Greg Field

Yep. It's pretty much, err, out of your hands once one begins. You can volunteer to crash by bailing out or do your best to save it, but some are not savable. No matter how well your damper is adjusted.

I believe the assumption being made here is that the bikes in the videos lack steering dampers and the implication being made is that if they had had dampers, they would not have crashed or wobbled. It is an assumption, though, as nothing in the videos shows whether a damper was fitted or not. The assumption and implication are possibly true, but we don't and can't know. What if they did have dampers? I would find it totally believable that the two bikes in the videos I viewed (the third did not open on my Mac) did have dampers. Both bikes appeared to be either on the track or track-prepped bikes. If all the racing orgs specify that dampers must be fitted, then these bikes would likely have dampers. Yes, assumptions but logical ones. Plenty of bikes with steering dampers have gone into incredible wobbles. I've been on at least three of them. I always use a damper on the Eldo because it has wobbled on me and because I know folks have been killed as a result of their tendency to wobble. Last summer, on the way back from the National, a friend and I swapped bikes. My Eldo went into a wobble on him at about 70mph. I was way ahead on his Eldo and so didn't see it, but friends riding behind him said it was a near-death experience. The damper didn't prevent the wobble but may have prevented worse. None of us can say. What I can say is that immediately prior to him and I swapping, I had been riding that bike at 120 mph through some great sweepers going so hard that my friend Stefano, who was riding behind on my Ballabio, commented, "I could not believe it. I was going over 120 mph and I couldn't keep up!" It was a little twitchy but never wobbled. Who knows? Maybe I am a human steering damper? I have a damper on the Ballabio, too, though I did run it for over a year without one after the stocker failed. Never a hint of a wobble without it. I lucked into a free replacement, so I put it on just in case. I pretty much keep it a zero to reduce the heaviness that more damping adds to the steering feel.

I've seen those alternators left unpaired for years without demagnetizing.

If you simply swap relay positions periodically, say once in the spring and once in the fall, they seem to last forever.

Yes. That is what I would call a serious wobble.

Yes check the valve stems and guides. V11s are hard on both.

What Dan M. said.

If the manual petcock is the Guzzi one and is wide open, it can supply plenty of fuel, even for race use. Check the screen and for kinks.

Our shop has fitted several LeMans models with handlebars. The easy and very satisfying (but more expensive) way is to get the parts from a Ballabio. FOr less money, you can fit aftermarket risers and bars of your choice. They will be solid-mounted, though, increasing felt vibration. I have a Ballabio on which I've added a LeMans fairing. The bars and fairing work together very well. I also have the Motobits pegs. It's a good bike for 800-mile days.

A deep and compelling response, as usual. At least it was readable this time and didn't make my eyes bleed. Congratulations on the improvements. I no longer believe the legions who say you are incapable of learning . . .

Try another gauge. EI can lend you a dead-reliable and accurate mechanical gauge to check what your pressures really are.

What symptoms leads you to believe yours is bad?

Check the 30a fuse in your fusebox. Does the plastic look melty?

Have a midget porn star perform an exorcism . . .

Any extra noise from the pump? Check the screen on the new petcock. It may be partially plugged with sediment stirred up in the changing. Also, consider changing the filter. I put one of those on an Aluminum two weeks ago. Today the guy came back with similar issues. We cleaned the screen and it's better, but I think we're going to have to change the filter, too.

A Tuono steers far more quickly than any stock V11 Sport. It doesn't feel unstable. You'll have to trust, or not, that I can tell the difference between quick steering and instability.

Ratch: The point is and always has been this: Every other time Guzzi has made changes like they did on the Sport, it wasn't because some journalist said the bike was twitchy. It was because someone died or was seriously injured. And they only did it after the problem was denied and finally proven to them by the spilling of blood. Of course the Eldo is unlike the Sport. Was Guzzi's reason for changing the geometry the same as for the Eldo? I bet a little investigation would show that it is. You can believe as you like, but do not pretend that what I know on this subject is in any way inferior to what you know on this subject. Shove your derision all the way up your ass. I never said the geometry was near the edge. As delivered, they are far from stable. That all of you have to spend so much time setting them up to prevent this is, I believe, a concession of this point. Add in production variation, and you get a certain number of dangerous machines.

Yes, what they found was that out of a given batch of identically outfitted (same windshield, same bags, same siren, same lights, etc.) bikes, some would wobble, no matter what they tried for set-up and no matter who was the rider. There were instances of LeMans 1000s on which this was observed, too. I cannot remember if anyone was actually killed on the early LeMans 1000 because of a wobble, but there were several horrendous crashes from it. Sometimes a design is close to the edge such that most individual bikes are to the safe side but some fall just over the line to the unsafe side. IMO, this was the case for the US police Eldos and the early LeMans 1000. It is likely the case for the red-frame V11 Sports, too.

