinks worked out... ] Heh. Now Pete, how tightly the nut who criticized your gear-installing abilities has his tinfoil hat torqued down is vitally important, don't you doubt it! Since I hear most often of bolts failing when trying to undo the from-factory torqued bolts on car cams, I suspect that "just about as torqued as you can get'em" is probably the right amount, but I'll defer to your far greater experience if that's alright w/ you... Yeah, I think that many of the people who're hot on the idea of gear-driven cams are that way because that's what the original V700, Ambassador, Telai Rossos, etc. had & hence if Guzzis were supposed to come w/ chain-driven cams then that's the way that God & Giulio Carcano would have made them. What they're forgetting in that reasoning is that Carcano & Umberto Todero with him [& Lino Tonti after Carcano] were all engineers w/ their background in racing! So of course their 1st iteration of a motor is going to have gear driven cams: nothing else likely even occurred to them! Down the road, the production engineering gets done & whaddaya know, chain-drive just make more [dollars &] sense. Doesn't mean it can't work as well or even better for 99.9% of the riders out there, just that it wasn't their first choice as engineers firmly committed to racing anything they could. [& good for us that they were that way, God bless'em, or we probably wouldn't like our Guzzis half so much!]

Yes, the stock Griso headers mated w/ the g#dawful ash-can exhaust is 2->1; Griso headers mated to a V11 w/ a suitably ingenious collector would retain the stock classic good looks of the dual exhaust, & so be 2-1-2... Think of Enzo's "Cobra" exhaust, only w/ auditory acceptability and using a preponderance of factory parts [always a good thing when trying to sneak it past the ever-zealous gendarmerie...]

Because we're human. Just because you asked...

I can't recall if it was Greg or Pete who stated at one point that the "increased compression" was almost certainly pure advertising dept. hyperbole, since none of the relevant part #s had changed in the pre- or post-'03 engines, but I do seem to recall seeing that around here somewhere... I'm in agreement w/ you on the observation that the smoother powerband isn't worth the added failure points in the ex-line, esp. as it seems the real culprit is the dang pre-muffler [much as the predecessors to the V11, the 1100 Spot/Sporti had been plagued by the "colostomy bag" plenum that similarly upset the powerband.] I'd rather see if the Griso headers can be retrofit to the V11 and get a proper 2->1->2 exhaust than shell out the ducats for RacerX's lovely replacments for the stock units, but that's just me. Fortunately, I haven't the need to do any of that yet, which is a lucky thing since I'm broke...

The color is probably an electrolytic corrosion inhibitor that's applied after shot-peening intended to improve longevity: rockers have been known to fail, so most shops would keep at least one pair on hand on the shelf, possibly for years. That's my guess, & I'm sticking to it...

I believe the Guzzi valve covers are aluminum castings. Typically, anodizing only works on wrought aluminum [particular Al alloys] & cast aluminum has too much magnesium or copper or zinc in it to allow for anodizing. In short, you may be out of luck, but don't quote me on that. You'll need to do some further investigation. Keep the rest of us informed w/ whatever you find out...

IIRC, I think what Yammie was actually patenting was casting the balance tube into the head between multiple parallel cylinders, not the actual balance tube idea itself. Not that it's important, just to clarify my earlier statement...

Hey Joe: I'm not certain, but I don't think any forum members have actually swapped out the wide wheel yet [Pete Roper's trying to find someone to swap w/ him for his Scura, but I don't know if its a done deal yet...]; but iirc, the 2000 & 2k1 V11s came w/ the 5 inch rear wheel, vs. the 5.5 inch on 02+ models. So they get to go from 170 down to 160 to get the same results as the riders of later bikes going from 180 to 170. Ride on!

Gorgeous, but... Davida doesn't offer a FF helmet? 3/4 helmets are for tourers & cruiser types who don't ride fast enough to think about how in a crash you'll go over the bars & slide on your face a ways... Ride safe, & wear it in good health!

I chose "kill switch" even tho' the correct option* wasn't listed. * - ie, "Whatever is most convenient at the time." Ride on!

Au contraire mon frere! The rockers are steel forgings w/ hardened bits etc. because anything less gets hammered to death in short order! And it's still rather simple to over torque small dia. screws like the locknuts mentioned. I'm certain somewhere amongst the threads on torque values, someone has already posted the guidelines to be used based on the base dia. of a threaded steel part; if not, it's prolly out there somewhere on the 'net.

Hey Greg (our inside operative @ MI... ) How long does it take to update Guzziology after new changes are made, generally? For instance, the new 8v gets [hypothetically] displayed at Milan this fall, and first ships some time next spring of '08 [yeah.. riiiiight!] Do all the Moto International elves gather round and start reading the available lit from Guzzi & then start tearing into the first model that arrives @ MI to check things out, or is it a matter of waiting until the 1st sacrificial customer's bike comes in for service & you guys offer him a deal on a slow turnaround so you can get a peek inside? Just wondering about the process of assembling the knowledge contained w/ in the mighty tome of Guzziology & when it gets updated following the release of a new model... Of course, you've dangled some tasty bits of information about all the undisclosed differences between various Brevas, etc. here in v11LM, so I imagine all those particulars have already made it into the latest version of Guzziology, but just how do you guys do it? I don't imagine it's all Dave Richardson's doing anymore, is it? That's just unfathomable... One o' these days, I simply must get a copy for my own! PS: seems to me if there was some way to knock a few bux off the regular price by doing a group buy, you'd have plenty of takers around here. We seem to have more than our fair share of propeller-headed mechanics on list who just love all the juicy details [sayeth one of them... well, except for the 'mechanic' part: I'm just propeller-headed! ] PPS: Just got Ian Falloon's V7 Sport & LeMans Bible & it inspired me to reread your Moto Guzzi Big Twins; any likelihood of a revised edition of the latter from you, now almost 8 years on? [i know: more like 10 years on for you, but I'm going by the 1999 copyright date from the publisher info...] Regardless, it's a fab book; hope you're still getting good sales numbers!

If I'm reading it right, I think the OP is referring to the difference between an '02 V11 & his new '04. No difference in powerplants beyond the addition of the front x-over [to control the 4-5k rpm hole in the powerband] & the change to the fuel-pump/gas tank/etc. to cure the vapor-lock issues, so the only "power difference" would be resulting from different TPS settings & valve lash settings [ie, initial setup + wear & tear/breakin...]

Just curious as to why you'd make that swap? Are the v11 electrics that much better than the Sporti's? I thought they were all wonky, just using different iterations of the Marelli ECU? Please expand upon your decision...

Looks like someone did - note the water in the headlight. Seriously, if it's been raining elk & moose [from reports, way, way heavier than cats & dogs!] for a day & the bike has been laying down in a puddle since some time in the middle of the night before, why wouldn't the photog take a pic of the damage before worrying about righting the bike [just so it can fall over again when the rain picks up?] Real bummer for all involved, but at least nobody at the rally died: there's that to be thankful for! Compare that to Burning Man: 30,000 oddjobs out in the middle of the Blackrock, no natural disasters necessary, at least 4 or 5 die every year in accidents just toing & froing... And next year, everyone who lived thru this year's rally gets a free "I Survived the National" t-shirt! Let's start taking the collection now...