motoguzznix

Hello To put an other light on the Mistral discussion, here the power measurement of a Ballabio now two years ago with the Mistral crossover compared to the stock crossover. The same mufflers are mounted for both runs being slightly modified stock cans. When we later installed the stock cans (including the catalyst) the dip at 4000 rpm almost disappeared. The Mistral crossover did not only cut the power above 5000, it also started about 1000 rpm later developping power. The difference in maximum power was only 3,4 HP, but between 6 and 8000 the difference was up to 9 HP! During driving there was no point going over 6000 because there was no power increase to be noted any more. For me the mistral crossover is not the one to use. I had better results with the Stucchi X-over. This acts power wise very similar to the stock part, but is better in mid range. When looking to the power dip at 4000 of most V11, the rise of the curve starts about 500 rpm earlier. To return to the Ballabio above: This was the fastest stock V11 we ever had on the test bench: With the stock exhaust system, like mentioned above, the power curve smoothed out and hit' the 100HP mark:

This is not true for the V11 injection system. There is no idle stepper motor that keeps idle stable. So it is normal that the idle varies from cold to hot.

Since the sump is already dismounted, you could further dismount the oil filter assembly (just 4 screws) and then drop the rod big end screws to inspect the plain bearings. Reassembling is no problem as the screws must not be replaced, Just to be sure about that.... Torque is around 65 Nm if I remember that well. My next step would be to inspect the cam shaft axial bearing as Phil an others mentioned. Whith the Stucchi tensioner you can unscrew that small 8 mm nut and remove the tensioner with the chain and wheels in place. At this stage check also the crankshaft axial play. The front bearing can be changed from the front without further disassembling (just remove the chain sprocket) in case of wear. If after all that the noise is still present, I would dismount the heads to check valves and guides for wear. This is very common on the V11 engines and the only weak point.

Hi The wire fixing breaking off is very usual. I use to drill a small hole in the aluminium ring to fix the wire properly with a cable tie.

Neil There is a lot of work done on your bike. When I look at the polished exhaust system - I know this because I did this work on my own V11. I own a MY 2000 KR V11. Despite an accurate tune up with carb synching, CO checking and so on my bike suffered of very serious vibrations. Out of this reason I dismounted the engine at 9000 km and balanced the crankshaft. With this measure I got rid of the vibrations. I read a test by Alan Cathcart in a motorcycle magazine where he also complained extreme vibrations on the tested V11. Some early V11 engines seem to vibrate, most don't. If a correct calibration of the engine does not cure the vibrations, yours seem to be also one of those. Mine is now as smooth as any V11 if not better. But it is a lot of work getting the crankshaft out of the engine...

footgoose I am sure you were not on the dyno with the mistral crossover. It costs you a lot of HP on top and does not sound any better. Just cost you money....

Hi knumbnutz Here is my advice: 11:1 is too much CR for a V11 engine, even with twin spark ignition. Don't bother with those pistons. The stock ones are strong items. Raise the pistons in the bores by milling the cylinders on bottom gasket surface. They should be flat with the head gasket surface. Squish is then given by the head gasket thickness - get the stock ones with 1,2 mm. After market gaskets can measure 1,5 - 1,7 mm which cost CR! You can mill the head for more CR, but don't go above 10:1 with single spark ignition. Your stock V11 flywheel is already as light as your lightened Mille GTs was. Small gains are still available by machining it. Stucchi crossover is fine, small gains are avilable. Mistral crossover is a disaster and costs a lot of HP at top above 6000rpm. Mistral cans do not cost HP but gains were not noticed when I measured it on the dyno. The camshaft is good, just check timing - best ist slightly advanced at 104/108° inlet/exhaust max lobe. My own V11 was retarded. The heads should undergo a service. The valves wear out at the shafts very early - go for better ones and replace the guides at the same time if necessary. Big gains are available from remapping the ECU. Fuel and ignition maps need rework. When you do your own Lambda measurements, it can all be done by yourself. Gelos went that route with very good success. Just use Tunerpro and Guzzidiag which are avialable for free / a donation. This was a quick guide with low budget mods if done by yourself. There is no expansive aftermarket hardware necessary to make the V11 go faster. Enjoy it!

