Skeeve

The reason the high-octane fuel leads to carbon buildup is because when the engine isn't fully warmed up, the carbon accretes onto the colder (relatively) metal parts; if you don't run the engine long enough to get it fully warmed up, the carbon just starts building up. It's easy to clean out by running the engine till it's good & warmed up, then squirting a water aerosol down the intakes while the engine is at about 1/2 throttle. Steam cleans the chamber & points south! HUGE clouds of black smoke, followed by white. But you gotta be careful; do it wrong [too much liquid water, not aerosol] & you get hydraulic lockup & blow your motor. As far as the timing of a stock bike goes: this is the drawback of the all digital engine management system! They're all 31 degrees BTDC at full advance now, Guzzi's decision. [This is why there's people who keep pressing Todd Eagen to get Dynojet to offer the timing module for the PCIIIusb for Guzzis, so we can adjust it to suit our needs! ]

Aw, shucks! [rubs toe in dirt] Tweren't nuthin... WRT "just run too lean..." that's *exactly* what it does! If you look at the stock map, it's *absurdly* lean at idle - 3000rpm; this is the range that most EPA/CARB [sorry, can't speak for the rest of the world] testing occurs: they test at idle [because most vehicles spend more time idling at stoplights in urban areas where air pollution is worst] & at just above idle [cruising rpm; where the other major time component is spent on most vehicles.] The rest of the map Guzzi runs at optimum [just a little richer than stoich'] or too rich [ Whaddaya gonna do? Budget for a PC3 & be done with it... Ride on!

To go into the "FWIW" file: the "95 NO-RM" probably means 95 normal octane, by the research method. The "91 (R+M)/2" you see on the side of a CA gas pump (most U.S. pumps, for that matter), is actually a *higher* rating that you'd otherwise think, since it is an average of the Research [the "R" in the (R+M)/2] and Manual(? - whatever, the "M" in the formula) methods. Since the Manual method is the only real means of getting a meaningful octane rating, & it's always a lower # than the Research (a "best case; this is what it should be in theory") method says, your 91 octane U.S. gas [(R+M)/2] is at *least* a 93 RON ["Research Octane Number"], & probably higher than that, if you're outside CA buying real gasoline, not the oxygenated cr@p they sell inside our state borders. The problem with the Research method is that it assigns an "octane value" to each component, & then you multiply by percentages & blahblahblah to come up with a number that's essentially an estimate of what the octane rating *could* be, if the numbers you started off with weren't so full of sh!t... The problem with the Manual rating is that you actually have to *run* some gasoline thru a special test engine to come up with the number, and it's always so dang low compared to the Research method that people hate to use it. Think how embarrassing it would be to try selling your gas at 86 MON when somebody else is selling their 94 RON gasoline? It doesn't matter to most of the public that your 86 MON actually has about a 95 RON equivalency... Hence the decision to avg. the two ratings to come up w/ some sort of standard that combines the real world with blue sky numbers! Ride on!

Thoughts? Yeah, it's going to degenerate into a Buell/Ducati slugfest: the other rides you mention don't have close to the power/wt ratio of those two, and with their shorter wheelbases, they'll turn circles inside the Guzzis, Bimmers & Trumpets. Unfortunately, the Ghezzi-Brian bikes haven't sold in the numbers necessary to be considered "homologated" for such a series (& I'm including the MGS01 in this category.) Better to support AHRMA & field a team of round-heads...

Glad to know my input was valued. Funny that on my own screen, the spaces in my ascii art were all deleted, but in your quoted text [your statement above was embedded in my own text quoted in your reply] it displayed correctly. Ain't 'puters fun? Ride on!

