GuzziMoto

So, I'm having trouble understanding what the three transverse bearings are doing. The right side (deeper one/ the one found missing in this case) is pressed into the rear drive housing and its inner sits on the axle? (Neither of those things actually spin . . . ) And the other bearings (on the wheel side)? They are pressed onto/into the crown wheel (ring gear)? The larger (outer) allows the crown to spin in the housing cover and the smaller (inner) allows the gear to spin on the axle? Yes, I agree. I don't see what the "missing bearing" would actually do. No offense was meant putting that in quotes, just not sure that bearing is actually doing anything. A bearing is (sorry to state the obvious) needed when you have two parts that move in relation to each other in a circular fashion. The housing clearly doesn't spin, and the axle doesn't spin. Where is the motion? I don't see how there is relative circular motion between the two. Maybe I am missing something, maybe there is relative circular motion between the housing and the axle. But I don't see it. Perhaps everyone else's rear housing has this bearing and yours doesn't. Or maybe you aren't alone, maybe the bearing is not really required. It seems hard to imagine that the bearing is required but yours was able to go as far as it did without catastrophic failure. But I am not looking at one in front of me, I could be totally wrong.

Sure, now. But back then Guzzi was actually way ahead of the curve. The sweet ohlins cartridge forks you have arguably owe their existence to Guzzi. But they are still really old tech, so by today's standards they may seem a bit crude. I bet they still work pretty well when they are working right.

This made me chuckle. It will work either way. I would put the tighter coils up top for the reasons mentioned, but I can't imagine it will make a lick of difference on a bike that big and heavy.

Whatever the oil level / air gap is, it should be the same in both fork legs. Otherwise one is going to behave differently than the other at near bottom.

The V11 should have almost as much torque as your VFR 1200. I find the V11 does like to rev, but it is also a midrange motor. I remember ages ago riding with a buddy on an R1 (this was over 10 years ago). The V11 would just gap him out of corners without downshifting. If he downshifted the R1 was clearly faster, but the R1 had to spin up before it made more power, The V11 was so easy to ride, you just twist and go.

It is what they were built to run. Use whatever oil floats your boat. I use SG oil in my motorcycles. Which SG oil varies, but I only use SG oils. In part, because that is the oil formulation they were built to run. Will using any other oil cause my motorcycles to blow up? No, probably not. But I think they will last longer and perform better if I run the oil they were made to run. I tend to keep my motorcycles for a long time. We don't put the miles per year on them that some do, but over the long haul we do put a good bit of miles on them.

If we would pay halve as much attention and religious efforts to suspension topics as we do to whether the battery must see 13.5 or 14.3 (and all in-between)this would be another place here I agree 100%. If my battery has enough charge to start the bike, that is all I care about from the battery. Tires and suspension are far more important to me. Quality suspension bits, better shocks and sometimes forks, are always money well spent. But I do admit to also truly enjoying money spent on motor. It may not have the safety aspect, but nothing puts a smile on my face than more power than I need. That they do. As many times as I have done it, I have never had a picture of it, though. I did have a buddy of mine behind me on one such occasion. He had a lovely view of the whole thing. But alas, no pictures. Even my wife managed one spectacular high side way back when we were parking lot racing at a BattlTrax event. She launched her V11 big time. So as a family we say, slow riders low side but the fast riders high side :-)

It is good for me to remember this crap. Helps as I get old...... The HD 883 did teach me a lot about suspension, especially about how to make bikes do things they weren't meant to. I also seem to remember adjusting the way the rear tire slide by adjusting the rear shock compression dampening. If I remember correctly (and I may be wrong), adding compression dampening to the rear shocks (yeah, it had TWO) made the rear tire slide earlier but more controllably (if that is a word). Less compression dampening in back gave you more grip at the rear but when it did let go it let go harder. We would run as little compression dampening as we could, for more grip. But you actually wanted some slide from the rear, so you could dial that in by adding compression dampening, The rear sliding would help the pig turn. It was a balancing act, grip vs controlled slide. We would run as much rebound dampening as we could, that helped fight the high side that seemed to be always around the corner (so to speak). When you high side, the rear tire lets go, slides out, grips, the grip compresses the rear suspension like a giant spring (it is), then it uses that energy in the compressed spring to launch you into the air. Running rebound to the limit of what you can run without causing the suspension to pack down helped control that energy to an extent and could make the difference between saving it or not. Not sure what, if any, relevance this has to the average street rider. I am just putting it out there for discussion.

The term "extra zinc" can be mis-leading. The first one meets SN, SM, SL, and those three rating limit the amount of zinc. SG allows more zinc. That does not mean an SG oil HAS more zinc, only that it is allowed to have more zinc. I would have no problem running the Mobil 1 car oil in a Guzzi. But I don't. I try to stick with SG oils. Not because I know it will blow up with anything else, but because I can and that is the oil the V11 motor was built to run. OIls have changed, but the V11 lump is the same primitive lump it always was. If I only had that Mobil 1 car oil, I would run that. But I have oils that are more like the oils that motor was built to run, so I run those. I save the Mobil 1 for the smart car (but 0w-30).