Scud I just dimounted the heads of a Ballabio with 15k miles on the clock and very similar rocker washer wear. Reason for the tear down was high oil consumption of about 0,8 l/1000km. We found worn valves and guides that could explain the the oil consumption. The owner used 5W40 high quality oil. We replaced all valves and the exhaust guides and put it all together again. I convinced him to use a higher grade oil in the future and he bought a 15W50 that will go into the engine soon. I am very curious if the oil consumption issue is cleared now. The washer wear is new to me - nerver seen that before even on engines with very high mileage. Maybe the oil was too thin or an oil pressure issue? Or a combination of the two? I will put my attention on the oil pressure of that engine. Thanks for this discussion that puts a new light on the washer wear.

Hi The TI exhausts are completely different to the stock ones. There was an ECU supplied with them to suit. you can load this data in any 15M ECU in case of need. The carbon cans from the Rosso Mandello are stock cans underneath the carbon wraps. (as czakky told you). No need to use them performance wise.

There is a very slight draw from the ECU - you can stop this by pulling out fuse F1. Since I have a new regulator, the drain from the battery is very small. 3 to 4 weeks of standstill is no problem now.

Wanderer When I take a look at the picture of the crankshaft the following comes in my mind: The damaged half of the crank pin is not really blue - maybe the surface of the crank ist not worn but bearing material deposits on it. In that case you can polish it off the pin. New rod bearing shells, cleaning the oil galleries, done. Regrounding the Guzzi crank often leads to breaking if not done correctly. Mounting a crank from an EV can cause terrible vibrations because of a different balancing. Good luck I hope you can save your crank.

Scud There might be another reason for the low oil pressure when the engine is hot: Behind the oil cooler connections at the oil pan there is an intermittend part to the oil filter/thermostat unit. These two parts have an Oring front and rear. Change these 4 Orings and take care they are a tight fit in the bores. If these Orings do not seal properly, oil can escape thus reducing pressure. There is only flow in that area when the oil warms up and the thermostat starts to open.

Anders I won't discourage you, but I suppose it might be a bent valve that remains open 5 mm. That can either be caused by charcoal in the valve guide or by a too tight valve guide play. In that case the valve sticks in the guide and the piston on his way up the bore hits the valve. If you are lucky it is a shrinked pushrod as mentioned above. remove the rocker and pull the pushrod. In case of a shrinking you can observe an aluminium rollover at the connection to the steel end caps. You can remove the other pusrod too to compare the length. In that case replacing the pushrod is a cheap repair.

@ Scud Yes, this is the tensioner I was talking about. @ Guzzimoto and SP838 For a race engine I would use a gear set. It absorbs less power and the disadvantages mentioned above are not detrimental for an engine that is always working at high rpm. For a street engine I can only see advantages for the gears compared to the stock tensioners. The stronger Stucchi tensioner is the best solution for a street engine. Use a Strobo light and observe the iginition through the hole on the right: on any V11 with stock timing chain you will notice the timing variation. When installing the Stucchi tensioner the ignition is almost stable apart from the idle corrections done by the ECU. My aversion for the gears is backed by some experiance: Once i reworked the gears (the oil pump gear) of a V7 to use it in my LM2. This involved a lot of work and eventually there was no way to install the oil pump gear: the oil pump was too nearby the crank. Displacing the oil pump by about 2 mm was the onnly way to make this setup work. A friend of mines V7Sports engine was distroyed by a collapsed timing gear: the abrased particles went through the engine which had to undergo a complete rebuild. My own V7Soorts gears worked fine, but were louder than a chain setup. Straight cut gears are very loud and last much shorter. Aluminium gears show wear very soon and then get louder too. I have seen such gears with 20 000 km that I wouldn't install again. It may depend on the quality of the gears involved, but these are my experiences.