I'm just wondering if there's any info yet on what dates are set for GMG 2006. Since it's the 85th anniversary of the company, I'd think they'd be making a big deal over it already, but it seems so far that they're waiting til after GMG 2005 to wrap? Given Harley's big promotion surrounding their 90th a dozen year back, I thought that Guzzi would have picked up a trick from the masters, and be pulling out the stops to get people good & excited before the event. Shows what I know! Any info would be greatly appreciated; I've got a gf who wanted to go to Europe this year, who could only be put off by serious discussions of economics [color, glossy graphs of the dollar vs. euro rate of exchange, w/ captions & arrows & a paragraph on the back of each one] & a promise that we're going in 2006 for the Guzzi 85th anniversary, which will give her time to brush up on her Italian (& me some time to learn equivalents to my basic Spanglish "a donde iz der banYO?") Ride on!

The reason there's a gap is because he din't cut notches for the turn signal stalks. IIRC (it *has* been 20 odd years!), the R90s actually had the turn signals hanging off the fork stanchions, rather than sticking straight out the sides of the headlight like most (J-brand & others) naked bikes. I fit one of the JCW models to my old Yellowhammer XSEleven, which required cutting a pair of slots into the sides of the fairing: _ F / R / O / N ___| T / \___ O | F | \ F \ A \ I R I N G Get the idea? (I know; my ascii art has always been crude.) Once the slots are there, the ring of the fairing rest exactly inside the chrome retainer ring on a standard 7" sealed beam motorcycle headlight shell. Actually looks quite spiff. Only drawback is the absurd amount of plastic shavings cutting out the slots generates, and the difficulty of getting the slots to match when done freehand. [Duh! Make a stencil next time! - voice of experience, there! ] You might have guessed that I actually quite like the bikini/cafe faired classic bike look, & find that it fits quite well with the modern Guzzi nakeds. If I didn't already have a LM7 [heh; "V11 LeMans;" not quite a Roman numeral 7, but it kinda fits, leaving one only to wonder whatever became of the LM6... ], I'd be seriously looking at that option. Good luck to you, whatever you decide to do. Ride on!

You mean the knockoff of the 1980 R90S bikini fairing? JC Witless BTW, the LockhartPhillips site no workee, so I'm not surprised that you couldn't manage to paste a link! It must suck to pay somebody to make you a fancy, glitzy website & then discover that their javascripting left something to be desired! Back to the bikini: cutting a notch in either side for the turn signal stalks is a PITA, but doable. Probably easier, now that Dremel-type tools are cheap. The real hangup is that they come with no mounting gear, so you've got to work up your own mounts. They do wonders for dressing up a naked bike & making it more rideable, since you can tuck down into the blast shadow for long highway runs. Ride on!

If the Antarctic ice fields melt, we'll only lose about 100m of elevation ASL, all around the world. Waterworld just ain't gonna happen unless the sea floor gets a fair bit of an increase in altitude... Still, it would be cool to go marlin fishing in Kansas! It'd certainly suck for anyone who owned what's currently sea-front, Florida, or delta area property tho'... But since we need to burn more greenhouse gases to put off the coming Ice Age, I don't think it's that big of a problem. I'm certainly not losing any sleep over it!

Actually, about 3 months back? someone posted the new part# from MG for the redesigned cable, w/ less angle at the tranny and longer expected lifespan (but they pointed out the routing was different, & iirc, required tank removal to install, since you couldn't just attach it to the old cable & pull thru...) Dunno what to search for, or you'd find a link to the old thread here. Ride on!

