dlaing

I believe I am the only one who has posted a dyno chart for the Quat-D. I had an early Quat-D and it made very healthy power up to about 4500 RPMs, and then it looses some peak power. So overall, rating the health of the powerband is dependent on whether you want power down low or up high. I needed power up high, so I traded mine. I now think it was a mistake as it sucked a lot of soul out of the bike. My Mistrals sound prettier, and have more peak HP, but the bike is not as fun to ride and I have to stay in a lower gear. I am definitely considering the newer model with removeable catalytic convertor. Pending V50Man's dyno results... Oh, and mine sounded a little tinny, while V50Man's (and Frankie's) sound deeper less or non-metallic.

Good question. I think anything with the right hose fittings that is designed for gasoline fuel injection, should be fine. But who knows, filters are specified to trap varying levels of particles and to flow atleast a certain flow rate. I don't think the flow rate is critical since we 30+MPG. The particle rating is more critical. We did some research years ago and we narrowed it down to a NAPA gold FIL3023, and any filter that cross references a Nissan Pathfinder will probably work. I seem to also recall some Isuzu Trooper/Rodeo filters would work, but I chose not to use them for some reason. But I don't remember why. It may have been size, particle size or flow rate... But I still recall the Weber filter filters out finer particles, so it may be worth the money. Also, many say they should last for many years, but I replace mine no less frequently than every two years which also is an opportunity to replace hoses, and clamps.

Middle should be good. My less than ideal grade Shockproof Light is about 3/4 up the glass. I think some say to fill it too the top of the glass and let it blow its way out to find the perfect level. In any case if the glass is completely submerged that is too much oil and if it is below the glass, that is too little oil. The vague Shop Manual says: I wish the engine oil had a sight glass.

After my gearboxes recall work, I had a leak there. I switched to cheap valvoline 90W140 or something like that and it slowed down a little, but shifted stiffly when cold. I procrastinated than finally dealt with it. I had to pull the starter and the swing arm. It gave me the chance to properly adjust the adjustment screw. I pulled the rear case which gave me access to the screws that hold the inner case together. When I started tightening those screws, I found that one was too loose right by my leak. I was scared to take it further apart to re-seal it, so I just torqued it down well, sealed the rear case, and put it all back, and filled up with RedLine light shockproof (EDIT PLEASE NOTE THAT REDLINES CUSTOMER SERVICE RECOMMENDS HEAVY). And it has been leak free ever since...will maybe a weep, but no drips on my now carbon covered crossover.....who needs ceramic coating when Carbon coating is free!?! If it still leaked and I had to pull the inner cover, I was contemplating paying the dealer, because it did look like a fair amount of work. But maybe someone has done it and it was not that difficult.

I love it! Common Pete, I bet you'd pay five dollars to have that on an old clunker. Todd, did you ever think of changing MPH to THC? Or is M.H. the owner? And does anybody have Y2KV11S? Or W4NK3R?

I think that goes between the throttle body and airbox. I think people are talking about the one that goes between the engine and throttle body....but both could wear and crack. The engine side rubber manifold piece is 01 11 43 00 As opposed to the airbox side piece 01 11 45 00 If it is that cheap, it may be a good idea to replace all four at the same time.

