Lucky Phil

There seems to be an ëngineering" issue here. When you apply a semi solid or solid lube for that matter to a spline any more than a thin film is not only a waste of lube but also counter productive. All that excess that gets pushed off when the two parts come together is never going to somehow make its way back into the splined area. Its not ever going to be a reservior of lubricant. What its going to be is a reservior of trapped dirt or excess that gets flung off and makes a mess. More isnt better. Same can go for solid lubricants such as spray on moly lube. Just a light coat required any more is counter productive. As an example, we lubricate the fan blade dovetail roots on high bypass gas turbines with spray moly. Clean them off and apply sparingly re assemble and good for another 5000hrs. Or you can clean them off apply moly lube liberally and have engine fan vibration issues. Which means pulling the blades again cleaning and doing it sparingly. The excess lube in the dovetails means the blades are to tight and cant move around as required hence the vibes. Not directly applicable to the V11 of course but an example of more isnt better. When you think about it, this philosophy also applies to MANY thing in engineering and life. Ciao

Thanks Tim, payment sent for 3 springs. Ciao

Are you saying your Roper plate has only 1 gasket fitted? Ciao

And stop leak wont help you become one. Dont even let the thought of using stop leak cross your mind. Font timing cover on a big block isnt that technical even for a hobbie mechanic. Besides you have all of us to help:) Drop the oil into a clean container and reuse it, pull and replace the front timing cover and use one of the later metal gaskets and it'll never leak again and while you have the tools there pull the whole bottom off the engine and change all the gaskets on the Roper plate and sump. Lets go!! Ciao

Yeah, that works great, and is my favorite. Most people don't have ready access to it, though. Like Phil says.. it can be subtle. I had a persistent mist from Rosie (Rosso Corsa) for a good while. Changed gaskets, lapped the valve cover flat, etc. Finally, using developer and patience, found a literally pin hole in the valve cover casting. It wouldn't leak until the engine was hot enough to thin the oil. Yes Chuck thats a hard one. I once had an oil leak from a Ducati 750 belt drive tacho drive that persisted. Turned out to be a blind porosity hole inside the bored hole in the head casting right where the oring sealed the tacho drive gearbox. If the hole had been 2mm deeper or shallower it wouldnt have been an issue. Filled it with some devcon aluminium paste and all good. Ciao

Locating oil weaps of this magnitude is a skill and requires a detailed eye and patience esp on the front of the engine where oily road grime can make it harder. Docc was on the right track with the clean it perfectly and dry it off and apply powder. I personally use the developer froma dye penetrant check kit I have but if you have a strong light, good eyesight and sometimes a mag glass you can do it without. The other tool that is usefull is absorbent paper or regular tissues. After a short ride inspect the joints with a good light and press the absorbant paper on the area you think is suspect. Any slight oil weep will be immediatly visable on the tissue paper. Of course the oil will whick along the joint so sometimes the short ride is better because you can get a better indication of the location before the whicking gets too far. Over the years I have troubleshot most types of oil leaks and never had one that stumped me. Had a few that were tough but always found them. The other tip is its not always the most obvious location. My 1198 from new had oil around the base gasket on the rear cylinder, so the obvious thought is a leaking base gasket, right? No it was a leaking rear cylinder rocker cover. The oil was tracking down the side of the cylinder behind the belt cover and ending up at the crankcases then working its way around to the back of the cylinder crankcase joint. The rear rocker cover had omitted on factory assembly the small amount of silicon sealer required around the sharp transitions on the rubber gasket. The oil travelling down the cylinder behind the belt cover was not at all obvious as the oil spreads and becomes a film which leads me to the other essential tool. A clean dry finger. A clean dry finger pressed agains a weeping joint then looked at with a good light is a very good tool, believe it or not. The oil cooler lines may well be quite tight, often tight enough to unscrew the nipple out of the cases if you dont hold it seperately. Good luck. Ciao

Red or for that matter any colour garters I'm all for docc, as long as they are around a nice lady leg. Prolly in trouble now from the "people that appose men that like women with garters on" movement. Ciao

Nice video but a lot of work to end up with a horrid set of red and gold rocker covers. You can't by style and taste I guess. Seems to have lowered the bar from Chucks previous benchmark red gaitors Ciao

FWIW.......I use Mobil1 0W-40 full synthetic and dont remove the gasket just lube the face that goes against the crankcase. I also precharge the filter with oil to satisfy my OCD. My bike doesnt use any oil or create any oil blowby into the air filter box. I would remove the sticker from the filter if it were me but it probably wont matter. Ciao

I'm not really interested in motorcycles as "ART". If it cant realistically fulfill its objective with excellence and focus on the road or track ( depending on what its designed for) then its like building an aeroplane that looks beautiful but doesnt fly. Pointless. Ciao Examples of bikes that fulfill the criterior....MV Agusta 1000 2003, Ducati 750 ss 1974, Guzzi MK1 lemans, Ducati Panagale, Britten V1000, Factory Harley XR750 flattracker, Jawa Speedway bikes, to name but a few.

