Skeeve

Doh! Sorry, thought there was some sort of group buy that would benefit everyone from getting as large a # at one time as possible. Scratch me off then, since I live stateside...

More vaporware: it's got the 8v "oops, we leaked it again" engine in that thing! Don't hold your breath; it only makes you blue...

Yes, I'm interested.

Seeing the increasing momentum, might I suggest waiting for the additions to the preorder list to die off to a low rate before finalizing? In your original post, you mentioned that the minimum order size was 50, even tho' you would have to pay the rate for 100 clock faces; it seems to me, that the closer you can get to that 100 [or even, gasp! go over!], the better for you, and of course, for anyone who might be coming late to the party. This thread has run for little over a week, so far, and you're already close to your initial goal of 50; if you reach your goal in the space of another week, then holding the pre-orders open another 2 weeks [ie, the same amount of time it took to reach your original goal] wouldn't necessarily represent a huge delay, but may enable enough wafflers [like me! ] to figure out some way to swing the finances & take part. Just an idle thought... BTW, thanks for coming up with this, it's a great opportunity!

My understanding is that the 6-speeds all utilize a completely different range of gearing than the old 5-speeds. Accordingly, I don't think a spoke-wheel from any of the Tontis [recent Cali's, Stone, Al/Ti models] will work. If you run carbs, won't you have to pick up the ECU off the '96 or earlier Spot? I don't know if the later model ECU can handle no output to injectors... As for which carbs, either Mikuni or Keihin flat-slides [FCRs?] are the only logical choice. Or, you can get some Edelbrocks [used to be Revco? - design evolved from Lectrons; Edelbrock bought'em a few years ago & markets them to the Harley crowd. They work well...] Best o' luck!

Oh, they've improved a great deal, but none of them are suited to popping in&out of tunnels; of course, how is this worse than wearing regular dark glasses that don't change at all? At least if you're wearing photochromics, there's some hope of your eyes' natural abilities/range of adjustment to be able to take up the slack with the glasses' help...

Yep, polarized glasses do all of that, altho' you can often times get the LCDs to give you some info if you turn your head right or left about 45degrees. I actually like the odd-ball shading I get with the polarized glasses and my face-shield: it seems the face-shield does some circular polarization, so that the oil slicks on the road [which would normally be completely hidden by the vertical polarizer in the glasses] show up as strangely luminescent patches on the pavement. Good information, & meanwhile, it still cuts down significantly on the glare from car windshields, etc. The sun-sensor lenses *do* require UV to function, so if you've got a coated faceshield that blocks UV, then they won't work. Most clear faceshields pass almost 100% of the available UV, so you get a nice sunburn when riding with them and the photochromatic lenses function just peachy... [i hate getting sunburned while riding; I never remember to 'goop up' before taking off...

I think it's habitual for manufacturers to quote their numbers in certain ways: "Dry weight" - the prototypes are dismantled completely, then each individual part is cleaned, weighed in a vacuum chamber, and tallied. Since air, oil, water, grease, thread locker, fuel, air filters & batteries are "consumables," their weights are not included in any "Dry Weight" sums. Neither is the weight difference between all the billet aluminum & titanium parts that had to be exchanged for cast or steel parts for production. "Fuel Capacity" - this is measured with a fuel tank that has been set out in the midday sun in equatorial Africa for an hour, to expand as much as is reasonably possible. This is then filled to capacity with fuel that has been chilled to -40F [you really can't expect anyone to ride in weather much colder than this, since the engine oil turns to jello and the battery can't turn the thing over when it's frozen solid...] The tank is then "burped" & shaken to make certain that all the air is out, and filled to capacity again. The volume of gasoline it took to fill the tank is monitored and recorded. This has nothing to do with what can actually be extracted from the tank, w/o going to extreme measures: this is why Suzuki claims a capacity of 4.3 U.S. gallons for the tank on a 1st gen SV650, even tho' when ridden empty it takes 3.5 gallons to fill to the gas cap. Dead reserve; ya' gotta love it! "0-60mph & 1/4 mile times" - the motorcycle is equipped with a programmable air shifter that will only upshift at 500rpm past the torque peak (or redline, whichever comes first.) A trained capuchin monkey is used as the rider [either that, or a six year old. Monkeys are very strong for their size, but children are made of rubber & are completely fearless...] Since the rider cannot reach the ground, the bike is held up by assistants. Rather than a "christmas tree," they have optical gates that record the speed based upon when the bike breaks the first beam; no reaction-time lag to cloud the measurements that way! About a pint (4 deciliters for you metric types) are in the tank; no more - what are you trying to do, lose all the benefits we got from using such light riders? Anyway, the monkey is trained/kid is told to jump off when the bike stops rolling. That way, you can ditch the weight of the brake system too. It's o.k., since the bike is just used the one time for the speed testing & then shredded to hide all the special work that went into blueprinting the engine, oversize valves, stronger valve springs to get that extra 500rpm before redline, etc. etc...