Dunno if you're interested, but if you're down here in Hell-A, you might want to join the LABiker list-serve.[Or even if you're not; we've got some NYC members...] GuzziMike over on the WildGuzzi boards used to be one of us, but he couldn't handle the email traffic (plus he took some of the pinheads too much to heart.) At any rate, there's one or two people that'll periodically host garage days, where you can get together & tackle jobs you might not have the tech know how, # of hands, or tools to do on your own. Naturally, I've never been able to make them, since the occasional date invariably falls on a day when I've got some prior, unreschedulable committment. Traction on the salt seems to be invariably cited as a reason why top-speeds are lower than expected [for traction-driven vehicles; jet- or rocket-cars need not apply! ] Moto Guzzi's eat rear tires on asphault because they have lots of torque & weight & the asphault doesn't have much give to it. Salt, otoh, is friable and not the most stable surface in the world. Even the caked dry dust of El Mirage is a HUGE improvement over the salt @ Bonneville (according to those who know. I'm just relaying other's words.) Salt: yes, well, you're completely correct about the best way to deal with it: stay the fcuk away! Amazing how many 20 y.o. cars there are out here on the road in So. Cal. compared w/ how few 5 y.o. cars there are back East... I'm going to Mirage once I get the Lemon broken in, just to see what the topspeed really is! At least once I have a baseline established, I can determine if further changes have had any beneficial f/x... & besides, it'll be a lot of fun! Ride on!

Plan A: Contact MGuk & ask them if they'll pay for the machine work to get you back on the road in minimum time. They should say "O.K." since it's widely known that the factory has no more 4v engines on hand to cannibalize for your spares. Plan B: Get a sheet of soft copper about 2x thicker than the present head gasket. Cut out a new head gasket, & crank it down to the high end of the torque spec. Let it sit for a few days, & retorque. [Hint: you're looking to ooze the copper into the hills & valleys of your mating surfaces.] Let it sit some more. Retorque. Go ride it & see if that solved the leaking. Yes, you'll have some loss of c.r. & hence, power. Big whoop; at least you'll be out on the road while you're waiting to see what Guzzi is going to do about your situation... Best o' luck, sorry to hear your MGS isn't all it should be! Ride on!

Wouldn't it be easier just to pick him up one afternoon, box him & post him to Venezuela? Stick a nice U.S. flag on his back, so they treat him appropriately when he arrives... I can't sign the petition, 'cause I'm not a U.K'er, but it's sure worth signing. I'm surprised the BBC hasn't gagged him in fear of lawsuits from victims of his listeners who follow up on his suggestions? I heard that a DJ in San Francisco advocated opening car doors on motorcyclists filtering thru traffic, & the outrage was severe enough to get his show cancelled. This Clarkson fellow sounds even worse. Pity he's not in Texas, where there's 3 pleas to the charge of murder: "Guilty, Your Honor"; "Not Guilty, Your Honor" & "But Your Honor, He Needed Killin'..." Ride on!

Ah! That explains a lot! I never could figure out why that cute lil' gal w/ the green V11 went by "robbie" & wrote like a guy! Good on you for having the patience to deal w/ a red-head... WRT the salt: Buy some cans of LPS3 or Boeshield T-9 & spray *everything* down with it well before going up there. At the end of the day, after you get off the salt, rinse everything off & blow it dry. Once you get back home, do a complete detail, taking everything down to below the layer of LPS3 and rewax. As far as Ingrid's wt. goes, you usually want a *heavier* rider, not a lighter one: the weight helps to maintain traction, and the limit on a vehicle's speed is generally due to aerodynamic drag & horsepower (or gearing), not mass. That said, her being so tiny may help with tucking in & decreased drag, but I'm not going to guess which would be more important in this case... Maybe we'll have to have all the SoCal Guzzisti show up at one of the SCTA meets @ El Mirage this fall & wring our bikes out? It could be a lot of fun, and the entry fee is definitely more reasonable! Ciao,

Don't sink into asphalt? They sure do! I've had at least two bikes with centerstands sink into asphalt, and one of them fell over because one leg of the stand sank farther than the other. That said, I agree that every bike should have a centerstand. 57973[/snapback] Centerstand = 2x support area sidestand has. Sure they'll still sink into hot asphault; they just don't do it as much as sidestands do. [Must....not... be... snide... ] TXRider made an excellent point about the MG sidestand being so far forward (awkward to deploy/retract) and out of sight (easily overlooked.) Is there a reasonable solution? I know somebody makes a ctr-stand, but the inevitable issues of weight & ground clearance come up. Sidestands *are* easy, but would using the exhaust system for mounting* be a better way? Just throwing out an idea... * - Many bikes exhaust systems are actually used for lift points now.

