Greg Field

Mine's an '04, though only a humble Ballabio. One of my rotors was so warped that the front end pogoed up and down if I hit the brakes hard. MG wouldn't warrantee it, so I bought new rotors and am so happy I decided to do something about the problem instead of just living with it. It stops oh-my-God fast now with no drama. I'm pretty sure I'd've locked the warped one and crashed had I kept it through the upcoming rain months in Seattle.

Perhaps if you'd read the post, you'd know that I said the nut was loosened, so that I could pull the bracket out so that I could cut a half a milimeter out of the bottom of the hole for the bolt below it. That is why no threads extend through it. It's loosened. I turned it off the threads that extended through the nut. Get it? That crashbar and its hardware were engineered by Stucchi, I think. If you have issue with it, address them. They, of course, lack your wisdom and experience.

Alex: First, no one has mounted a camera in the sump while accelerating hard, so what follows is an explanation of what we think is happening: When the motorcycle is at rest, the oil level is below the plate, at essentially the same level at both the front and rear of the sump. If you accelerate very briskly, the oil splashes toward the back of the sump. As it splashes back, the oil level gets higher at the rear and lower at the front. If it splashes back violently enough, the oil level toward the front of the sump gets low enough that the oil pickup is exposed, and the pump draws in air instead of oil. The sloppage plate serves as a cover over the oil, which we hope will keep the oil level from rising too high at the rear of the sump and thus too low at the front. The oil level is something like 10-20mm below the plate when the motorcycle is at rest. When you accelerate and the oil tries to splash back, it will rise at the rear of the sump to the level of the plate, at which time the plate will force most of it (some will leak through holes in the plate) to stay below the level of the plate. We hope that by constraining the oil thusly that enough oil will remain around the pickup to keep the oil pump from sucking air. I'll be back later with one data point on whether it worked or not. (My rod bearings are hoping for a positive result.) Rusty: Good on ya!

Hijacking requires use of force. I used none. You are free to ignore my posts, as is everyone else.

In all things, only Gary knows best. Just ask him.

I put mine on at 0400 hrs Sunday morning, before my Sunday ride. For anyone who's interested, here's some words and pix on what's involved: Preliminaries 1) Drain the oil. I did it the night before so more of the oil would drip off the parts I would be playing with. If you will be changing oil and filter, remove the filter, too. I had just changed oil two weeks prior, so I'm reusing the oil and filter. 2) Inspect the sloppage plate, and if necessary, debur it. Here's the plate. It's a very nice piece that's even inscribed with the name of Pete's company, so that when some archeologist unearths your V11 ten thousand years from now, they'll read the inscription and surmise that the Aussies ruled all the world in the year 2006. There were no real burrs on the one Pete sent me, but whatever cutting process used left a minor raised ring around the circumferences of some of the holes. The only holes on which this could possible matter are the ones for the oil journals. I used a flat file to gnaw them down. This shows it about halfway through the gnawing. Clean the plate thoroughly afterward. 3) Using a 19mm wrench, loosen and remove the three oil lines that enter the sump. 4) Remove the screw that fastens the sidestand support to the upper sump, as shown in the fuzzy photo above. Loosen also the big bolt that holds the sidestand mount to the crankcase. I have a crashbar, so I had to loosen the big silver neut shown, which fastens on the crashbar. 5) Remove the lower sump by removing the screws that fasten it. If you lack an air ratchet, or (like me) can't stand the racket made by air tools early in the morning, let me introduce you to my little friend, the perfect tool for this job: Mr. Torq-It. He's great for taking out and replacing all those sump screws. 6) Loosen the upper sump by removing the screws around its inner perimeter. Some of them are shown below, as is another of my little little friends: Mr. Hoseclamp. This one is best friends with Billy Bob's oil filter, but there's another Mr. Hoseclamp out there who wants to be your oil filter's friend, too. 7) Loosen the four screws that hold fasten all the plumbing for the oil system (two are shown above). Support the oil filter and the rest of the guts as you are removing the last screw, so it doesn't tear free of its threads under weight of the upper sump. 8) Set the upper sump carefully on a bench, supporting it if necessary to keep it from tiliting and spilling the oil out of you filter, as shown above. 9) If the old gasket is torn, replace it, and then top it with the sloppage plate and add another gasket on top, as shown above. Those lobes of the gasket that extend toward the center are the most important part of the gasket and need to be in perfect shape because they seal the pressurized oil journals. Make sure they are in top shape. A leak from one of the journals will be internal, so you won't see it. A small leak won't be catastrophic, but a big leak will be. I do not use gasket goo for these gaskets. If you insist on using gasket goo around these journals, use it very sparingly (so you do not plug a journal) or use an anaerobic sealer so it will not harden in the journal if it gets in there. As the photo shows, the sloppage tray is a good fit and fills well all the space toward the back of the sump (right side of photo), so it should keep more oil near the pickup during drag-race starts. 10) Time to install the upper sump and sloppage plate. It is vital that the gaskets that surround the oil journals stay in place during installation. One good way to ensure this is to slide one bolt into place at both front and rear journal blocks before lifting the assembly into place, as shown above. Lift it into place and start threading the two screws until they can support the assembly. Then, insert the other two screws and thread them in partway. It is best not to fasten them until you have started threading in all the perimeter screws. Go ahead and thread in these perimeter screws loosely, then tighten the oil-journal screws, and lastly tighten the perimeter screws. 11) If the lower sump gasket is torn, replace it, and then lift the lower sump into place and tighten its perimeter screws. 12) Hook up the three ol lines and tighten them. The two at the front are often routed so tightly that they rub together and onto the alternator cover. As you can see above, mine were abrading each other and the alternator cover. Take this opportunity to separate them before you tighten the fittings, so they do not wer through. 12) By adding the sloppage plate, you've lowered the upper sump by about 2.5mm, between the thickness of the plate and extra gasket. Because of this, you may need to relieve the lower perimeter of the hole in the sidestand mount. In my case, I had to remove about 0.5mm and did it with a Dremel and burr, as shown in the fuzzy photo above. Tighten both the screw into the sump and the bolt above it that fastens the sidestand mount to the engine block. 13) The thin, silver "Roper Line" betwixt engine block and upper sump is the only external cue that that plate's in there. Check your work once-over, add engine oil, and go for a ride. I added oil to halfway between full and add, as checked by the Guzzi method, meaning with the bike level and dipstick screwed all the way in (this is about where iit had been when I experienced oil starvation under acceleration before) and then rode it yesterday on a long ride two-up.Tonight I'll try some full-on launches while watching the oil-pressure gauge to see if the sloppage tray does its job. Whatever the result, afterwards, I'm gonna add oil to the full mark as checked by the safer method of just inserting the dipstick to the top of the threads. Thanks again, Pete!