Isn't a flasher just a fancy name for a special relay w/ a capacitor across two poles? Can't the lead be moved from a "normally open" pole to a "normally closed" one to give us the [clearly obvious choice] of having the turn-signal light immediately & then flash? At any rate, I though flashers were pretty much self-contained, fairly plug&play additions to an electrical circuit; shouldn't it be straightforward to find an alternate that works correctly from some other brand/source? Don't mind me, I don't know nuffin' about the magic smoke, I just like to look at the twinkling lights...

+1, A+B! Stay well, Edge! We can wait...

If?IF?!? - everyone here on v11LM must take the poll! Norge! Norge! Norge! Come on! We can put Guzzi on the map! [At least, this ridiculously tiny little web-based portion of it! ] As for my other suggestions, they're just that: suggestions. I know Wendy via my LABikers connexion & long-standing subscription to MCN [the American MCN, not the sad Brit bike-rag...]; have no idea who Alice Sexton is nor about her connexion to Ed Milich, so regardless of who you choose to vote for, I strongly believe a little time on the part of everyone here at MCN could make a positive difference in the overall perception of Moto Guzzi by others if the Norge takes top honors in its category.

Go here and vote for your favorite in each category. Pay special attention to category #9 "Best new in 2006 motorcycle:" the correct answer is in the middle, #3, Moto Guzzi Norge. Let's face it: when was the last time a Moto Guzzi was even considered for participation in a "best of" poll that wasn't being run by a Moto Guzzi brand-oriented site [such as this one?] As highly as I regard the Buell Ulysses, I had to throw my vote at the Norge: if Guzzi wins some added brand recognition, it may mean that people may actually stop asking "Is that some kind of Harley?" - !!! - the ramifications are intense! PS: not to tell you how to vote or anything, but I'd also suggest the best motorcycle show is EICMA, concept bike is the Moto Morini, and blogger is Wendy Moon... Ride on!

"Cynicism is nothing more than the smoke rising from the ashes of burnt out dreams..." Glad to hear your son has a got a better grip on reality than most of his generation!

Well, not as such: e-cars are generally lighter than big land yachts; the only wear & tear on roads comes from vehicle weight [which is why the rt. lane of I5 is such a sh!thole, but the left is o.k.; all the big rigs drive in the rt lane & tear it up constantly... Sorry for you out-of-CA types, this is a bit of a "locals only" analogy! ] Ergo, the bigger & less fuel efficient your vehicle necessarily is, the more you *should* be paying toward road maintenance. [begin political rant] Of course, the real issue is that if the tax monies collected on fuel & road taxes actually went toward what they were ostensibly collected for (instead of being rerouted to useless social "feel good" programs that only encourage increasing dependence upon an ever-growing nanny state by those whose votes are being bought by diverting the funds from their proper use to these travesties of govt. "beneficence",) well, then the roads would all look like those in "poor" states like Oregon & Arizona, whose highways are like the mythical frickin' Eldorado - paved w/ gold, compared to the cr@p roads we've got to put up w/ here in CA!... Say what you will about the Governator's betrayal of the voters who elected him in the recall election, his legacy will be getting the legislation ramrodded thru that prevents the state from ripping off the road fund more often than every 3 years out of 5! [end political rant] So anyway, the real question is "shouldn't those users of socially anti-productive vehicles be taxed [penalized] in order to encourage more efficient use of our precious national resources [in this case, U.S. foreign debt]?

