Skeeve

#1: I'm guessing somebody from one of the big Brit bike manufacturers back in the 60s. You know, the folks who were still using single & twin-cyl engines designed back in the 30s... #2: I'm guessing someone from Harley-Davidson, same era. You know, the folks who were still selling v-twin engines designed back in the 40s & 50s... [Not that there's anything wrong with that, Guzzily speaking. After all, we're all here because we like riding bikes w/ an engine designed back in the 60s (or 70s, for you small block fans!)] Ride on!

Hmm...could be. I suspect that it's more likely that being a hand-made item, the fitment is probably a big pain in the backside, so they don't want to poison their customer base by shipping somewhere that they can't begin to dream of providing basic customer service, let alone good cust-serve. Artisan-think, vs. the kind of cr@p I had to deal with out of a shop here in So.Cal. with my J-brand commuter bike: they decided that they'd rather rip me off than work with me to rebuild my crash-damaged bike [that the at fault driver's ins. co. was paying to have fixed.] I'd rather have a shop like Jingushi than the one I unluckily found here in the "good ol' USA..." Ride on!

The stock ones are pretty darn quiet, which I don't mind, but their BIG drawback is they strangle the motor w/ too much backpressure at high rpm. [Guzzi high rpm, not J-brand high! ] The car aftermarket scene has gone to very efficient hi-flow mufflers that if one could be found that fit inside the stock beauty covers, would be a great alternative to the stock cans. Plan B would be to go for a box muffler like the DynoMax illustrated above to replace the Guzzi factory "premuffler" collector box & cans, a la' the Quat D. Plan B has the nice advantage of the whole mass centralization thing, along with eliminating the need for passengers to sit w/ their knees up under their chin due to high footpegs brought on by the desire for adequate ground clearance, so let's move it into Plan A's slot & vice versa. I'm more interested in going with the replacement cores inside the stock beauty covers, simply because I dislike the looks of the colostomy bag muffler tucked up under the bike, but that's a personal choice issue. None of that is as pertinent as the simple pursuit of a cost-effective muffler that balances the desire for less backpressure with reasonable noise control, & oh yes, lighter than the stock cans would be a nice bonus! Unfortunately, the MG Ti exhaust system is outrageously expensive, as are pretty much all of the aftermarket options due to the low production volume of Moto Guzzis. Que sera sera!

Oh, yeah, I guess there is that! [Once again, my capacity for missing the obvious suprises me!] They do at that!

The frame braces are pretty neat; obvious advantage to handling due to better rigiditittididitty from triangulation doesn't require much imagination to grasp, as well as improved resistance to the "casual" frame tweekage in event of tipover or minor accident as has been reported here in other threads... & The aluminum subframe looks cool, but only saves about 3kg (6lbs for us unrepentant colonialists! ); at the price they're asking, it definitely should come *after* throwing money into a lighter/better performing exhaust system! Why would a replacement throttle pulley be of benefit to the injected bikes? I'm aware of why the carb bikes needed diffn't. twist-grip snails, but what advantage does this gizzie represent? Anyway, who was asking about Guzzi places to visit when in Tokyo? They might want to drop by this place...

But fewer miles - only about 200/wk, & on the commuter (beater bike), not the V11. Riding on weekends has been infrequent (too busy since my accident), but looking forward to getting back to living right now that I'm finally getting caught back up w/ my life! Beware the jealous or inattentive cage driver opening their door at random when lane-splitting...

Wow! Guzzi is making a 1200cc laydown single and marketing it as a touring mount? Whoda thunk it?

Reverse cone megaphones? LOUDLY is how they perform! Those are exhaust pipes, not mufflers...

Fine, just so long as they do away with the cr@p bodywork that made the Centauro so hideous in the 1st place! Nothing wrong w/ a Centauro that time, a hammer & some dollies, a welder and a couple sq. meter's of aluminum sheet can't cure... Kinda like belgiancentauro's solution, now that I think on it! But yes, a Coppa MGS would also be a visual treat, maybe as much as the Coppa Mans is!

The irony being that Mother Honda, in all her wisdom(?), saddled the VTEC VFR with a dain-bramaged version of the real vvt tech used in their car engines, so that the pre-VTEC v4 engine makes more power throughout the range than the new; the "new & improved" engine only feels like it hits stronger when the VTEC kicks in because the low-rev performance has been somewhat strangled! Couple this with significantly more ex$pen$ive valve-servicing intervals, and you see why the pre-VTEC VFRs are holding their value on the used market so well, while the VTEC models sales are plummeting as word gets around... What does this mean for us? It means that if Guzzi can get to market with some integrated bags on a sportier Breva or Griso, they might be able to siphon off some of Honda's lost VFR sales [since Triumph as also just stubbed their toe on the redesign of the ST...]