Ah, nice reading an old thread. Some general input from me. Cars, having four wheels, are affected much differently by changes of preload to a given wheel. With four wheels, if I give one wheel more preload than the others it makes that wheel take more of the weight than the others because that wheel is trying to stick out more than the others. That wheel, if the car was upside down, would be sticking out further than the others so it is taking more of the cars weight. Imagine a table where you can make the legs different lengths. Adding preload to one wheel of a car also pushes the diagonally opposite wheel into the ground more as well, they are affected in pairs. Motorcycles lack this dynamic. Adding preload to one wheel does not have a large change on how the weight of the motorcycle is distributed. It can make very small differences, but nothing of significance as far as weight distribution. Think of a two legged table (useless, I know), changing the length of one of the two legs would make little difference in how much weight was on each leg. Preload and sag do have a large affect on the geometry of motorcycles. Adding rear preload steepens the rake and decreases the trail up front. Steeper rake makes the steering quicker, less trail makes the steering lighter. But too much, too steep a rake and / or too little trail can cause stability issues. Way back in the old days I raced a Harley 883 in a class where everyone raced the same pig of a bike. It was fun, in a weird way. But everyone was doing crazy stuff to try to make their pig dance better than the others. We would drop the front and raise the rear crazy amounts. The bike would end up being very unstable, so you fit a steering damper and cranked it up a lot. I had one nasty crash where I hit a bump in the chicane at Daytona. The 883 started head shaking so violently that I could not steer it through the rest of the chicane. It shock so hard it broke the steering stops. I did not save it, I went down hard. That was a learning experience for me, I learned to be more careful about bumps, be lighter at the handlebars (death grips = death wobbles), and run more steering damper. We also backed off the ass high thing just a little. Sometimes that is how you find the edge, by going over it. Setting sag has a few effects. It sets the ride height of the motorcycle. It (hopefully) puts the suspension in its happy starting spot. It affects the geometry of the motorcycle, which determines steering and stability. What the rake angle is, for example, of the motorcycle while sitting there statically is not as important as what the rake angle is when you are riding it. I briefly had a Honda CTX 700 (don't laugh), and it was sagging so bad with the preload it came from the dealer with. When I (lets say over 200 lbs) would sit on it the front end would rake out even more than it was supposed to be. That did not help steering at all. I added all the rear preload it could take, and steering was much better. More balanced. Thankfully the Honda is gone.

I have a Griso and the wife has the V11. They weigh near the same, the Griso being slightly heavier. The Griso does feel heavier at no to low speed stuff, but once you get moving the two feel about the same weight wise. The Griso is heavier but it carries it weight lower, so they feel about the same weight when moving. They do handle different, and the seating position is much more of a couch with the Griso (everything is relative, to me the Griso is a couch). The Lario feels worlds lighter, and no doubt it is. There is a guy in Cali doing big bore and 4v per cylinder conversions for the small block. That is probably the only way I would own a modern small block. The Lario could use the big bore kit as well, but with something that old you kinda have to accept it for what it is. I don't hold out much hope for the factory making something interesting enough for me to buy. I used to have hope, but it has been so long I can't get excited about where Guzzi is now and what they are building. I thought the additional resources of Piaggio would allow them to be the company they wanted to be. But it seems they have become a red headed step child that only gets to make certain kinds of motorcycles (retro little bikes and cruisers). I would love to see them build something outside the box again, something that would make the kind of impression the Original LeMans did, or the V11sport, or the MGS01, or the Griso (although the original Griso that never was was the Griso I wanted). Oh, there I go, thinking crazy thoughts again. Sorry.

The metal stacks my Daytona has were on it when I bought it. I don't know who made them. My friend whom I bought the bike from had bought the stacks years earlier. They actually bolt to the throttlebodies the same way the stock plastic stacks did. I don't know how yours are, but if the stock plastic stacks bolt to the carbs it should be easy enough to make that work. The RXV is cool, but currently it is not running, "projects" are often like that around me. Sometimes for years. Right now all my money is going into a hole in the dirt called a Jeep (Just Empty Every Pocket).

Mine has the metal stacks with the flaired bell mouths. The filter are actually attached so that the flaired bell mouth is in the middle of the filter. The base of the filter is attached to the stack about 2/3's the way along the stack. I have sections of rubber hose (fuel injection hose so it is pretty stiff) to act as spacers to fill the gap between the filter and the stack. That was not the original plan, the filters were bought to fit on the ends of the stacks but that ended up being too long. So I slide the stack up into the filter and used the lengths of fuel hose to fill between the filter and the small section of the stack. It is hard to describe, but it works well. I just had to cut the hose to the right length so that when wrapped around the stack it made it the entire way without a gap. But again, the stock set up has plastic stacks. They should work, they can be removed from the stock airbox and you can buy filters that fit the ends of them. I seem to recall some on here have done exactly that with their V11's and found it worked better than the pods directly on the TB's. Carbs are even more sensitive to airflow, and would have a bigger benefit to running the stacks vs no stacks / just pods. But the stock airbox is still your best bet for performance.

