Dan M

seems someone needs a hug

I agree with Pete as well. I once had a Honda that lost the clip and the wrist pin moved into the bore creating quite a gouge. The offending clip was ground to bits, nowhere to be found. I'm sure it was mixed with the rest of the metal in the sump. The heavy oil smoke alerted me to the trouble but found no metal "jingling around" in the combustion chamber. It's tough to fathom a couple of things here. First, how someone would know they were riding a bike for thousands of miles with a loose wrist pin clip. Second, why someone would continue to ride for thousands of miles with that knowledge.

Thanks, I'm not serious at the moment but may consider the upgrade down the road.

Yep, $399. - here: http://www.mphcycles.com/Accessories_New/B...sers/Risers.htm

Was not aware of that. Still have them? I've spent a bit of effort dialing in the OE forks and like the performance, If the price were right I might consider Ohlins. I'm in the habit of throwing money away when it comes to this bike anyway.

That seems like a good price (pending exchange rates) for a complete Paioli fork.

Um, this opens another whole debate. Measuring the intensity of analness here will require not only feeler gauges and dial indicators but quite likely trucking scales and teams of psychologists.

Who? When? Where? Regardless of all of the other blather I think everyone here knows .005" is 5 thousandths of an inch and .0005" is 5 ten thousandths of an inch.

Come'on Pete, it's not about .005". We all know it makes no difference (well, at least 50 of us anyway) It's about crappy weather, can't ride and nuthin better to do, so might as well break Dave's balls. Sorry about the wasted bandwidth though. And what makes you think nobody's having a beer already?

How do you know? In earlier posts you said you wouldn't bother with a dial indicator. This is why I asked how you know you are within .0005". Are you saying that you checked them with a dial, they were .0005 apart, and you went back with your feeler gauge and felt the difference? Was this for science? Seems to be a great deal of time to spend by a person who does not want to bother with lock nuts. Ratchet (and other than actually being a professional mechanic; myself) and the 50 others are satisfied at within .001 as Ratch said +/-. That's +/-. Did he say +/-? I'd interpret that as no more than .001 greater or .001 less than spec. That's a .002 spread my friend. While I agree that a dial indicator would be the most accurate way of checking this clearance, after adjusting valves for decades, hundreds and hundreds of them, I've never set up my dial indicator nor have known any other professional to do so. While I feel that I've developed a pretty sensitive touch in regard to how that gauge feels when you have it right,(which by the way, varies from engine to engine) Being able to say how many ten thousandths difference there is from valve to valve by feel is not likely. Unless of course it's you doing it.

That would sum up things nicely Jean-Marc.

Just one question. OK, three. How do you measure accuracy to within .0005 without a dial indicator? Do you have feeler gauges in graduations of less than 1 thousandth of an inch? Can you feel the difference with your feeler gauges of a 5 ten-thousandths variation? That's pretty impressive. Enlighten me please.

I got a response similar to this last winter, telling of the expansion and they said the wheels would be back in production in six months (around August 07). I tried again in October and they said no availability. Still, the PVM site shows Moto Guzzi pricing. I did attempt to contact PVM through their site and was transferred directly to the EMA site. Anybody ever get a weight on the Alpina spoke wheels?

I've contacted EMA several times - They've said no wheels available for V11.

If you need to wax nostalgic so to speak. Aerostich makes a waxed cotton jacket that has the modern stuff like armor and vents http://www.aerostich.com/product.php?produ...=395&page=1

tikkamassala, tikkamassala. Hmm, you may need to adjust your valves. Or is it what you sound like after consuming Tikka Massala. In that case. let 'er rip!

Even now when the outside temp is 16F and the streets are snowy. If I can find time to do a job, I want to have everything on hand to finish it. I won't lose any riding days this time of year if I'm waiting for parts but I don't know when the next time I'll get to spend some "quality time" turning various fasteners on one of my bikes.

The nipples on the manifolds near the heads went to the vapor canister. (I'm assuming it has been removed also) You can cap those off at each manifold. Make sure your T-bodies are fitting properly with no vacuum leaks. If you are running K&Ns with stock FI set up things are probably lean, causing your cough. What about the exhaust, is it stock? Did your t-body sync help? Is your bike equipped with a PC3?

Sounds like normal wear if it snapped in the coil. The coil is where the spring should be flexing. If you look at the action in both directions, the spring relaxes some in the upshift, as the angle of the pawl opens unwinding the coil. With a tight spring that grabs the boss, (on the downshift) the coil cannot flex so the arm that hooks on the pawl does too much of the work, snapping it before the coil. Sounds like yours just plain wore out. You should be good for a long time.

Did it break at the base of the long arm? Right next to the start of the bend? Seems they mostly break there. If the coil is bound and kept from flexing, that point gets the work. I think some of these springs are wound tight enough to grab a 15mm boss. Obviously if yours was, it wasn't by much - hence the long life. Couldn't be that Guzzi is using poor quality springs, could it?

Hey Leon, There has been a lot of discussion on this topic. Many of us have chosen Wilbers. Worlds of improvement over stock. There is much info on this forum for dialing in both your front & rear suspension. One of the best mods you can make.

Mine does not have one. I'm thinking the collective transmission engineers (Luigi, Guido & Aldo) realized that the eccentric under the acorn nut that centers the assembly was sufficient and eliminated the other one. The pawl arm is a fixed length so why would it need two adjustments for length of throw? I'm thinking the post that takes it's place limits the pawl from moving too far away when ramping over the pins as the shifter is released. All pure speculation of course.

Great to not only show your mates that you knew what was wrong but did the fix too. And, when they break down you can fall back on "well, if it was a Guzzi I could probably help you..."

My overall point is, it is all about the spring. If the spring reaches it's binding point by winding up tight on the boss it will be fatigued. They all seem to break in the same spot, yet over a widely varying length of time. How tight it is determines how long it will last. Obviously the tolerances vary greatly from bike to bike. Not only boss size but how tight the spring is wound. I'd gamble that the bikes that have more loosely wound springs in combination with 15mm bosses will be the ones to maybe never have a failure. Those who make the change to their bikes, be it turning down the boss or relaxing the spring or both are likely never to have another issue with the spring. So far as the eccentrics go, if your bike shifted positively when new, they are most likely adjusted properly and need not be messed with. Those adjustments make up for differences in machining tolerances from unit to unit. Once set, no further adjustment should be necessary. It seems those who have played with it have then had to do the trial & error thing to get it right, probably back close to where it was to begin with.

Yes, like I said in my first post. But, like the adjuster under the acorn nut, it must be adjusted to a position of balance so both up & down shifts are possible. I'm thinking if you try to limit the downshift throw to save the spring, you may have difficulty actually achieving the downshift or you will have too much throw on the upshift, possibly going past the gear you are attempting to select. Moving the adjuster under the acorn nut can effect how far the mechanism has to move on the downshift, but only in theory. If you position it to bias toward the downshift, you will have difficulty obtaining an upshift. If you have the acorn nut adjuster set properly to get balanced action on both up and down shift, and if your trans has one, adjust the limiting eccentric to get full throw in both directions. The pawl will still wind up the spring tight enough to fatigue it on the downshift. So, as I've said before, if you bend that springs arm some to lessen the tension against the pawl, the problem is solved.