Greg Field

Rocker: What I was getting at is that you can cut or abrade off the odd protrusions on the throttle drum that prevent installing the new grip.

ROcker: We just grind off the extra stuff on a deburring wheel.

SHeise! I'll empty the box. Sorry. Or you can email me at parts@motointernationl.com or greguzzi@comcast.net. Thanks!

Guzzis like "dynamic tension" when cornering. I use the throttle to keep the chassis jacked up while braking. Seems to help more on the Eldo than on the V11 but it does help on the latter, too. THey hate violent on/off throttle and brakes transitions.

The taillight lens I was refering to is the one from the Daytona. Guzzi sells it for about $30. We have it for $24.95. It has a clear window on the underside to light a license plate.

Yes, dual points. I put in a B10 cam, which forced me to either change the gear on the distributor to that of the dual-point timer or run the timer. It was 5:00 a.m., and I lacked the patirnce to drill out the pins for the gears, so I installed a timer instead. It works fine, but I have always hated adjusting and timing thos things. The lowers are made from a mold Bob Nolan has. They work great, so great that I remove them for summer.

Yes, my Eldo. We do have a helmet law in Washington.

Yeah, I might be wrong about the model. I'll look on Tuesday and report back.

Yesterday was the Washington Guzzi breakfast. My friend Kevin from Michigan was in town, so the plan was to ride to breakfast from my house and continue on to do a lap of Mt. St. Helens, if the snow was off the passes. After having coffee at my place eight Guzzisti on seven bikes left my house, headed toward Enumclaw. The ride was uneventful until we got on Green Valley Road, the fun, twisty part of the route. I asked the fast guys to go to the front and if anyone wanted to lead. No one did, so I took off, and had some fun. About 2/3 of the way along the route, I came around a corner to see a fluffy little dog frolicking in the ditch. "Damn," I thought. "I hope he stays there." When I got to where we turn onto another road, I pulled over and waited for everyone to catch up. Soon, Ducati Sport Classic-mounted Cool Hand and Cali Aluminium-mounted Steakdaddy showed up. Then, we waited and waited for everyone else. That's when Dave Talley, another Guzzi rider, who was heading to the breakfast on his own, pulled up on his new Norge and informed us the the rest were pulled over on the side of the road. I turned around to go see what was up. I hadn't gone a mile when I saw them whizz past me. I turned around again and caught them up when they pulled over by Cool Hand and Steakdaddy at the turn-off. That's when I found out that my friend Kevin had crashed the Eldo overbraking in a corner when little fluffy the dog ran out in front of him. He said he was OK, and the bike seemed just scraped up, so we continued on to the breakfast. About 20 bikes showed up. Here's a few pictures down the line: Seemed almost like a mini-sidecar convention, too, as one fifth of the bikes carried chairs. Here's a few. That's when I got to look over the damage to the Eldo. Mostly, the crashbars did their job, but the fairing and right saddlebag also took a hit. We mostly were able to straighten the crashbars and handlebars by tuggning on them, but they're pretty ground off. There's Kevin with the post-crash Eldo. He came out of it not even sore or scraped in any way. Miraculous! Here's the fairing. This will not buff out. We had a great breakfast and some good fun catching up. After it was over, it was time to ride. I decided to modify the plan and stay local, just in case Kevin started feeling delayed reactions from the crash or the Eldo started having problems. Cool Hand and Tim Miller decided to go along. Cool Hand led, showing us his excellent new local routes. We spelunked our way north toward Monroe, having a ball, but Kevin seemed to be really having problems keeping up on the Eldo. I decided to trade off with him, figuring he would be more likely to keep up on the Billy Bob. It was a good theory, but Cool Hand and I still were always way out in front. That Eldo really goes. I never felt at any disadvantage against Cool Hand's 2007 Duc. About 3:30, we stopped for lunch in Granite Falls. Here's Tim and his green V11 Sport. Here's Kevin and the Billy Bob. After that, we rode home through a food coma from too much Mexican food. Despite the crash, a pretty good day . . .

Joe: Nice job. The otherwise-identical lens from the B750 (I think that's the model) has a clear window for the plate light. If your local supplier does not have them, we prob'ly do at Moto International. I'll be back at work there Tuesday if you need me to look up which model it cam off of. Wanna lend out the template?

If you want a really effective hugger, get the aftermarket one for the 1100 Sports/Daytonas. It's available from Moto Intl. in both fiberglass (unpainted) and carbon. The one made for the V11 Sports is what I have on my bike. It works good only if augmented with an improvised rubber flap for the front. This shows the hugger and the rubber flap at the front. Unfortunately, I do not have a photo of the 1100 Sport hugger.