Our red frame V11 has 5 relays, originally made by Siemens (they failed). That relay installation is clearly not factory. That does not mean it did not have 3 from the factory, but that picture is not of a factory installation of 3 relays. Even the space for the relays is big enough for 5 relays. I have not seen one with 3 relays from the factory, but I can't say I have seen that many.

If you want pods, I would measure the ends of the stacks that connect the carbs to the airbox and get filters that fit that size. The universal filters from K & N are sold by dimension, including the diameter of the opening. Keeping the stacks helps with air flow. My Daytona has metal replacements for the stacks to mount the filters, but the stock ones should work fine. The rain covers are also a good idea as when K & N style filters get wet dirt flows through them like water.

Unless you are doing it for looks, I would keep the airbox. That said, I have a '93 Daytona with K&N pods (for looks). I recommend you try to keep the stock intake stacks (the guys that connect the throttlebodies to the airbox), mount the pods to the end of the stacks, and I use the covers on my K&N filters. They are like raincoats for the filters (oil / gauze filters and rain don't mix well). It likely won't make as much total power with the pod filters, airboxes are your friend when it comes to making power, but it can be made to work well enough.

I un-linked the brakes on my Lario. I did not like the way the linked brakes felt. The front brake, only working the one disc, was wooden feeling and had no bite. I only un-linked them and they feel much better.

I am not an expert with Cliff and his myECU, but from what I know of it I see no reason it could not be made to work with that engine. As mentioned, was it working well until the rain? Or is that a wrong impression? A wide band and an inertial dyno would help determine fueling needs, but first I would make sure you don't have an issue with something more basic, like water where it should not be.

The parts circled in red allow the ring that bolts to the head to push on the pipe just shy of the head. The rings that bolt to the head are large enough to slip over the end of the pipe, so without something else there is no way they could push the end of the pipe into the exhaust port on the head. So, the two circular parts fill the gap between the ring and the pipe, allowing the ring to push the end of the pipe into the exhaust port on the head. I do not know if all V11s have those parts, but if your ring can come off the end of the pipe as ours can they have to have something.

Years ago I had a couple of kick start dirt bikes, a four stroke and a two stroke (still have the two stroke), and some friends had the same. I found that if I ran Shell premium mine would start right away after sitting the typical week or two, where as my friend was running BP / Amoco and his was hard to start. I convinced him to try the Shell premium and his also would start easily after sitting a couple weeks. There can definitely be differences between fuel brands. While the base stock may be fungible, the additives package is what makes the fuel different.

My Daytona, which does not have the stock airbox, runs pods fitted to fancy Aluminium velocity stacks. I don't know where my friend, the previous owner, bought them but that was years ago and my friend is no longer with us. But someone used to make them. I do think they help. And running the stock rubber / plastic ones would be better then not running them. The snorkel is more about noise reduction then power. I had a Suzuki DRZ, the most common mod on those was to remove the snorkel and cut the snorkel hole to a 3" x 3" square (make it bigger). That seemed to let the right amount of air in, but did make more noise doing so. I also cut the intake snorkel on my Lario out. It definitely changed the amount of air going into the airbox (and on to the engine) but also increase the noise. The bike was slightly rich in the mid-range and with the snorkel cut out it runs great. It has stock pipes so you can actually hear the new intake noise clearly over the sound of the exhaust. If I could re-fit the airbox to my Daytona I would. But the bike is rather extensively modded and the stock airbox will not fit back on. The pods with the velocity stacks work well enough, but I would rather have the airbox.

I have a set of these in black on my Griso (2 valve 1100). I had to replace the spark plug lead to accommodate the different routing. But it was a straight swap other than that. For a V11 it should just be a direct swap.

That no doubt plays a role. But there is also a big advantage to having a box of relatively still air for the motor to inhale from. The volume of that box also plays a large part in how well the motor runs. That volume and shape can actually be tuned somewhat like an exhaust pipe to improve flow into the motor.

I do understand the desire to get rid of the airbox, the open airy look is sexy. But it is a trade off, the airbox actually helps the bike run better and make more power. You can get rid of the airbox, but it will take some work to get the bike close to back to where it was as far as running well. It is unlikely it will ever run better than it did with the airbox (in reality, if it did run better without the airbox it would be because the bike was not running 100% right with the airbox). There are some who have removed their airboxes and got the bikes to run pretty good without. But it is a trade off.

Other then his accent, he was a great ambassador of the sport. Sad news indeed.