That could just as easily make it worse. It is a fifty/fifty chance of improvement. five or ten degrees will probably do the trick, but it could just as easily be clockwise as counter clockwise. The trick is to center the lobe between the definative inability to upshift or downshift. The inability to upshift or down shift is detectable by the ratchet not re-engaging. With the case closed this probably requires some understanding of what is going on, patience, and faith in yourself as a mechanic. Or you could just try ten degrees one way, test it, and if it is worse, go the other direction. If you go too many degrees, the upshifting problem will become a downshifting problem. So, I recommend trying to find the point of adjustment furthest from bad shifting. I think the adjustment is key to anyone finding false neutrals that is not blowing shifts due to rider input. Here is a digest of what I wrote previously, http://www.v11lemans.com/forums/index.php?...topic=5417&st=0 with paraphrased and stolen un-quoted quotes from other posters: I adjusted mine with the side cover off and discovered mine was quite a bit off. Adjusting the screw with the cover on is flying blind, but totally doable, as evidenced by Ouiji's success. To find out how it works, I opened up the box, undid the acorn and lock nuts, and activated the shifter with eccentric lobe maxxed out in either direction and discovered that it sets the neutral point of spring pressure on the ratchet. Meaning that if it is maxxed out in one direction, the ratchet will not re-engage on up-shifts, and if it is maxed out in the other direction, the ratchet will not re-engage on down-shifts. Keep in mind that it does not need to be maxed out to not re-engage. There is only a quarter turn of adjustability where it seems to be happy. At least on my bike. Your mileage will vary... Of course I set it in the middle of that quarter turn. The bike was previously not set to the middle of that quarter turn. I also marked the lobe apex or whatever it is called on the set screw so that I can adjust it from outside and know what the heck is going on inside. In the part's manual, the eccentric pin (#9) goes through the forked end of spring #28 and positions it with respect to the case. The forked end of spring #28 also engages the pivot shaft of ratchet arm #24. Adjusting the eccentric raises or lowers the rest postion of the shift lever and the rest position of ratchet lever #24. The orientation of the slot in the screw-face does not align with the orientation of the eccentric lobe. Or to rephrase, the slot is not in line with the direction of the offset. To free the lock nut from the adjuster screw I had to back the nut and aduster screw out to the limit of the adjuster screw, which locked at the end of its travel so that the lock nut would unlock from the position it was stuck or glued in. Also, going deeply in or out seems to make no difference, although it could effect your acorn nut's ability to thread if the screw goes to far in, or if the screw goes too far out, the acorn inside may contact the screw face. Be careful. I could be overlooking something. This adjustment will ONLY help those with either missed upshifts or missed downshifts. If you never mis-shift don't mess with it. If you mis-shift both up and down-shifts, it it probably a different problem. If you shift and then it does click right and then you can't go to the next gear, then you might want to adjust it. Do mark where you started. It is possible to make it worse. One half turn takes the lobe 180 degrees, so stay within a quarter turn of where the factory adjusted it. Adjust in small increments, be patient and test it every 15 degrees of the 180 degree arc, to find where it shifts well and where it shifts poorly. After you find that, test it fewer and fewer degrees till you are sure where dead neutral is. I may have completely over worded this whole thing, but without trying a closed cased adjustment, I want to be sure everything was covered. Perhaps Ouiji could write us a simple step by step, since he did it with the case closed?????? FWIW I previously wrote: I had set the adjuster screw to balance the ratchet right in between upshift failure and downshift failure. The result is flawless up-shifts, but down-shifts are a little dodgy if I don't go through the gears. The reason, I surmise, is that the weight of the shift lever is pushing the ratchet in the direction of a down-shift so that the ratchet does not always engage after a down-shift. It looks like I will be following Ouiji's lead and adjusting blindly with a closed box. (the other solution would be to put a counter weight to neutralize the weight ot the lever. I now have a pretty good idea how it works, so I am confident that it will shift better than ever! But now I am sure that my missed down shifts are due to lever position and that the screw setting is fine.

http://www.v11lemans.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5711&hl=

Ditto on the adjuster behind the acorn. I have mine nearly perfect, but my lever is too high, so I sometimes get lazy and accidently rest my my foot momentarily on the lever, just long enough to blow the shift. If I skim my foot off to the side on downshifts, it is 100%. I went with the higher adjustment because I wanted to upshift in left turns without fear of dragging my foot.

I won't stop bitching till I see it raining supplies to stranded people. But what we get is just what the cheap tax payers asked for. Bush bought American votes with petty tax breaks, and the swamp people pay the price. Granted that if the Hurricane had hit before Bush cut funding, the result would have been the same. But Bush deserves blame, and since Clinton cut funding, he too deserves equally proportional blame to how much was cut. Although I have a partisan bias, I would bet that Clinton, Gore or Kerry, would probably be just as inept, and the other side of the house would be bitching and blaming....so get over it, and join my bitching out YOUR President. When 911 hit, Giulliani aced the pop quiz while Bush sat through Kindergarten. This is Deja Vu all over again. Isn't it ironic, Gulf War and Gulf Disaster. Just like Giulliani on 911, the mayor of New Orleans is kicking ass, and after two days got Bush to stop looking like an ass, and promise to rebuild NO. That being said, it is all superficial, and the only reallity that matters is people getting saved. On 911 Bush saved as many lives as Giulliani, and the same is happening here. I don't think anyone expects the commander in chief to have the balls to force the major airlines to cancel their flights to fly sorties in and out of the Gulf Coast. But that is exactly what we should expect. And yesterday is the time to expect it. I blame Bush for what happened yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I don't give a damn if he does or does not make feel good speeches. We need action. If we don't blame him, he can't be held accountable and he can continue on his merry way of making oil companies richer at the expense of peace and taxes. And on a positive side, I think it is great that Houston opened up the AstroDome to the refugees, and all the people across the country who are opening their doors to strangers are freeeekin' awesome. Way more awesome than me sitting on my duff bitching. Here is another good article(for those who wish to read about blame): http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/20...n/index_np.html

