Skeeve

OTOH, it does make a rather distinctive & pleasant piece of garden sculpture!

Yeah but... how do you scratch your left armpit on the road w/o losing headway and getting run over by the cell-phone yakking, make-up primping, newspaper-reading inattententive idiot d@mn cage-monkeys? Ride on!

Pretty much so; that's my intended route if I can ever get the darn thing mounted... Have I mentioned before what a paragon of virtue and kindness I consider you to be? Hmm, "St. Field" - I like the sound of that! First we'll have to get you beatified, which may present some problems, as I'm certain Enzo will misread that to be "beat on..." I don't suppose you could lay the plates on some .10" or 1/4" graph paper and take some pics of'em to post for me? That might be a little more convenient than having to ship'em back & forth. Altho' it would provide an excellent excuse to ride up & copy'em, I don't think I can afford the gas or time just now... But in case I've sufficiently obscured the point: YES! I'd appreciate it very much...

I thought that for just such reasons it had been settled long ago that the Cologne & Milan shows alternated years? What's up w/ that? Someone decide to break the truce, or do I just have it bass ackwards?

AFAIK, the answers are: 1) Yes, exactly. 2) Yes. 3) Yes. Supposedly, the exploding aluminum OEM flywheels, while made by RAM, were made to Guzzi's specs (apparently, with inappropriate radii on some of the cuts) whereas the RAM aftermarket versions are not prone to catastrophic failure. IIRC, there's some pics of Al flywheel shrapnel over at GuzziTech? (maybe somewhere else...) with some commentary upon the ultimate cause(s) of failure... FWIW: the additional lightness vs. the already lightened v11 flywheels just leads to less torque reaction when blipping the throttle at stoplights and more driveline snatch when noodling along at slack throttle; for most purposes, you'd be better off replacing it w/ the standard steel unit [altho' Pete Roper will tell you that you want the 20# unit from a Convert in there! ) Best o' luck w/ your decision!

Not in the U.S. it's not! Thanks for the tip, tho': maybe it's available via McMaster-Carr?

Because magnetic tank bags don't have to be exclusively used with tanks. In this case, the word "tank" is an adjective used to suggest a common use, but is by no means to be understood as the only such use possible... Contemplate, if you will, the Guzzisto who has arrived at the enviable position of owning an example of this exotic breed, after having passed thru a lifetime of motorcycling upon (gasp!) other brands! Such an iconoclast is likely to have, somewhere along the line, managed to acquire a tank bag of the most convenient sort for use with that vast majority of motorcycles possessing fuel containers of the humble, yet eminently suitable material called "steel." Upon embarking upon that road apart which constitutes the ownership of a Moto Guzzi post-y2k spine frame, they would have discovered that they must, perforce, acquire some other type of tank bag, as the nylon fuel tanks of these machines are known to be entirely non-magnetic. Thus, they find themselves with a spare tank bag that they may, nevertheless, not wish to dispose of, for various reasons [not least of which might be their continued possessory interests in other, non-plastic-tanked motorcycles...]

There is one huge glaring flaw with the Moto Guzzi "official" rack (& no, I'm not talking the pricetag!): it is made of aluminum. Why is this problematic? A steel rack won't weigh that much more than an aluminum rack of similar capacity, but it has one fabulous redeeming feature that cannot be matched by anything of aluminum or titanium: it's magnetic! Sometimes steel isn't just the cheapest choice for materials, it's the best! Also, be careful that if you buy a rack from an individual/eBay, that it comes with the mounting plates! I scored my MG rack off ebay, but failed to realize that the necessary mounting equipment was more than minor couplings. I was thinking that I'd only need to scout for a few metric fasteners, but NOOOoooo, I need to fab up some plates to mount the dang thing to! Unfortunately, nobody seems to have a picture of these *off* the bike (or even in situ, for that matter), to give me an idea of what/where to cut. (Yes, I've asked...) I know this much; the front of the plates apparently fasten to the back of the passenger footrest hangers, but for the life of me, I can't figure out where/if such plates attach at the rear. So unless I break down & buy another complete kit to get some templates/instructions, I've got a very unique Xmas tree ornament... Ride on!

That was the deal they ran last spring. Get a pair of these now for when you sign up for a track day or a riding school, where they require (relatively) new shoes just to participate! Something else to bear in mind: buy'em now & bag'em (helps prevent aging) & by the time you get to use them, they may be just the skosh (technical term! ) harder to be comparable to the Stradas...

Too right... As they say, that's not a x-over, it's a colostomy bag! Still, it is Germany, you know how hard they have replacing stock parts what with TUV (? - I think that's the agency...) breathing down their backs... Still, we'd better keep this guy & Enzo separated: next thing you'll know, he'll have it painted particolored with a bright blue "Cobra" exhaust on it! Ride on,

Hah! Beat me to it!.. How about a cute cousin? Now that is hot! (The bike, not the overly zaftig model behind it...) See what I mean about the Centauro being a great bike once you strip off that roccoco plastic it came with?

An auditory fiesta! Thanks for that...