HI I cannnot see a big advantage in replacing the timig chain by a gear set. In many respects the chain is the best solution: 1st: It is in the engine - replacement is cheap and life cycle very long. 2nd: The gears must take into account that the distances between crank, cam and especially the oil pump are less accurate since Guzzi changed to the timing chain as this is less sensitive in that respect. So the play of the gears is big and they are noisy. When the engine runs uneven at low rpms, the gears can rattle. This distroys the aluminium gears fast, especially the straight cut ones. They last much shorter than the chain. 3rd: The main reason why the chain is better is due to the nature of a 90deg V-twin: take a look at the camshaft - all 4 cam lobes are positioned on one side of the shaft, which causes irregularíties in cam rotation. When the cam runs up the ramp, the shaft decelerates, when it runs down the other side it is accelerated by the valve springs. A chain with good tension is a big mass that dampens these oscillations and makes the rotation smoother and the timing more accurate. 4th: I recommend the Stucchi/Valtech tensioner - it is tighter than the Guzzi tensioner and cheaper too. The timing is more accurate also at idle speed and idle gets smoother.

How much is the CO at idle? Adjust it to 3 - 3,5 % using the CO trim of Guzzitech.

For a CR like this the coils will work. But if there are any advantages compared to single spark? I doubt. An this CR works also with single spark. Mine is at 10,5 with single spark. It is interesting that the Breva has BPR6 plugs outside and C8 inside. But this maybe relates to the fact that a CR.... 10mm plug with a heat Rating of 6 is not available on the market.

Yes will send the file again as zip. Ernst

sp838 and gelos When using the Breva/Fiat coils, don't go havoc with compression ratio. I was pretty unsuccessful when tuning a Breva 1100. We raised the compression to slightly above 11:1 and the engine pinged/knocked severely. To get it out from pinging, I had to reduce the ignition timing so much that all the gains from the CR were gone. All this because the coils were not able to burn the mixture correctly. When the compression pressure gets too high (good VE, high CR), the spark is too weak with these coils. They are designed to fire 2 spark plugs of a 4-cylinder car engine. On such an engine, one cylinder is during overlap when the other is ready to fire! The spark during overlap doesn't need much energy so the other cylinder gets 90% of the energy available from the coils. In a twin plug Guzzi engine, both plugs in one cylinder are in need of the full energy which the coil can not deliver simply because it is not designed for that purpose. When keeping the CR at 10:1 and the mixture not too weak it will work. But you cannot get the full benefits of twin sparks with these coils.

@ SP838 Sorry, my Emailadderss has changed, please resend to my new one: motoguzznix@live.at

@ Ken: The Breva 1100 iginition map is no good idea for the V11. It has a lot more pre iginition than even the V11 stock map. It will cause pinging and bad running behavior. It only works with a moderate compression ratio and low volumetric efficiency of the engine. The same goes for the standard ignition coils of the Breva. @ sp838 8 deg less overall will not work fine as the engine needs the 8 deg around idle. Reducing to near zero in that area will decrease from idle Quality. In case of real interest I can email a tunerpro file with a good working ignition map for a V11. Let me know your email address.

docc prior to touching the head fixing nuts, check the following: the oil feeding connection on the inner side of the head - remove the fuel tank to get there the plug in the head that allows access to the inner stud - just remove the valve cover. There is an o-ring underneath the 10 mm allen plug When the head bolts are not loosened, the o-rings underneath the rocker arm brackets never get leaky.

Hi When the engine pings, it is better to address this in the ignition map. Pre ignitioin must be reduced in the rpm and TP area where pinging occurs. This can be done with Guzzidiag. Mark your throttle grip to find out the tp position.

Yea, just like my '58. It's a mesh screen, right? No, it is a smaller aluminium can with a paper element and it needs to be replaced on a regular basis too.

Hi Some years ago I did some dyno measurements with my V11. During those sessions I compared the Stucchi Xover with the stock V11 part and found only minor differences: From 3 to 4000 rpm the stock part was about 3 to 4 HP in front, from 4500 to 5300 the Stucchi was slightly above (1 HP) but the difference was not worth thew money. I remember some dyno runs by different people that showed that the Mistral Xover takes away about 4 - 6 HP at the top end with sometimes very small gains at bottom end. Remember: When someone puts on open cans and the mistral Xover can cure a lean spot that occurs with the standard Xover, the conclusion is the mistral part has more restriction, so less air goes through the engine and therefore the lean spot is gone. When you would get the mixture right with the standard Xover, there will be more power due to more air through the engine. I would keep the standard crossover and put on open cans from a company with good reputation. Most important: Get the mixture right on a dyno - this is the cheapest way to go with exhaust.