That's fine for the comparison w/ the J-brand bikes in the article, but the Beemer & Priller are no different in most respects. Somewhere, the math just doesn't add up: 15k A$ = 11.5k US$; 22k A$ = 16.9k US$. I've got to be honest: I've loved Guzzi's ever since Cycle had that red LMII on the cover back in '76? '78? That more than anything else is why I own a V11LM today. But at 17 large, you'd better believe that I'd still be riding almost anything else. Heck, for that money I want the MGS01, with the HiCam motor! Yes, I know that the article points out that the Harley gets $A 24k, but that's the whole "fashion over content" lifestyle issue that we're not going to go into here. Besides, you have to admit that H-D does deliver excellent QC these days, and their bikes hold their value pretty well (altho' those days may be coming to an end.) I'm curious as to why Australia (which seems to have a decently robust, if small, MG community) is getting such a shaft on pricing, in comparison to brands which sell for as much of a premium stateside, or in the EC? Is it just that Guzzi, due to it's small production #s, is getting the shaft on shipping costs & passing it along? Yowzer: I can certainly see why it's in an Aussie's or Kiwi's interest to travel stateside, buy a bike here & use it for travel, & ship it home! Here's to you Guzzi-riding Aussies: You truly love the marque!

Great article! Interesting: "In fact, I still can't decide which of the four I'd buy after a further week of sampling. Probably not the Guzzi, but only on price alone. It's a fair bit more expensive than the others, and the Ohlins suspension just isn't that exclusive." They liked the Guzzi, but in comparision, it was 1/3 again as expensive as any of the others, roughly $A 22k vs. $A 15k for the rest (except the Hog, which was $A 24k) What's up w/ that? Even the Beemer & Aprilia, which are more expensive or even in price w/ the Scura stateside were down in the 15k price range. Why are Guzzi's so friggin' expensive down under, even in comparison to their direct price competition everywhere else? Seems fishy to me. No wonder Guzzi has trouble selling enough #s to make break-even... Ride on,

'02, so no front balance pipe, right? I know a lot of people say they don't care for the looks of the front balance pipe, & it brings some exhaust sealing issues along w/ it, but it does serve a purpose! Seem like nobody with an '03 forward experiences the "hole" in the mid-range to the extent of the earlier models sans balance tube. I'm not suggesting you retrofit '03 headers to your '02, but... que sera sera?

MC sidestands have been a safety "problem child" for a long time! Nowadays we have cutout switches (which being mounted low down & forward, get coated with cr@p thrown up by the front wheel and start malfunctioning), but look at all the other options that have been tried: Ducati's infamous "suicidal" self-retracting spring-loaded sidestand (that led to insurance premiums being absurdly high because of all the parking lot "tipovers" where the bike would spontaneously topple over & trash the left side...); rubber-tipped sidestands a la' my old Honda G'wing, that *do* "fold up" under that 1st left-hander, but boy does that hop throw you!; I dunno how Harley deals with their sidestand, which is recognized as a super bit of motorcycle holdin-up engineering, but I'd sure hate to ground that down hard at speed! What works best? Centerstands! Can't drive off w/ them down, they don't sink into soft asphault the way sidestands do, and they make it so you can work on your bike w/ a garage full o' kit. Pity nobody seems to consider them standard equipment anymore... Best o' luck on your physical, mental & motorcycle recovery!

I'm curious if anyone is going to the BUB speedtrials next month? AMA/FIM motorcycle landspeed trials While I'd dearly love to enter 1/2 dozen different classes if I had the money & time to work up the bikes necessary, I was hoping that somebody w/ a V11 or Daytona/Sport was going to give the Cooked Goose people a run for their money? Seems like a V11 LeMans has a chance in Production Pushrod. Today's Tech Question: does a Daytona (or Centauro, MGS-01...) compete in the Production Pushrod category (yeah, they're cam-in-head, but they gots short, stubby little pushrod!) or not? Enquiring minds want to know... ;-) I imagine at least one Buell entrant is going to be there...