No news to anyone who's been hanging out in v11LM for any length of time, I'm a big fan of Mr. Roper's generous contributions & have yet to find anything I disagree with in any substantive degree in anything he's said. To lend further support to his point: I got a nice email over on Wildguzzi a while back from someone who'd been inspired to look up Sir Harry Ricardo after I mentioned him; I decided maybe I should read his book myself, having only had read reference to it over the years. Great stuff, so good I'm thinking of shelling out the $80+ to get a copy of my own, since the Ricardo Institute has seen fit to finally reprint it for the first time in 20+ years, & who knows how long that will continue? (FWIW, 1st editions sell for over $600 & that's not even a signed copy!) That led to a whole lot of further reading, with which I'm even now engaged; oddly enough, all of it seems to agree with what Sir Harry wrote 80-odd years ago: you want more power, you can squish it harder, spin it faster, or build it bigger, but they all have their tradeoffs. In the end, it comes down to basics, and one of those is that the smaller the combustion chamber, the more resistant to detonation, so the higher the compression can be. A hemi-head, "spectacle" combustion chamber like Guzzis w/ hi-comp pistons possess have a broader combustion chamber than the bore! [Due to "folding"] This is why Guzzi had to go to a twin-spark layout on the Breva & onward models. The alternative would have been to go to a bathtub chamber like H-Ds use (quite effectively!), but I guess Guzzi/Aprilia/Piaggio decided that it would be easier/cheaper to go the former route than to have to change their castings & machining programs to redesign the combustion chamber & pistons. Too bad, as the dual-plugging just keeps them even with smog cert. requirements, w/o necessarily bringing the higher combustion efficiency that a better chamber would. [Or were you thinking Harleys going from the I hope that anyone with a Guzzi who wants to run the hi-compression pistons has a dependable source of hi-octane gasoline around, & I'm not talking about the p!ss that's sold as "premium" here in L.A.-la land! Either that, or carry around a can of Avgas 100LL (& ditch the stock silencers w/ cat converters, if your model is recent enough to have them; no sense ruining them by running leaded gas!) I would dearly love to experiment with redesigned heads, try going to a 3-valve head, maybe a 2v wedge head, at the very least building up some of the combustion chamber to provide more squish band & taking some of the crown off the piston. Ah, rampant empiricism! What fun!..

OTOH, I find it hands down the ugliest Guzzi ever, & have been saying so since the day I first saw one! But then, my tastes have always run to the conservative side... I have to admit, they do kind of grow on one. Kinda like a wart... Lurv that motor tho'! Pity they're starting to find favor with collector's; I was hoping their price would stay depressed long enough that I could afford to find one cheap & recover w/ my own bodywork. A little glass, a little resin, a little paint: something nice could come of it! Ah well, had I but world enough and time... I see your Centauro & raise you a Spot 1100 in bright yellow. Call! Tsk, I think my hand beats yours... or maybe not: I imagine it depends on where the game is played!

Just curiousity: Given that the v11 engine is just an evolutionary extension of the prior 2v mills, what kind of parts commonality do we find w/ older/other Guzzis? Obviously, the changes made when going from roundfin to square were extensive, but what fits what? I know you can drop whole engines/transmissions into older frames, but suppose you had pieces parts from a couple of wrecks, & wanted to combine parts from say an 80s 850 T5 with a 90s 1100 Sporti with a post-millenial Coppa d'Crasho? Just how extensive can the frankenbiking go? Pete? Greg? Carl? Todd? Care to share your wisdom/experiences? You all seem to have encountered this to at least come degree; outside of obvious incompatibilities like not trying to put a Tonti-frame swingarm on a spiney (or vice versa), what kind of overlap in designs is possible (or particularly ill-advised! ) I'm not talking something legendary along the lines of Mother Goose here [1]; just the sort of "hey, this can work!" options open to back-yard mechanics...[2] Gentlemen, start your engines! [1] Mark Etheridge transplanted a Hi-Cam into a loop frame, iirc: it's listed as Peter Coronado's 1100i Eldo, but I'm positive that when PEter showed me Mother Goose, it was sporting the Hi-Cam from a Centauro [that granite grey engine paint was too unique to miss!] & that PEter had said the the Centauro w/ the 1100i engine from his [sob!] backed-up over Sporti had sold quickly for more money than Mark had spent on the donor Centauro... [2] This all comes to mind because I was thinking about my (admittedly, something of a mechanical genius!) brother who built 2 (extremely well!) working Honda CB160s out of 3 parts bikes back before I had my 1st minibike...