It's that time of the month again. I have my buddy Kevin from Michigan staying here, and he'll be going with us. @#$$#! Guthrie's out of town, so I'm running the meeting. This means the meeting part will be short, indeed. As usual, everyone's welcome to meet at my house for coffee beforehand. Show up 7:00 or later. We leave at 8:00. Afterward, Kevin and I are going to continue on from Enumclaw, spelunking through the Cascades to (with luck) find a non-highway pass that's not still snowbound through to the Yakima Valley or Columbia Gorge. Yes, this may mean riding on some dirt roads. We'll be winging it by map and instinct. Anyone who wants to join us for an adventure is welcome. Or if any of you relative suthrunners from northern Oregon want to meet up in the Gorge, we can probably make that happen. The current frame of a plan is to spelunk past Mt. St. Helens (reports put the road by Windy Ridge as closed still as of Monday) to punch through to somewhere near Trout Lake and then maybe swing back up through Klickitat Canyon Rd. and who knows from there?

I used to sell the FBF crossovers at Moto Itnl. but stopped after a significant number began cracking, including the one on my own bike. The cause is not vibration or stress. The cause is insufficient purging during welding. This may not affect them all but appears to have affected one batch, at least. If we're lucky, Slug will jump in here; after mine cracked, we checked his when he was here one day. His was cracking, too. He was once a welder of stainless. He looked at the welds and was able to see the proble right away.

No. The clutch lever from a Tuono will fit but I know of no aftermarket brake levers.

Last week on the WildGuzzi list, a guy reported in that his Rosso Mandello engine siezed. The cause was a NAPA Gold (Wix) filter that backed off. It's not just UFIs.

Joe: We have two Cafe Sports at Moto Intl. One is set up with Guzzi Ti pipes, Throttlemeister, Motobits foot controls, and a few other things.

I've considered trying them, but I just can't believe they'd be suitable for rainy Seattle, with no center grooving. I've been very happy with Pilot Powers in that regard.

Yes, we put on a new filter. And we got a call from another shop today, asking how we keep the filters on our Grisos from loosening. He said every filter on every Griso he'd sold has come loose. Each had been installed with a torque wrench set to the factory recommended 14 lb.-ft. We told him what we do, which is to put them on there as tight as possible before the filter wrench slips. Our service manager figures this is 35-50 lb.-ft.

There's a local guy with a griso who's had his filter come loose enough to leak oil onto the ground three times now. The first time, he tightened it up again himself. It began loosening again, so he brought it in to Moto Intl. Our resident 250-lb gorilla really put the torque to it. It started loosening again after a few days, so we glued it on with loctite, and it's holding so far. I do not believe insufficient tightening is the problem. You're free to draw your own conclusions, though. As to loctite, keep in mind that loctite requires threads clean of oil. To clean a V11's threads, you'll have to take off the lower sump anyway, and then you'll likely have to do the same again to loosen the filter. Given all that, it's easier just to put on a hose clamp.

How much are they, Paul?

FWIW, on the WildGuzzi site, a guy just posted about his filter coming loose on his Rosso Mandello and his engine siezing. It was not a UFI filter. It was a NAPA Gold (made by Wix, I think) filter.

I use the centerstand I have permanantly fitted to the bike. I also have a Pit Bull, but I haven't used it since I installed a centerstand.

I always have a little pink streak running down from my rear-drive vent after a brisk run. It never drips onto the tire or ground, though.

I advocate lugging if you are breaking in new rings only (that is, already "broken-in" bearings). I use a steep hill and put the bike in one gear higher than I normally would for the speed I'm starting the load run at and full throttle to really load the rings. Motoman does the same thing, turning up the load on the dyno to apply extra load on the rings. What he means when he recommends xx percent throttle at xx percent of redline is that he sets the throttle and controls the revs to whatever speed that is by varying the load on the dyno so it doesn't rev higher. In other words, the rpm not only doesn't increase slowly, it doesn't increase at all. In other words, he's lugging it for that throttle setting and rpm. He's at 100 percent power for those settings.

I sell Odysseys at Moto Intl. Nearly every day I have reason to charge one of them. I managed to ruin one with the very unsophisticated multi-battery charge out in the shop. It was the only battery hooked up and was on full power for over 24 hours. Now, instead of using that big-ass charger, I brought in my el cheapo auto charger and use that for the whacking. It has done the job every time where BatteryTenders and the like do not. I like the Optimates, though. They go sometimes over 15v but are current limited.