Lucky Phil

What caused to Oil pressure failure? Ally rods in my view have their place.....in drag cars. The metallurgical facts remain as valid now as ever. Aluminium will fail eventually due to cyclic load strain no matter how small the loads are it will eventually fail. Steel properties are totally different in this regard, steel will sustain cyclic loads below the yield point for an infinite number of cycles. A second hand alloy rod that looks and measures up perfect will always have a question mark over it where a steel rod under the same circumstances wont. Tell you what if I was living in the states where Carrillo rods come from I know what i'd be using. The Daytona engine I'm currently putting together uses Carrillo's as standard. I sent them back to the factory states side and they refurbished them for me and posted them back for $120/rod. Great service and company. Ciao

Doesnt matter about the case numbers as you shouldn't/cant swap out one side for another. Vertical split cases generally have the main bearing bores align bored so cases are a pair. Ducati cases are number stamped on both sides with a matching 3 digit number so you can tell that you have a matched pair. You could always bolt odd ones together and align bore them and sleeve them I guess but thats getting fiddly. Ciao

Uh, have you ever tried to tune Dellortos? Nope never messed with Dells. But I have had some good experience with Webers on an Italian V12 or two not to mention Porsche and the older style Weber IDA's on an AC Cobra with the 427 side oiler of which was a major pain in the tush. As for motorcycles I mainly messed with a few sets of Keihin on my Old 78 Honda CBX's that had some work done on them with cams along with a D&D race exhaust and the Dyna S ignition system or to say just a tune up. And of course the old Mikuni carbs on the older bikes. Mainly going from the 28MM on the Z1 900 to the 29MM that came out on the J model 1000 and then tossed it for a Turbo and a Holley 650 under the seat. . So yes I used to be and still am a little bit of one of those guys on one wheel with their hair on fire. Back to the topic. With some help with the good people of this forum I might be able to overcome my O knowledge of electronic stuff and be dragged into at least what makes the V11 run. But those Mikuni flat slides sure do grab at me lol. Yep, they do look good. Ciao

Really?......I'll take the EFI every time. Thinking back on those carb tuning days makes me shudder, petrol and tiny jets and needles and crap. Fuel tank off bits everywhere, plug chops,ugh. Now plug and play, its all presented to you graphically as well as a 3d image and you keystroke what you desire and away you go. Perfection. The other advantage for EFI is that you can run a throttle body size to accommodate the horsepower you can make and not have the problem of trying to get the slower running carburation right. So to take an extreme example, a modern Ducati twin runs a 65mm throttle body which allows it to make the horsepower. The efi allows an engine of this capacity and power with the required 65mm size throttle body to carburate in the lower areas perfectly. If you swapped out the efi and fitted a carb that allowed you to make the equivalent power its almost impossible to get the carburation right down low without some extremely complex carb of large physical size and even then you have the all the horrible mess of the physical tuning. EFI was the breakthrough that made the original Ducati 851 series in the late 80's a competitive race bike, a large throttle body size to make the power without the almost impossible task of trying to get an equivalent size carburetor to carburate cleanly everywhere else. The same even applies to the old Guzzi, not quite as dramatically but its still basically the same. Ciao

I've been buying parts off them for years. Never had them do any shop work for me though. Ciao

Thanks,yes Griso Ciao

Hmmmm, I remember an issue with the Mighty Scura that required several people to fix at the spine raid.. 2018-09-10_08-34-08 by Charles Stottlemyer, on Flickr No shortage of,ahem, experience there:) If thats your accommodation at a rally these days I must start getting to a few. Ciao

They looked fine to me @ 42,000 klm docc but more Guzzi experienced people might want to comment, Pete? Tensioner wear between .98 and 1.44mm, drive teeth looked perfect. Ciao

I agree and as I said was very skeptical. The only reason I can think of is the timing chain drives the ignition pickup wheel on the back of the cam gear which obviously is used by the ignition pickup to time the ignition event. Does cam chain slack affect the position slightly of the wheel and its triggering cutout to mess with the ignition timing occasionally? I still think its unlikely thats why I was wondering if a bike like doccs with quite a lot of miles up has the hiccup. I emailed Joe to let him know how satisfied I was with the gear conversion and he did mention without me translating to him of my running experiences that people that have converted to gear drive report the engine is sharper in response with the gears so my feelings were confirmed. So carbed bikes also suffer from the hiccup as well? If so then thats definitely an ignition issue. Ciao