Re: "cancelling the line" - no more V11 spine frames, per various sources (Todd Haven, et al); Piaggio is standardizing on the Quotards (perimeter frame) designs, with a replacement for the Tonti-framed California's due sometime in the near future. So no more new production V11 Sport derivatives; 2006 is strictly selling off dealer stock. Expect a new cruiser to replace the California derivatives sometime in 2007. Again, this is all hearsay, but from respected sources. It makes sense from a bean-counter P.O.V., ie: get Guzzi as profitable as possible in the least amount of time so that you can sell/spin it off while keeping the Aprilia crown jewels... Back to your project: So, you're looking at buying all the Coppa parts, including the biking fairing, & taking off all the Tenni parts, including the 3/4 fairing, & swapping on the Coppa kit? Sounds expensive & time consuming; I think I'd just try to find someone to swap bikes with...

The Coppa green isn't going to blend well with the Tenni green. While I agree with you on the excellent visual appeal of the Coppa, I love the Tenni's color scheme as well, so for me it would be wasted money to "Coppa-cize" a Tenni. If you're determined to proceed, definitely *do not* order the official Guzzi parts, since you'll need to have a custom paint job to match the unusual green of the Tenni's fairing anyway. As someone else pointed out, you definitely do *not* want to paint any of the Tenni parts; if you care nothing for the Tenni's "limited production" status, then you could probably trade it straight across for a Coppa Italia (or at least, trade it + less cash than it would take you to paint it like a Coppa.) Viva V11! Too bad Piaggio has seen fit to cancel the line...

What's the difference in capabilities between the non-USB version shown and the PC3usb? Can the software "throttle pump" feature be retrofitted to the older serial PC3's, or is that strictly a feature on the newer -usb model? Other than that, all I can say is that someone in the UK/EU might be able to score a real deal, but I've already been skinned on Ebay more than once, so I adhere to a strict "not outside my continent" buying protocol... Ride on!

Pep Boys ["Manny, Moe & Jack don'cha know what I'm after!"] carries Purolator motorcycle oil filters. I don't know if it's just the Long Beach Peps that keeps the Guzzi mc oil filters in stock [there's a much higher percentage of Guzzis in this neighborhood than normal; probably has something to do with MG Classics being right here in town] but if it's at one Pep Boys, you can get your local one to order one (or a case!) up for you. If your local Peps doesn't keep'em stocked, you might want to coordinate an orchestrated assault between you & your other local Guzzisti, & take turns going in & ordering one/month. If they keep getting requests, the home office may take steps to tell the store to keep a couple on shelf: once that occurs, your group can call off the assault. Best o' luck!

Well, that's good to know, Pete! I didn't realize the FM oils were that big a problem in a/c engines. Since everything is moving to water-cooling and friction-modified "water weight" oils (witness the state of affairs here in the States: you take your car in for an oil change, & you're limited to 10w30 FM oils; you want real oil, you gotta buy it yourself & change it yourself! No problemo for me, but what about if you're a guy in a rush or a gal who's not "into" cars?), the future bodes ill for our old tracto... er, air-cooled engines. Thank heavens that for now, the heavier grades are still w/o modifiers. Just an FYI, for those buying oil in the States, the oil packaging has an SAE emblem that looks sorta like a circle, with a top rocker, center dot, & bottom rocker. If you want oil w/o friction modifiers, look for an empty bottom rocker; FM oils will have something like "friction modified" or similar in the bottom rocker space. Or just look for diesel oils; they're built to take the lickin' that a motorcycle engine dishes out, & so far, they don't have friction modifiers [probably for similar reasons as you pointed out, Pete!] Wheeee! Aren't oil threads FUN?