Just a worthless, minor correction to Gary's immutably brilliant post: I never said all three were in the Seattle area. I said all three happened to people I know. Only one backed off filter was from a guy in the Seattle area, for the record. His filter backed off about 150 miles from home, while headed toward Denver. Hmmmm . . . how did an undertightened filter last through a week of daily driving and then carry him so far, over mountain passes and all? Only Gary knows. All the other stuff about split filters and flickering oil lights and unknown causes torching bearings were in the Seattle area. Only Gary works on more Guzzis than Moto I does, so he alone can tell you if this is typical outside the Seattle oil convergence zone.

Re; Filters loosening. Never a filter installed at Moto Intl. or my home shop. The three this summer were all filters installed by guys just like you all: longtime, experienced owners who are not stupid and know how to tighten an oil filter. They had each changed countless filters in the past, and those filters did not loosen. This one time, a filter did. Could they have, for some unknown reason, undertightened them this time? Certainly. And so could you one time. Coud there have been something about the construction of the filter that caused it to loosen? Sure, I guess. I didn't get to see the filters, but I did get to see the trashed rod bearings.

I concur with Pete. Many here do not even hesitate to spend huge sums changing the looks of their machine or chasing a horsepower or two that they will seldom use, yet blanch at spending very little or going to an extra ten seconds' worth of trouble to proof their bike against a known hazard. Like a hose clamp on your filter, this is cheap and proof against a known hazard. I have no financial interest in these plates but think they're a very wise addition to any V11 that still has its broad sump. I'm putting one on Billy Bob tonight in advance of a long Sunday of riding.

Nog: This is typical. A few bikes suffer most of the problems. The core of most V11 SPorts just keep on ticking and ticking. Some stuff, such as the instruments and cables and angle drives haven't been so reliable. The late ones, especially, are as good a motorcycle as I know of.

The only difference I have ever noted between the early and late Ti kits is the ECU, and the differences there are all in the tuning. Micha (service manager) thought there might also be a small difference in the passenger-peg hangers, but couldn't remember the details. Moto Intl. has a Ti kit on ebay. It's the full kit. We're just trying to reduce stock of expensive, slow-moving items for winter.

Call Cycle Barn, in Lynwood. Phone number is 425 355-4667. I'm not sure what, besides Harleys, they rent. I have an Eldo you can ride, if you want it. It's the Oyster Run this Sunday. A bunch of Guzzi nutcases wil be going.

Mine's not that ready . . .

The Guzzi Ti cans are pricey but look and sound great. Bikes run well with them, too. They are also the only cans I know of that can be run in both high and low positions, which would allow me to run them with my H&B bags and also high up when I remove the bags. If I could afford them, I'd have them.