Alright Michelle! It looks like your tenacity paid off, and maybe this dealer will learn from this mistake(whether his or MGNAs) and follow through with claims. If MGNA is taking that line, I will consider a new bike again someday. Also, kudos to the dealer for spotting the short spacer...too bad they could not give you reassuring details.

And cut severely in recent years. And Bush is repeating himself: I don't remember the exact quotes, but they were something like: Nobody would have thought terrorists would use planes as weapons. Nobody thought the levees would not hold. Here is an interesting article(I am sure there will be more...Ane the TV media said Bush and Clinton, both pulled funding. We shall see who was more responsible): Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? By Will Bunch Editor & Publisher Wednesday 31 August 2005 'Times-Picayune' had repeatedly raised federal spending issues. Philadelphia - Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake. New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation." In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness. On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune: "The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them." The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs. There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22: "That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said." The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006. But now it's too late. One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday. The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need." Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be." -------- Will Bunch is senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 when he reported for Newsday. Much of this article also appears on his blog, Attytood, at the Daily News.

Yah, or trade all our fuel injected overkills of motorcycles for 850Ts or better still Honda scooters assuming they have politically correct catalytic convertors, and take the extra money to give to some "non-profit" organization where the CEO makes ten times what we make. Hey all you cheap people who want to do good! One way is to give blood. There is a national shortage in the USA. So if you are willing and able, now or soon is a good time to donate.

What I like about the idea of a personalized plate, is that I don't have to have the government tell me that I have to have the hideous number pkr3782 on the butt of my baby.... Too bad I am too cheap to buy a plate that I would prefer.

Just watch the video of the Texas Tech Freshman, and I am sure you'll understand. http://home.flash.net/~drs72/ringmybell3555.wmv

I love it, the Post Title is For members in england only and one Brit replies, followed an Aussie, a Canuck, and a Yank.

Alot of people are recommended by "experts" to go with lighter oil than the ten weight that is specified for the Marzocchii. From what I can tell, as a non-expert, the only reason to go lighter is if you have already dialed your adjusters all the way out to minimize damping. Likewise if you dialed all the way in, you might want to go heavier. I imagine at 165# you might want less compression damping than can be dialed, and might try 7.5 Weight. But it would depend on where your adjusters are now....assuming they are well set...

Nothing wrong with wanking! Checkout this windows media player file of a guy ringing a bell at a football game. http://home.flash.net/~drs72/ringmybell3555.wmv

Way. All we have to do is look to the US Gulf Coast for a reminder of how worse it can be. I guess most of us can stop whining this week.

Lets get back on target and shoot some rednecks: http://games.ncbuy.com/1126/ Aren't there any shoot the italian motorcyclist games? Here is a fun game where you can be like Valentino Rossi: http://arcadetown.com/turbospirit/index.asp

I think I am going to give up sport touring

Buncha sucker punching @55H0les!

Yeeehah! that was a hoot!

I would not. I don't like to think of myself as vain, shallow or overly concerned with aesthetics, but yes the reason is purely the aesthetics. And for what it is worth, I don't really like fairings. Of course I am in San Diego That being said, I see the need for others to have a full faired sport touring machine with matching luggage, and would consider one for a second bike.

We'll get Ralph on it right away. But seriously, it may be a little premature to shout, RECALL!, but I think everyone should at the very least durring the next tire change, check to see how loose that spacer is. It is kinda subjective to say what is too loose, but if it feels looser than a tenth of a millimeter, I would pull a bearing to check it out. I would not be surprised if every earlier V11 with the narrower rear wheel rim had a short spacer, and quite possibly the newer bikes, too.