This one docc is at around 2800-3000 rpm under just a wiff of throttle but in 3rd gear, not lugging it at all. It will just cough and miss a beat every klm or so under those conditions. Ciao Resolved with the timing gears? It appears so docc. I read years ago of the theory from many that experienced the same and couldnt tune it out that it was down to timing chain slack affecting the ignition pickup. I was skeptical so was wondering does yours do it seeing it has a quite a few miles up? Ciao

This one docc is at around 2800-3000 rpm under just a wiff of throttle but in 3rd gear, not lugging it at all. It will just cough and miss a beat every klm or so under those conditions. Ciao

Well spent a whole ride today trying my very best to induce a cough or hiccup but it just wouldn't do it. Maybe it is timing chain slack that is the reason. doccs got a lot of miles up and I assume his has some chain slack by now, wonder if his does it?....docc? Ciao

Hammmmmer.................................. Ciao

You forgot to thank me docc for NOT getting involved Ciao

Well got it done and dusted. While It was up on the stand with the tank off I pulled the airbox and fitted the gearbox support as well so that's another job off the list. The bike started right up with oil pressure even before it fired which was nice considering I had drained the oil cooler. The gears are almost silent, I can hear them hot and cold but I'm listening for them. When its hot you can just hear the sound of meshing gears whirring around which sounds rather cool to me. Couple of things, the idle went up by a few hundred rpm. I have my idle set fairly high at just under 1200 rpm on the Vaguelia and after the install I had around 1400-1500 rpm indicated. No loose hoses or any other obvious issues so I took it down on the idle screw. The bike ran fine and I'm trying my best to be objective here but it was maybe a little bit more responsive. It seems to respond to the throttle a little sharper, not night and day but it seems sharper. I had read a long time ago ( with some skepticism I might add) the theory that the old floating throttle hiccup was caused by timing chain slack so I was interested to see how this went. My bike has always done this at or around 3200 rpm while cruising on the flat with just a whiff of throttle, maybe 2-3%, just off the stop. It would cough once every klm or so. I don't ride in the hiccup zone much so I wasn't bothered to chase it down. On the test ride I tried my hardest to make it hiccup and cough but without any success. The jury is still out on this I'll see how it goes in different atmospheric conditions. Ciao

Not sure what they will sound like to be honest. My RC-30 Honda and my VFR750 both had gear driven cams but you need to remember those systems used a spring loaded backlash gear arrangement to make them quiet for road use. In 1988 I was at the Aussie round of the WSB at Oran park chatting to the late Robert Dunlop in the pits about his RC-30 WSB and he mentioned his had the backlash gears removed. When he fired it up I could immediately tell even over the race exhaust. I personally thought it was a nice clatter, bit like a muted Ducati dry clutch rattle so the gears in the V11 wouldnt bother me even if they are a little noisy/clattery. I'm hoping for a nice little bit of whine when cold and quiet when hot. Watch this space..... Ciao

Less inertia in a gear system. Gears are just "cleaner", no tensioner, no chain wizzing around changing direction and wearing out. A quality cam gear drive will outlast the engine easily, give more accurate timing and make your shirts whiter than white. A chains major benefit is its cheap and easy to manufacture, its quieter, its easier to adapt to a design than a gear driven system. There's a reason the vast majority of manufactures dont use gear driven cams......its just to damn expensive and when we are living in a world where the modern engine designer even eliminates key ways cut into cam drive sprockets cams and cranks to save a machining operation and the cost of a key whats the chances of them making bespoke cam gears. Ciao

Hey, buddy.. that got a blower on it?? No Chuck, but my car does:) Ciao

Elegance, engineering purity? You may as well ask Ducati why they bothered with that lovely bevel drive system on their old twins, or their continued adoption of Desmo valve gear or MV Agusta on why they bothered with silly gear driven cams on their road and race bikes or Honda on their VFR series or Rolls Royce for using shaft driven bevel gears on a Merlin engine. If you need to ask then you probably wont understand the answer Always found chains are best left for the bedroom activities Ciao