Nog: Reliability of these bikes is fine. We see a lot of Guzzis at Moto Intl. Some Guzzi shops may not service six V11s in a summer. We service that many a day sometimes. One day we had five green 2000 Sports here. That was a purty sight. The numbers we see ensure that we see more problems than other individuals and shops see. We sell 20 percent of the Guzzis sold in the US and probably get an equal percentage of the service business. This is why I frequently am able to warn you about things so many others scoff at 'cause they've never seen them, yet.

Yes, we've seen more'n a few V11 Sports start a'knockin'. Surely, though, all these were caused by owner error 'cause a Guzzi'd never misbehave. Here's the count this summer: Two bikes with torched bearings caused by gaskets that split or got spit out Two bikes with torched rod bearings caused by filters that backed off One bike with torched bearings that was prone to oil-light flicker One bike with torched bearings from unknown cause (this was beauchemin from this list; he never mentioned oil-light flicker) Fortunately the bearings are cheap. The rod bolts are not, and it is recommended that you change them.

The tensioner on a V11 is automatic. I do not see how a mechanic could leave it loose. It could have been put on out of time, though.

Easto: Remove the nut from the backside of the rounded-off fastener. Here're some brief pix of how to install the TLM centerstand. If you live in the US, Moto Intl. is Teo's agent, and we have the centerstands in stock for both the early V11 Sport and later Sports and LeMans models. I'll take some pix later of a set of new components off the bike and put a "how-to" in that section of this site: This shows the long crossbar in place under the porkchops. Two tabs extend down from the bar. The back side of each tab is flat, as shown here. This will guide you into installing the bar with the correct side back. From the right side. At each end of the crossbar is a flat plate extending upward. On the right, this plate is affixed by the pivot for the brake lever. In this case, I have Motobits foot controls, so it is affixed by a bolt. On the left, the crossbar attaches where the pivot bolt for the shifter goes through the porkchop, as shown below and behind the Motobits footpeg here. This photo, used again, shows the small red plates in the kit, which are used to link the crossbar to the lugs extending down from the subframe to supprt the crossover. In the kit are pivot bushings and two spacers of different widths. I think the wider spacer was used on the left leg but can't remember definiteively, so you will have to try it both ways to see which gives the proper tire clearance. Good luck! This

Augie: Last week, my Billy Bob began running like you describe yours as running. I set the valves, synch'ed and balanced the TBs, hooked up the Axone, and confirmed that allwas properly set. I was getting a hint of cough while hooked up so I adjusted the Axone for +15 on the fuel at low throttle openings. This cured the coughing for two days. Then on Sunday I went on a long ride two-up, and the problem gradually returned. Yesterday morning I think I found what is the root cause of the cough: A small but sure-to grow crack in the weld joining the two halves of my FBF crossover. That afternoon, Slug came in to get some stuff. I checked his FBF crossover and found it cracked, too, although his was cracking across the weld. You might check for cracks in your exhaust system . . .

I sure hope it fits. The screen for the V11 Sport came in several versions and each differs in several details from each other and from the screen on the Ballabio. I hope you get lucky, 'cause Gustaffson does not say which fairing this screen fits. Maybe it won't matter if the holes are not drilled?

Phil: Yes, makes sense. While I was interviewing Dr. John one day, he talked about chasing harmonics in the airbox while they were developing it, but they ran out of time and money to solve the problem. Can you proveide measurements for proper placement of the holes? I've got a few airboxes laying about. I'll give it a try. And good luck on the 150-mph single.

RJ: If you can get by with a take-off valve (service will take them off at the request of an owner), I'll give you one gratis. If you require a new one, I can order it. EIther way, I'll need your address. Send it in a PM.

Yes. Especially if you run them dry like those on most V11s I see.

The big tube with a plate welded on each end mounts crossways under the porkchop, and affixes on the right at the brake pivot and on the left at the buttonhead bolt toward the rear. The little plates link the tube just installed with the frame lugs for the crossover mount. I'll take some pix later tonight. It goes on pretty easily, unless you have an aftermarket exhaust crossover.

30s and 40s share all dimensions save side-to-side width. The 40s are significantly wider. I use the 30s. The H&B mounts come with a back rack that can hold a bag or a trunk, for when you really need to carry stuff. It is a stout system that can prevent considerable bike damage in a crash. Mine was on the bike when it was totaled in a crash and the bag abosrbed the impact and prevented any damage to the exhaust or rear of the bike. This system makes the bike a really practical daily driver. I pick up and drop off Guzzi engine blocks at the machinist and do all my grocery shopping on my Billy Bob. Plan on a few hours for mounting the bags. Also, they may not work with a high exhaust.