GuzziMoto

Well, the Austrian GP came and went. It was not an overly exciting race, but it was an excellent ride by Pecco, showing why he is already a world champion. Jorge Martin did an amazing lap in qualy, but sadly he did not have that pace in the race. Had he not messed up in the sprint Martin might have had something for Pecco there, but that mistake missing the chicane and the bigger mistake by not slowing down to loose a second was pretty costly. How did he not see that coming?

An electric scooter from BMW is always going to be expensive for what you get. Anything from BMW will be expensive for what you get. The electric BMW scooter aside, one advantage of electric bikes, outside the environmental aspect of it, can be performance. An electric motorcycle is not automatically fast, but it can be. An electric motorcycle can offer amazing performance for the money. But there will always be trade offs with going electric, mostly centering around range, weight, and cost.

I would agree. Although at least with Andreani they make something that fits some V11 Sports. Sure, they don't seem to understand which ones it fits and which ones it doesn't fit, but at least they make something that fits some. A surprising number of things I order nowadays are direct shipped from the manufacturer, and the seller never actually sees the product.

A basic test of any adjustable steering damper setup is to adjust the steering damper to full stiff and turn the handle bars back and forth. If you don't feel a small degree of easy movement right at center, that is good and if you don't have any freeplay in your steering damper you are probably good there. If there is a small amount of easy movement before the damper makes turning the steering stiff, you have an issue and need to trace out where that is coming from. Same with any lack of stiffness anywhere else in the turning range. It should be equally stiff through the full range of movement. With the steering damper on full stiff it is easier to feel for freeplay. There should be none. I also recommend you turn the damper to full soft and feel for resistance to turning. In addition to freeplay being bad in a steering damper setup, stiction or resistance to turning can also be bad. That is how the wife's original steering damper died, it would stick at whatever point it was at. Turning the bars from that point required more energy put into it then it should, but once it broke free and started moving it then took less energy to move it. That resulted in the bike wanting to weave, as every time you turned you tended to turn more then you wanted to. The less you wanted to turn the worse it was. The only way you could easily feel what it was doing was if you turned the steering damper all the way down and turned the bars back and forth. Otherwise the steering damper hid the effect.

One of the many perks of owning a V11 Sport, or most any Guzzi, is not much aftermarket support. Even companies that make something that fits the V11 Sport will often either not know it fits the V11 Sport or not care. Even when the V11 Sport was a current model bike, it did not get a lot of support. Now that it has been out of production for almost two decades it has only gotten worse. Even Guzzi themselves don't have much support for it. Side story, I just had my long standing order for a gasket set for a '93 Daytona cancelled and my money refunded because the vendor has been unable to actually get the gasket set from Moto Guzzi.

The lack of compression dampening in the first gen forks is fairly well known, but I can see how someone new would not have known. We probably haven't discussed that in a while. The easy button fix for that is to blank off / cover up one of the two bleed holes that allow the fork oil to get out of the way of the piston without having to go through the valving in the piston. I would not cover / block off up both bleed holes (as I recall there are two of them) as leaving one open seems to work best with the stock valving in the piston. But it may be that with different valving in the piston that can flow more oil you might get good results by blocking off both holes and forcing all the oil through the piston. I am not sure about the adjustments not working, but for sure if you block off one of the two holes and force more oil through the piston valving the adjuster becomes relevant and adjustments to it make a difference. But with the stock bleed holes the compression adjuster for sure only affects the last inch or so of travel (the part of travel after the piston has gone by the bleed holes in the cartridge). Also, having compression dampening ion one leg and rebound dampening in the other leg is not how all forks do it but a number of forks do it that way and there are even advantages for doing it that way. It can work fine that way. There are design issues with the first gen forks, like the compression dampening not mattering until the piston is past the bleed holes, but the separation of compression and rebound dampening to their respective legs is not one of them.

I would agree with you about Vinales, KTM have likely wasted a factory seat when they only have four. But I disagree with you about how close KTM is to winning. They are tenths of a second over a lap off the pace of Ducati. That is close enough that a different rider, a different set up, or even Michelin showing up with a different tire, can make the difference. That is the nature of racing. Even Honda and Yamaha are close pace-wise. But Aprilia and KTM are really close. A gnat fart could make the difference for them. Riders going to a different brand can go either way. They can gell well and do better then they did the previous season, or they can fail to adapt and struggle. The KTM is more different vs the Aprilia. The KTM has a very different chassis nature, using the steel chassis. It has better stability under braking, and does well in low grip tracks. The bike struggles when they can't use its strengths, like at Silverstone. I think the KTM would be harder to adapt to then the Aprilia. The Aprilia is more like the other bikes, and is a lot like the Yamaha used to be only with more power. A rider that can use that conerspeed could really do well on it. If Vinales and Aleix can do as well as they do on it, I assume a more talented racer could do better on it. But you do need to be a racer that can use the extra conerspeed. Oliveira came from the KTM, where he did well but not by using more cornerspeed. He has struggled to adapt to the style needed for the Aprilia. Sadly for him it seems he is going to Yamaha, I don't expect much from him there.