Don't be ridiculous! A right wing politician wouldn't be afraid to shoot you to your face; it's the left wing politicians that'll shoot you in the back!

Individual liberty, which of course carries with it the burden of individual responsibility. "Freedom of choice is the freedom to starve." I forget who wrote that; it was an ex-slave who was trying to educate his fellow emancipees that they only had themselves to depend on now. Harry S Truman and his "buck stops here" would be far the right of any of today's Republicans, & completely alien to modern Democrats. I suspect he wouldn't be too fond of the political animals infesting the halls of govt. here in the States these days, either. Hey, I just came up w/ a great slogan for the new t-shirts! "Moto Guzzi - the ride starts here!"

They work very hard at it. They've redesigned their combustion chambers to make them more efficient than Guzzi's hemi head [hemi's only work well for 4v engines; 2v hemis wind up needing 2 plugs to get a good burn.] They use an under-square design which gives them a longer period for combustion to occur before pushing the gases out the exhaust. All together, it buys them enough space to get by the regs. Ride on,

My facts are straight. Barbara Boxer & Diane Feinstein & the rest of the democrats who've locked up the California legislature & keep saddling us with more & more poorly written, ill-conceived & horribly implemented legal impedimenta are about as right wing as Trotsky. Buy a vowel, get a clue: whatever it takes, you need a little perspective! The fact that you want to deny the results of demagoguery throughout history & plead that the prime examples of what left wing politics produces does nothing to contradict the fact that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Robespierre et al were & continue to stand as the shining examples of left wing political icons. The left wing as the "warriors of freedom" would make any of the real people who died fightiing for liberty in the French or American Revolutions puke. Since my degree is in economics, I think I have a better grasp of the subject than most. At least good enough that my friends won't watch the news with me anymore 'cause I start pointing out the lies, the d@mn lies & of course, the statistical fallacies used to prop up their specious arguments. Oh, & btw: I wasn't exactly born w/ a silver spoon in my mouth, buddy. The only money anyone in my family has had has come from working for it, & scrimping & saving it. Socialist don't respect that; it's against their political agenda of increasing the number of voters dependent upon the public largesse, who then reelect the socialist overlords like good little sheeple... Since CA isn't going to let anyone take advantage of the "under 500" quota w/o a fight, I don't think that MGNA is too far off the mark wanting a 50-state bike to simplify their lives. Their argument that the CA dealers are going to bail in large numbers if they can't have a 50-state bike from the outset is likely invalid, since any dealer worth their salt doesn't consider someone more than 200 miles away to be their "competition." Remember that "Do it for the children" is the battle cry of an enemy of freedom. Ride on, Your friendly neighborhood libertarian

You're right; we do need pollution control standards. But CARB has outlived their usefulness, and now just promotes ever tightening standards to continue their own bureaucratic existence! You do realize that automobiles are no longer the primary source of air pollution in CA, right? Yet CARB pursues ever diminishing returns against cars (& the incredibly low percentage of drivers, motorcycles) instead of doing what really would have an impact, ie [in order of increasing importance:] nailing all the Mexican registry vehicles on our roads [much larger number in SoCal than motorcycles throughout the state, much worse polluters; you wouldn't BELIEVE these rattletraps!], shutting down the the dry cleaners, and enforcing some sort of pollution controls in the shipping (trucks, busses, etc.) industry. Much more f/x to be gained from any one of those, yet CARB keeps on pursuing LEV, SLEV, PNEV, blah blah blah cars when the pollution reduction is already almost nil. As far as Guzzi passing CA's smog test: MGNA is stupid. If Guzzi is still working on a 50-state bike, MGN should be selling as many 49-state bikes as possible to keep the factory open long enough to produce that 50-state machine. Besides, nobody who lives in CA & wants a Guzzi badly is going to be perturbed with having to buy it in another state & ride it long enough to have the 7501 miles on the odo to register it as a "used" vehicle when they bring it home. Heck, I'd rather spend my registration tax dollars in some state where they really do use it on the roads, rather than here where the money gets diverted into some socialist politician's pocket so he can continue his efforts at denying me my constitutional rights. And yes, if my family wasn't all here, I likely would have moved elsewhere by now. CA used to be the garden of eden; now it's just the poster child for why this nation was never intended to be a democracy. Ride on!