Any idea how to ship something like this? I'd expect it to get held up as "toxic waste" or somesuch nonsense. Certainly wouldn't want to airfreight it [oil is lighter than water, sure, but it's still Shockpruf Heavy isn't it? ] Best o' luck,

Seems to me that all these snowmobilers could've learned a trick or two from the "greatest generation"[1]; haven't they ever seen pix of the jeeps in WWII w/ the upright angle-iron pillar welded on the front bumper that comes up over head height for the jumpseat passenger? They jury-rigged those things 'cause when they were storming across Normandy, the Jerrys had left piano-wire strung across the roads [the windshields were normally left folded flat, unless really cold or driving in the wet; they wouldn't have prevented decapitation anyway, as the wire would have ridden up the flat windshield & then *poinked* back down in time to do harm anyway...] Seems to me that a little preventative medicine would have gone a long way for the high-speed trespass snowmobile crowd... [1] Who had no wish to earn such a moniker; overall they'd much rather have stayed home & given it all a miss, but they didn't.

1: I don't have one 2: Not interested [ruins the great lines of the v11LM fairing] 3: More power to ya!

You might want to ask for "spherical bearings" rather than bushes, if that's what those are [i can't recall, but I seem to remember some test pointing out back in the day that the then-new Guzzi floating hub was connected to the frame via a torque arm floating on spherical bearings on each end... Just an idea, don't mind me, I might have my head stuck up my backside!

I seem to recall reading something on this to the effect that Triumph USA had done a cost/benefits analysis to the effect that for the ever-increasing rates Advanstar Attractions wanted to charge for their participation [leave us not forget; w/o the manufacturers booths, there's absolutely no reason to go to one of these events vs. attending the local county fairgrounds biker swapmeets ("jumble sales" for you U.K. types)], Triumph was far better off spending the money one print advertising & local cooperative promos w/ their dealership network. That said, I think it was pretty short-sighted of them to bow out too. The manufacturers would be better off hosting their own regional shows that last a week or more (to give people travel time & enough chance to actually test-ride) and tellling Advanstar where they can stick it. Figure one at Las Vegas (Reno?) for the west, another in Kansas City for the central U.S. and maybe somewhere in PA, NC or maybe upstate NY for the eastern seaboard? Heck, make it big enough, get enough vendors on board, and lower the entry to $5 so that the only cost is for travel, and I'm willing to bet it would be a smashing success. Schedule some races & other stuff along side it & call it a circus & charge little more if need be, but it would still seem to be a bit more appealing than what the CWIMS has evolved into...

Closest thing I can think of is the LABiker motto: "Ride. Eat. Repeat." - but it's a t-shirt, not a patch... Cool jkt, btw!

What's this cr@p for? As others have stated, it's for emissions control, in this case, fuel vapors. The idea behind it's operation is that vehicle (motorcycle) parked in sun develops considerable vapor pressure in the fuel tank; this vapor is bled thru the can of charcoal granules, where it is adsorbed [that is not a misspelling, it is the correct descriptive term for the collection of a gas by a solid, FWIW.] When the engine is running, the far end of the line (which is routed to the airbox) then has enough vacuum [supposedly] to then pull more air thru the charcoal bed, which gives off it's hydrocarbon fumes to be burnt in the engine. Why bother w/ all this bovine excreta? It has been determined that hydrocarbon vapor is a major precursor to photochemical smog [the "brown layer" seen so often in So.Cal. skies & other urban areas.] Since motorcycles contribute so significantly [not!] to this due to their huge numbers [bwaaa-HAHAHAHA!], it was seen fit to require the fitting of such devices to new models sold here after 1982? [sometime in the dim past for Californians; only recently for residents of other areas...] The plain fact of the matter is that shutting down/putting better scrubbers on just ONE dry-cleaning facility reduces a more significant percentage of photochemical smog than all the bikes sold in one year produce from their fuel vapor, but the businesses pay more taxes/b!tch louder/have better lobbyists than a measly bunch of bikers... Anyway, photochemical smog has formaldehyde in it, which is bad for the lungs, so I don't mind leaving any such cannisters in place until the 1st time they get in the way for mechanical needs; this may mean leaving them in place of the lifetime of the bike. Or not. At least here in CA they don't have biennial inspections for bikes the way they do for cars [altho' that may come sooner than later, if people keep going around talking about ripping all the smog controls off their bike as soon as they get it registered the 1st time...] Ride on!