I would not dismiss the other racers, and now that a number of really good racers have left Ducati for other brands because of decisions Ducati made surrounding their promotion of Marquez, it seems likely that Ducati's dominance will be diminished. To dismiss those shifts of rider talent to other brands seems short-sighted. The Aprilia and KTM have advanced to the point that either one could win the title with the right racer on board. And who knows, with this new shift in talent the right pairing could easily happen at either Aprilia or KTM. If one of the ex-Ducati guys ends up beating Ducati next year Ducati will only have themselves to blame. Marc is currently the best guy on a GP23 Ducati. But he is only just faster then other much less talented racers like his brother, Alex. Read into that what you want, but clearly Marc is not as dominant on the GP23 compared to other guys on the GP23 as he was back on the Honda. His talented seemed to allow him to get more out of the Honda vs other guys on the Honda then it does on the Ducati.

And if Marquez not only fails to win a 9th title but tanks the brands shot at another title? Because this "business decision" could go either way. Also, if Marc wins a 9th title I think most people will credit Marc, not Ducati. Where as if Marc can't win a 9th title on a Ducati that will make Ducati look less then great. The two main possibilities are Marc wins a 9th title, in which case people simply point to Marc and his massive talent, where as if he fails those same people will assume there is some conspiracy or other such BS reason because Marc is the greatest rider and for him to fail must be on something else. From a business standpoint their choice to upset their own apple cart as they have done seems like a high risk / low reward choice. So I get people not seeing the logic. But some fans will think it makes sense.

Congrats. Looks pretty nice. I would think that scratch can be pretty well fixed without a complete repaint, but it is hard to perfectly match metallic paints like that. I have not seen an exhaust like that for a V11.

Well. if the engine held four quarts and two of those quarts were 10/w40 while two quarts were 0/w20, the resulting oil would be roughly a 5/w30. If of the four quarts three were 10/w40 while one was the 0/w20, the resulting oil would be roughly a 7.5/w35. Oils tend to mix like that. three quarts of a 40 weight oil and one quart of a 20 weight oil makes a 35 weight oil. You can figure it out by averaging the oils. People will do something similar with fork oils, you can mix 10 weight fork oil and 5 weight fork oil to make 7.5 weight fork oil. But I agree with what Pete said, putting a quart of non-spec oil in when you find you are low on oil is not going to do damage to the engine. It would be far riskier to run the engine with too little oil. In the end, especially with fairly simple engines like Guzzi engines, the most important aspect to the engine oil is that it has engine oil. You should use the recommended oil. But if you add a quart of something else for whatever reason to get the oil level where it is supposed to be that isn't going to damage anything. Guzzi engines just aren't that oil critical. Some engines use engine oil to perform various hydraulic functions, my Jeep engine uses oil pressure to run the variable cam timing, and uses two different oil pumps at two different pressures to allow that. A Guzzi engine typically doesn't have any of that.

That is classic inventiveness. Smokey Yunick was a creative fellow. Engine rotation is especially important on motorcycles. Guzzi's lack the resistance to changes of direction that other motorcycles have due to the direction the crank spins in. Of course, they have a factor other motorcycles don't have, the sideways torque reaction when getting on or getting off the throttle. But you can have your Guzzi well and truly wound up and it makes no difference to how easily the bike changes direction. Where as on a normal big bore twin high rpms make it noticeably harder to change directions. Side note, on motorcycles whose crank runs side to side instead of front to back like a Guzzi crank the engine may spin in the same direction as the wheels or opposite of the wheels. Spinning the engine backwards, opposite of the wheels, can make the bike easier to steer but isn't commonly done for other engineering reasons. Back in the day some of the 500cc two strokes had two separate cranks, one for each pair of cylinders, and they spun them in opposite directions to cancel out the gyroscopic effect. Modern MotoGP bikes don't have two cranks, but they do spin the crank backwards as mentioned earlier. For a MotoGP bike the extra engineering is worth it when the payoff is easier to change directions. So this came full circle back to MotoGP. I don't really get too worked up over the paint schemes, but I did like the old Aprilia look from back in the day.