CARC is a fancy new acronym for the same drive system as on the V11 series, only with a slick new swingarm casting to provide weather (& lube) protection. So, in a few years time, all the new Breva & Griso owners who believe in "out of sight-out of mind" will begin experiencing driveline failures when they discover that even tho' the bearings in the U-joints are now protected from the weather, the fact that the factory habitually scrimps on the lube during assembly doesn't mean the bikes with the CARC driveline can be rode hard & put up wet.

McMaster Carr? Just out of curiosity, what's the porkchop thread spec? You said "spectacularly odd," so is it something like 20mm x .5mm [iem, a big even # after the usual transition from the even-to-odd# progression of 10,12,14,17,19,21,23,etc..., with a really fine thread for that size fastener?] Enquiring minds want to know!

Not the only one, but he won't do it. I cornered him at an event here in So.Cal. and asked him when H-D was going to let him use the VR motor in a Buell, & he replied that they'd love for him to do it, but he not going to. "Why?" "Because that motor is too big & heavy! It's fine for a cruiser, but it's no sportbike motor! All the water cooling & pump & related paraphenalia means that thing weigh 50lbs more than the old Evo Sporty mill that my bikes are based on; I can't work with that kind of handicap..." "Oh..." Would Eric like to have some other, more powerful engine to work with? Mebbe. But not at the risk of giving up the old lump's compact size & reasonable weight. And Erik's done a good job of extracting a good bit of extra juice from what everyone (including Harley) assumed was a "completely mature" platform before he started in on it. Gotta love somebody who digs around in the backroom & turns up the forgotten pieces that have been gathering dust & says "Hey, what's up with this thing?"

He wrote "vapor," not "vapour," so clearly, you two are talking about different things! ;-) "England and America are two great nations separated by a common language" - Oscar Wilde

Heat retained by the fuel pump isn't much of a problem, as long as it doesn't reach the critical temp; the fuel, after all, can carry most of that away promptly upon the engine starting and running... The problem is in the fuel in the line vaporizing and essentially creating so much backpressure the pump turns itself off, thinking it's done its job! Good thinking with the insulation, but as I recall from Al Roethlisberger's (sp?) posts on the topic, short of moving the pump into the tank by buying an '03+ fuel tank, the best bet is to move the pump to the position used on the Centauros and the Tenni, up at the front under the steering head, where it sees lots of breeze and little engine heat when the bike is stopped.

Of all places, Japan seems to have gotten more than their fair share of Tennis! Dunno if any of them poke their heads in here on V11LM; the language barrier may have something to do w/ that.

Word! There is the occasional fluke, tho', like the circa late sixties Honda 10/12mm open end toolkit wrench I keep in my toolbox. Finish on it is execrable, it looks sandcast, but it's got a nice snug fit on the 10mm end, & a decent not-quite-loose one on the 12mm end. Better than a rubber biscuit, for free. [i consider all OEM toolkits "free," since they're mostly garbage, as you say, so anything found in'em worth [b]not[/b] throwing away is like found money! Hey, it may only be pocket change, but it's worth stooping over to pick it up... ]

Um... interesting? Aesthetically, it looks like the guys who take steroids & then only do upper-body workouts: horribly twisted & distorted & imbalanced. But macho; yeaah, that's it! I'm a HUGE fan of the screened-over great gaping holes in the fairing, that do absolutely nothing since they aren't hooked up to ducting for ram air. All this thing needs to look "complete" is a big nitrous bottle hanging off the rear subframe...

The seller is the guy I'd been looking for all last year, who bought "my" Tenni out from under me, the day before I went in to pick it up! [i'd been shopping the bike for a month or more beforehand, & finally got my gf on board to come in with me to "check it out." (ie, include her in the buying process so she couldn't b!tch at me later that I made a major purchase w/o her input...) ] The seller just didn't ride it that much, so w/ only 2500 miles on the clock, he wound up paying about $3/mi, since the guy from OC Triumph had been pitching it to me for $8200. Figure about $4/mi after sales tax & registration. I'm sure that it was a tough decision for him, but he seemed to be taking it in stride. He's definitely ahead of the curve on the usual "25% depreciation on any new vehicle" sales rule! Sure wish I still had the money...

No thanks, Brevona too fugly. Why'd they get all "creative" when the 750 Breva had showed them the way? (Altho' I'm not exactly a huge fan of it, either...) Glad Yoda is v11 LM has he!