The thing to remember about Guzzis are... there are no rules (when it comes to "model years...") The silver Sport may have only been imported to the UK for those years, yet the shipments to the US market got the last few stragglers in '01 (or vice-versa. You know how it is. It's Moto Guzzi fer Chrissake's! That kind of charming inconsistency is part of the trademark! )

Wouldn't it have been easier to just turn the bike upside down & suspend it from the rafters so that you could work standing up? After all, it's air-cooled, so it's not like the radiator overflow is going to leak... [he asks with an innocent grin]

Yeahbut: I think the "four valve motor" comment in the Telegraph article was coming from someone who normally reports on cars, ie: "A 24v V-6 Acura" [which equates to "4v per cyl," which is the much more pertinent method of reportage common to the motorycling press...] So, the "4 valve V-twin" reduces to 2v/cyl & Bob's yer uncle! Mr. Pedant

Clearly, you'll want to replace those red valve covers[1]; I've got some nifty black ones I'll trade you, straight up... [1] 'Cause, as everyone knows, red is regular light that has been shifted to a longer wavelength because the item is moving away from you. This is why the fast guys always paint the front of their bikes blue and the back end red, so that it's moving faster as it approaches the bystander, and faster again as it recedes...

Methinks you missed the point, Greg: the matchlock fanciers still despise you as an insufferable modernist and the anti-freedom crowd are just saving their plans to disarm you for later...

Using statistics to try to reveal truth, instead of creating unreality? Absolutely! If the anti-freedom movement would just stop using in-house "Research Institutes" to generate predetermined results, maybe I could believe their self-serving "facts" to support their side. Unfortunately, since they don't/can't/won't, I cannot begin to lend them credence. So sorry! You said it: the anti-freedom sorts who're all for an ever-growing Nanny-state, "It's for your own good, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" always seem to be the funding source for the researchers who find that "guns are bad." OTOH, the people who just use the data collected by non-partisan sources because its freely available & they don't have any funding to manufacture their own data sets always seem to come up with "guns are at worst a non-influence, & may actually help." Hmm, funny about that! Just what I read in the non-partisan press my friend! Do an internet search on "Michael Belleisles" & explain to me how anyone involved on the anti-freedom side of this issue can continue to claim their methods are valid? So, what's the weather like there in your own private Idaho, anyway? Out here in the real world, it's hot, but then, I haven't been too hot since I left England after the coldest winter they'd had since WWII!

Yikes! Guess that dream will remain unfulfilled!.. Thus goes the way of the V11 spineys: as Mama Guzzi suspends support, parts & accessories prices will continue to rise... It certainly doesn't help that the $ is in the toilet vs. the Euro, either! That's what we get for moving all our means of production elsewhere... Hmm, I guess I'd better start taking welding classes again & build me a glove-box so I can make my own Ti pipes; there's no way I can afford that ticket for entry!

Heh. I've ridden w/ Todd down Palomar way. I was having the best day of riding ever, even tho' the roads were a little slick [snow melt runoff] here & there. Now, I'm slow, but I was by no means the slowest of our group, & riding my SV650 [this was several years ago now.] Todd flew past me mid-corner on his Jackal (this was when it was still mostly stock, except for his "modified" footpegs[1]) like I was standing still! I wicked it up a bit to follow him, & hung with him for a few corners, & learned a little by following his lines, but decided I'd rather back off to my usual pace & live longer... Fortunately, I don't have any misplaced machismo when it comes to riding: I know I'm slow, & have nothing to prove on that score! Still love those S.D. county roads, too bad there's too many cages on'em these days! [1] "Modified" by grinding down the ends on the pavement!

Actually, Lodi is wherever you are. That's the significance of Creedence Clearwater Revival's song, Stuck in Lodi, Again: supposedly, there's a town called "Lodi" in every state of the Union. In the case of Lodi, CA, it's a town that used to be an eye blink in the middle of farm country. About 10 years ago (mebbe 15, now?) they joined the 20th century and got a Wal-Mart, Target, & all the other cr@p that completely removes the local "color" from a town (but provides modern conveniences at a price people can afford...) Now the farm land is being converted to grapes (like CA needs more wine grapes! ) and condos as Stockton's suburbs slowly encroach on what used to be the quiet town in the middle of nowhere. Still, Lodi is great place to get off the 5, gas up, & enter the Delta... Ride on!

Sounds like they're making'em out of CP tubing; titanium is very soft ("gummy" as my dad used to say [1]) unless alloyed. If the makers are using 3Al/2V tubing or higher grades, it may be that the pipes are getting hot enough to anneal the metal [sorry, don't know enough about the heat treatment of Ti to know what temps the precip hardening goes away again!] Oddly enough, the real weight of a can is in the internals & headers; it would make much more sense to make the internal baffles out of Ti to save wt. & then use a nice, rugged stainless tube riveted to the outside than to make the whole thing out of Ti. Probably weigh less too! That construction method would also have the nice feature that if the external stainless got "yucky," you could drill out the rivets, slide on a new replacement & pop some new rivets back in to rejuve the can! Whee! Too bad we live in a throw-away society; we'll never see pipes built this way... Thanks for the insight, Greg! Sounds to me like I should start saving my pennies for the Guzzi Ti pipes now! No, wait: the V11s are an obsolete model, w/ little future support to be had; I'd better start saving my pennies as of 2000 when they introduced the V11seses! It's been a good millenium for Guzzi! [1] - The Dadster used to work as a machinist for various aerospace contractors back when So.Cal. still had an "industry." He *hated* machining Ti!