So, pushing the grey area of the rules is not what Yoshimura Suzuki and Mat Mladin were accused of doing. I am not accusing them of anything, either. I am simply talking about what happened. It was the AMA / DMG that accused him of cheating, and the evidence was pretty clear as they had the illegal crank out of his superbike in their hands, having been removed from his bike at a race weekend after he had just won the race. He was then disqualified from the race. That is all fully documented and none of that is my opinion or me accusing him of anything. It is what it is. The crank simply was not the same as the homologated sample crank, nor did it match additional sample cranks that were provided by Suzuki after the crank was pulled from his bike. The crank was likely a factory race part, but I don't know that. I only know the crank was not a standard production crank and the rules said it had to be. It was a black and white violation of the rule book. It was also years ago, but you can still find information about it on the internet. Whether or not you put all the blame for this on Yoshimura Suzuki, Mladins team, or you put the blame on both of them, or perhaps you are like some people out there and blame the AMA / DMG for this, that is up to you. But it is clear that a non-homologated crank was found in his bike at a race weekend. Two race weekends in a row. And that was clearly against the rules. My personal feelings about Mladin don't enter into it. But it did not surprise me that his bike was illegal. There are plenty of other question marks about him and his team and cheating, but this episode was a clear cut case of cheating. Until this hit the fan it seemed like the AMA / DMG were looking the other way about the actions of him and his team. But that is getting into a grey area.

I do like the Coppa's. Nearly was able to score one leftover new ages ago. That one looks decent, a little rough looking but that might be superficial. It does have a complicated background, it sounds like, being from Japan. And never good to have sat. But I suspect it would clean up pretty well.

Gear cam drive is good, but aluminum gears for that are not a good idea for a street motor, as said. It just isn't what aluminum is good for. Strange that Guzzi went with some of the gears in aluminum for the high cam motor. But they do screw up occasionally. That said, while I would convert a chain drive cam set up to gears, I would only do so if the gears in question were steel or another suitable material.

The first time getting caught cheating you could blame on the team alone and not the rider. But showing up for the second race with the same illegal part, that is now on the rider as well as the team. In the end, it is the rider where the buck stops. Key in all this is his team mate was never caught with illegal parts. But you are free to have your own opinion on the matter.

Established history. When Mladdin rode for Yoshimura they were cheating and finally got caught. Even after getting caught with an illegal crank he and his team showed up the next race weekend with an illegal crank. They were that arrogant about it. Interestingly, Mladdins team mate, Ben Spies, was never caught with an illegal crank as I recall, and his bike was also torn down. But I could be wrong about that. What I know for sure is Mladdin was caught cheating, twice. https://www.roadracingworld.com/news/updated-ama-pro-racings-edmondson-the-fact-is-they-got-caught-cheating/

I am not sure I follow the jist of this. The move Marc pulled was uncalled for in a demonstration race, but completely expected from Marc. He would wreck his mother. I would agree that Marc is a hard and determined racer who has already experienced a lot of success due to that. But he has always been the number 1 guy at the team, and never was one to share that status. That may lead to some issues at a team where he is not the number 1 guy, and the other guy on the Italian team is an Italian guy who is the current world champion. I don't think anyone doubts Marcs ability, but many of us see a potential for the team to implode the way Yamaha did with VR and JLo. That may open the door for another team to beat them. Also, that may lead to a high repair bill as they will likely go through more parts then they are used to and it may even lead to injuries that could end their championship hopes. But Ducati made their bed. I will happily watch it pan out. It seems like many people see what is coming, but Ducati seem oblivious. Not sure if it is by choice or they really don't see what could go wrong. Oh, I once spectated at a race next to Mladdin. We were both there racing, and we were both watching other classes run. I was stunned at what a @#$$#! he was, literally laughing at the racers on track in the HD 883 class. I know many people have good things to say about him, but I don't. My other take-away about Mladdin was that many said he called it like it was. But my experience was he called it like he thought it was. That and he was a cheater.

Well, Ducati better get used to that. I don't think that will be the last guy on a Ducati Marc makes contact with.

I would agree, before Marquez riders were aggressive but they seemed able to keep things balanced. A give and take. With Marquez, he brought a Dale Earnhardt sort of mentality. He would be more aggressive with his passes then he had to be as a way, it seemed, to intimidate the other riders. Sometimes he would flat out knock the other guy down, even if there was room to make the pass cleanly. That way, next time they would give him more room knowing that otherwise they could end up on the ground. Now you have a generation of racers that model themselves after Marquez. Another factor is, in my opinion, this trend of paving the runoff right up to the edge of the track. That adds an element of confidence, the guy knows even if he blows the corner he will still be on pavement and likely won't fall down. While I get paving the runoff area, I would suggest adding a strip of grass between the track and the paved runoff. Sure, a few guys may fall down in the grass, especially in the wet. But that is the risk of running off the track. Freddie has lacked consistency and has no respect from the current racers it seems. It is a hard job, you are never going to please everyone. But Freddie seems to be pleasing no one. Simon is respected among the racers, and seems to understand racing. He seems to have a decent grasp of what is legit hard racing and what is over the line. I won't be surprised if I find I don't agree with some of the calls he makes. That should be a given. But I think he will make the right calls based on a good understanding of being a racer. His biggest hurdle may be putting aside his personal relationships with the riders, and avoiding any favoritism. But he seems well known and liked by most of the riders so perhaps that won't be an issue. Harder to play favorites when they are all favorites.