Arg! [That's the generic expression of disappointment/frustration factor; it pales in comparison to the 'AAAUUUGGGHHHHHAARARARRGGGGGG!!!" I used to hear from undergrads after the computer ate their 10 page paper they'd been working on all day in the lab. It was especially heartfelt when I'd innocently ask them if they'd saved it at any time during their creative process, like I'd suggested to them when they first checked out the computer 6 hours before. (Hint: the answer was inevitably "No" with a gaze of "Whyever would I want to do that?") Ahh, for the good old days! ] Anyway, that is a right b@st@rd bit of luck... 2 Q's: #1: Is that cat fixed? 'Cause why would you want to perpetuate stupidity if it's not? [Darwin in action] #2: Why? It's a cat; they're replaceable. It's not like it's a dog w/ a personality & everything; it's a cat: they look at you solely as a food/heat source. If they can't effectively do their part in controlling the snake/rodent population, what good are they? Ah, now here's something we can agree upon! 'Bout the only thing going for Country music is the considerable percentage of really hot women performers involved therein. Now if they'd just quit their whining! Good luck w/ the feline; my mom just had to give hers away, as he'd developed the annoying habit of attacking her in the middle of the night. Do cat's sleepwalk/get night terrors? Who knows... At any rate, he was a pretty neat cat, but she's better off w/o him since she's got bad asthma and keeping him around wasn't helping it any... Ride on! PS: get pet insurance if you're not prepared to write off your cats when they inevitably attack the snakes in the grass...

That thing on the back of the car they're stuck to is a "bumper," with the rather direct result [we 'Murricans are so literal-minded, y'know] that we call them "bumper stickers." Thanks for the tip on the patch; it's a good'un!

This is the problem with short model lifespans and low number runs: there aren't enough of any one model out in the Big Room for there to be any significant cost of scale benefits. That said, the bearings should be readily available from a bearing factor, since the manufacturer doesn't have those made up special, but orders them from a catalog... Only solution is to look at buying a scooter (or whatever) that's been around dog's years: parts cost for a 1981 Honda C70 is pretty good, simply because it's the same bike that Honda made since the mid-60s and has licensed to others to still make today [w/ a few updates, like a front disc now & more plastic, but you get the idea...] Cheapest car to own has got to be a VW Beetle [a real one w/ the A/C engine in the back, not one of the new Golfs w/ swoopy bodywork...] - there were only more than 27 million made, so even at a 90% attrition rate, that's still more than 2.7 million on the road today, which is better than most modern cars that have only been out a couple or 3 years. Cheapest Bike? Probably the Honda Nighthawk 750 [essentially the same bike as the revamped twin-cam Honda CB750K from back in '78 or so...] Cheapest scooter, I don't know: I already mentioned the C70 [& it's lineal descendants] but I don't consider it a true scooter in the twist'n'go sense. Guzzis rate pretty high in the "cheap to run" category, of course: even tho' the model runs are short, the models are all pretty derivative and they've been around in various forms since the 60's. Of course, you already knew that!

That's for the run of the mill "farm hand w/ a gun." A proper shootist took the time to find out what charge his gun liked [don't just cover the ball w/ powder & load, altho' that's the old BP* rule of thumb] and what brand o' ball had the right hardness of lead [yes, lead comes in diffn't alloys, and they make a difference to how the black-powder arm shoots.] Oh, and practice, practice, practice! The brass-framed stuff actually works fine for light loads but will shoot loose over time; the iron stuff will hold up for the long term as long as you clean it religiously after firing. Guess ol' Sam Colt knew what he was doing after he'd spent 15 years trying & failing to make a repeater that worked... The biggest problem w/ those old charcoal burners, Peacemaker or otherwise, was that the sights were so execrable. It was a wonder that anyone could be accurate enough to be dangerous w/ one, let alone so many as to generate the legends of the "Old West..." *-Up until the French invented smokeless, there was no "black" powder, it was all just "gunpowder" until that funny-smellin' smokeless stuff came along... ] Dunno what this has to do w/ Guzzis, of course, other than being another machine that some view as "antiquated" yet still performs it's function quite handily...