THe first of the Guzzi police bikes for the US were most likely in 1969 (I never found documents saying exactly when). Accidents happened in several different years. Not every bike wobbled. Only some of them, which is the point I brought up in the beginning. Like most of you here, Guzzi and the US importer (Berliner) at first said, "Well, they must not've been set up properly." Berliner spent the money to ship the wobblers back to ZDS Motors in California, where they had their best mechanic set them up. Most of those that wobbled before still wobbled after this guy had done everything to set them up properly. He reported that Guzzi should buy back and scrap these bikes. Guzzi said, "No, they're still not set up properly," and sent in an engineer to do this work at ZDS. He changed steering head and swingarm bearings, measured frames for straightness, and did everything he though might help. Then he turned to the ZDS mechanic who had already done these things and found that they wobbled anyway and told him to take one of them for a test ride. The ZDS guy said words to the effect, "Hell, no. I did everything you have just done, and it didn't help. I don't want to get killed on one of those things." So, the Guzzi engineer took one of them out, and the ZDS guy followed on a non-wobbler, knowing what would happen. SUre enough, the wobbler went into a wobble and the Guzzi engineer was seriously injured in the crash.

I did write that a test rider was killed on an Eldorado, first in my book. I wrote this after talking to the Guzzi engineer who came to the US, set up the bike, and then crashed it. It was he who told me that a Guzzi test rider was later killed on one of the wobbling police bikes. Ivar DeGier confirmed that the test rider was killed. So did Todero. I also talked with the service manager at ZDS Motors, the US West Coas Guzzi distributor, and he was the guy who was riding aloong on another bike behind the Guzzi engineer when the bike went into a wobble and threw the engineer. If you can disprove any of this, I'm waiting to hear the sources you have that are better than eye-witnesses and the actual guy who was thrown.

Now you're saying the bike has to be stock to meet your criteria, whereas before the criteria was that they had to've been "set up"? Hmmm . . . I gotta believe no matter what is said, you'll toggle back and forth to maintain your belief. So be it. People keep saying the same as you about the other Guzzis that wobbled and then were fixed. "Mine doesn't wobble!" Well, OK, maybe yours doesn't, and maybe you don't ride it very hard or haven't hit just the right bump yet while heeled over. People were seriously injured and even killed on the Eldos and LeMans 1000s, the former of which was scrapped and the latter of which was fixed in the second series and by recall of the first series after the fact with new parts. I do not know of anyone killed on a V11 because of wobble, but I bet if I investigated with the engineers about why the change was made, I'd find that there are crashes behind it. I'll get to that when I have time to update "Big Twins," hopefully soon. I can tell you that that's why the earlier bikes were fixed, not because some journalista said they were twitchy. And nice selective quoting. Nolan, a semi-professional journalist, also found that the stock ones were twitchy. He rides all kinds of bikes that handle quickly, as do I, and neither of us describe these other bikes as "twitchy." Quick steering and twitchiness need not be synonymous. Several of the early V11s I have ridden were definitely twitchy. They were stock.

I already know nothing will convince Ratchethack, but in case there are others here who find it more plusible that Aprilia spent all that money to change the frame because, allegedly, some journo called it twitchy than because there was an actual problem that exposed them to financial liability, see Nolan Woodbury's post in this link: http://wildguzzi.com/forum/index.php?topic=28534.0 A certain number of those things're extremely twitchy, no matter how they're set up. Many of these are no longer on the road 'cause they were totaled in crashes. Other specific bikes aren't twitchy, no matter how they're set up. If you have a twitchy one, be wise and maintain and use your steering damper. And be careful.

Different individual bikes, built to the same pattern, can exhibit different behavior. A manufacturer is responsible for all of them, so naturally the manufacturer has an interest in making them to a pattern where all will be safe. If they turn up a few examples that show problems, despite their having set them up, they must change the pattern. This is likely what happened with the V11 Sport, as it was with the LeMans 1000 and other Guzzis, including one that I am extremely familiar with: the Eldorado. I have a police Eldorado that I ride the hell out of. I can go all day at 120 mph, and usually, I get no weave. Other Eldorados will wobble at 80 mph or so, as the American cops found out using them. Cops crashed and got got injured. Naturally, they complained. Guzzi did not believe them and sent over an engineer to see what was up. That guy did every set-up thing possible, and then he took the bike out for a ride. It wobbled and threw him, badly injuring him. Still not believing there was a problem, Guzzi them flew over several of the wobblers to Italy for testing. One of their ace test-riders was killed when one went into a wobble. After that, Guzzi believed there was a problem and stopped building that chassis entirely. That your bike doesn't wobble and even that most of them don't is not good enough. None of them should wobble. Some do. You can believe yours doesn't wobble because of your superior abilities to set it up all you want. That doesn't make it true.

They're single-use gaskets. It they loosened the head bolts, they should replace the base gaskets, if they're the metal crush type.

It sounds like hot-rod because it's extremely loud. It's just a single resonance chamber fed by two pipes.