Yeah, I would say Phil is in the not happy about this move camp. But many other people seem to have a different opinion of Simon Crafar, especially on the AF1 Forum I also frequent. I do not agree with Phil's assessment of Simon Crafar, but it's a free forum. We don't have to agree. Well, we do agree that Freddie is rubbish at the job and needs to go, I think. Time will tell how it works out.

Some good info on here. Especially about the difference between spring rate and preload. But I don't think spring preload has the same sort of effect on a motorcycle as it does on a car in relation to weight. On a car, if I add spring preload on one wheel of a four wheeled car that puts more weight on that tire at that corner of the car. That is in part because of the way cars distribute the total cars weight between all four corners. Of the four wheels / tires if I add preload to one to cause it to support more of the total weight of the car that one wheel / tire will have more weight on it while the weight on the other three also changes. The wheel / tire in the opposite corner will also get more weight on it while the other two will loose weight. Motorcycles do not share their weight the same way between the two wheels. With only two wheels, they can't act like the car with its four wheels. Adding spring preload to the back doesn't put more weight on the rear wheel, and it really doesn't put more weight on the front wheel. Anything that changes the attitude of the bike, how much it is canted forwards or backwards, will have a minor impact on how the weight is split front to back. But it would be a very small effect. The same as dropping the front end by sliding the triple clamps down the fork tubes. That does speed up the steering by increasing the rake, and it does reduce trail. But it is not really putting anything more than a minor amount of increased weight on the front wheel. I seem to recall docc did a test of that once with a pair of scales. That said, moving weight around on a motorcycle can indeed make a big difference. There are two ways to move weight to the front, clearly one option is to add weight to the front. But adding weight is not always best performance wise. Another option would be to either remove weight from the back, which has a similar effect to adding weight to the front, or even moving weight from the back to the front. Probably the largest amount of weight on the V11 Sport you can move from the back to the front would be the battery. Anything from just a lighter battery in the same location, to better yet moving the lighter battery forwards on the bike, would help. Probably the largest amount of weight you can remove from the back would be the exhaust. The wheels themselves would be another place you can dramatically reduce weight in large chunks. And while reducing the weight of the wheels does not reduce sprung weight, it does reduce unsprung weight AND rotating weight, both of which are good things in their own right. There is a reason why our aluminum framed Ducati racebike has a titanium rear subframe that weighs next to nothing. With the L layout of the Ducati V twin it has issues with weight distribution, making it hard to get enough weight on the front. Reducing the weight on the back of the bike also shifts the weight balance of the bike forward same as adding weight to the front. But it doesn't have the weight penalty that adding weight to the front would have. The Guzzi V11 Sport does tend to have a rearward weight balance, and in my opinion anything you do to move the weight balance forward on it would be a good thing.

Word is Simon Crafar will be taking over from Freddie Spencer as the head steward next year. That seems like a good thing. It is a hard, thankless, job. But I feel that Simon will be better at it then Freddie. https://www.motogp.com/en/news/2024/07/24/simon-crafar-to-become-chairman-of-fim-motogp-stewards-panel-from-2025/504347

The newer CARC Guzzi's are funny. The ECU monitors the voltage it sees from the battery. If the voltage it sees at the battery is too low it will not allow a start attempt or it will abort a start attempt if the voltage drops too low when a start attempt is in process. When you push the starter button on a newer CARC Guzzi you are requesting a start. The button does not directly send power to the starter relay and then to the starter. It logs a request with the ECU, which then either engages the starter or not. That is also why on the newer bikes you only have to push the button for a moment but the starter will run until the motor starts or until the timer expires. On newer CARC Guzzi's holding the starter button down should override the ECU and its abort process. But on the earlier CARC Guzzi's there was no override option I am aware of. That can make starting with a Lithium battery problematic when it is cold out. If the battery doesn't provide enough voltage it will abort the start. And if it aborts the start attempt it can be hard to get the battery warmed up to where it has enough voltage to start the bike.

That can happen, but it is usually more from having children then a wife in my opinion. I got married and it did not slow me down, but it can slow some people down. Children tend to be a bigger effect, though. But even there some are able to have children and not loose their edge. For me my wife helped me concentrate and go faster. But then she liked racing.