No docc, been pulling breakers on jet aircraft for 40 years as part of safety isolation when working on systems. The manual tells me to do that, totally fine. Ciao

Whats this one docc? MV? Ciao

Thats a G45 twin I think docc. Ciao

Not enough to worry about. You are only grinding back to a knats over what its worn to anyway. Personally the Baisley roller conversion passes the "elegance" test for mine. Its what you would have done in the first place if you weren't constrained by production costs. Like gear driven cams, what engineers would do if "those that loom from the dismal science" (economists) didnt exist:) Ciao

I'm with you docc. the Grisso is a bike that looks WAY better in the flesh than a photo. Ciao

Yes docc, not roller lifter, roller rocker. Heres the link to an online image of the Baisley big block conversion. No more rocker foot wear. Ciao http://www.guzzitech.com/forums/threads/hidden-customization.15092/

Sorry docc I mixed them up during the clean up after the job was done, but I'm pretty sure it was the exhausts that were the most worn. The exhaust on one side is the inlet on the other and vice versa. Often its the inlet valve train that wears slightly more on most engines due to the larger heavier valves. Ciao

So, with over 100,000 miles on my flat tappet Sport, when I set the valves, they are actually looser than my feeler gauge is telling me? If so, I wonder how much looser? Could be docc. When the rockers wear its simple not enough to slide the feeler in there because you will almost certainly be measuring on the unworn portion of the foot. To do them accuratey you need to set the gap to the worn part of the foot. I guess mine had around 3 to 4 thou wear on them. There is a place over in the States that does a nice roller rocker conversion for around 700USD from memory. Not only do you eliminate the wearing foot issue but you get more accurate cam timing as well. Ciao Ciao 3 thou is a lot for those miles. I don't mind running my valves a little loose, but . . . So, use a feeler gauge the width of the valve stem and most carefully align it with the groove worn into the rocker foot? Thats it docc. I can send you an image to show you the wear location if you like. Ciao

Yea they have been around for years but in the early days serious engine builders used to go for the flat solid lifters. Now its the other way around and rollers are used in high performance engines. Some US car race series still mandate the use of flat tappet cams and its a limiting factor to higher outputs. Ciao

So, with over 100,000 miles on my flat tappet Sport, when I set the valves, they are actually looser than my feeler gauge is telling me? If so, I wonder how much looser? Could be docc. When the rockers wear its simple not enough to slide the feeler in there because you will almost certainly be measuring on the unworn portion of the foot. To do them accuratey you need to set the gap to the worn part of the foot. I guess mine had around 3 to 4 thou wear on them. There is a place over in the States that does a nice roller rocker conversion for around 700USD from memory. Not only do you eliminate the wearing foot issue but you get more accurate cam timing as well. Ciao EDIT... just measured the worst one docc 0.003" wear. Because the foot doesnt wear all the way across its face you get inaccurate valve clearance settings unless you are aware of it and just use the feeler on the worn part.

I agree, roller tappets are not a clever solution. The roller tappets use a different cam. If they don't use a different cam the valve timing will be very different. Cams, as it sounds like you know, are either made for roller tappets or flat tappets. As to all flat tappet motors failing, I am only repeating what Pete Roper says. I thought the switch to roller tappets was a step backwards and I don't understand why they didn't just properly fix the flat tappet motor. But they don't listen to me. Not a lot wrong with roller lifters really. Chevrolet have been using them for years on their later generation of V8 engines. Little friction, totally reliable,ability to use more aggressive cam profiles, no real need for cam/tappet breakin,turn hi revs reliably, smaller package size overall. Downside...a little more weight and complexity. Over the years working on what you might call hi performance engines its valve train wear/failure on the highly loaded sliding/rubbing surfaces that is the common high wear/failure point. Not saying its necessarily a weakness in all cases but its where you go looking first. Roller lifters arent elegant but they do work. I like them. As it happens I just fitted the V11 with a new set of rocker arms yesterday while doing the Grisso valve cover conversion. At 42,000klms the old rocker arms had the typical wear on the valve stem foot that makes clearance setting harder than it should be. They would have gone more miles but I had a new set so threw them in. If the engine had a set of roller rockers wear at this point wouldnt have been an issue. Might look at getting this conversion done on the old rocker arms. Ciao

How about pulling the whole assembly out as Pete did then holding the nut in the vice and using an old uni joint half to grab the splines and using a bar through the bearing holes and doing it that way? Ciao

Why not pull the whole assembly out then use an old uni joint half to hold the shaft via the splines and then a large ring spanner? Hows that sound? OR do the above and use the drive shaft as a big tool to turn the splined shaft. So attatch the drive shaft onto the splined shaft with the assembly held in the vice with the retaining nut and turn the drive shaft 90 deg and use it as a kind of nuckle bar? would that work? Ciao

Looks amazing Chuck but not as cool as the Smithsonian at DC and Dulles. Ciao

Impressive. Quite some mouthfull, worth a proper Tweet if you want. But sorry, that's BS. Eating tappets is not necessarily a matter of bad design. Not that I would doubt you guys cannot immediately recognise a bad design should you ever come across one, but in this case it's just not so. I take phrases like this as a personal affront. Some folk here should eventually make up their mind why they're still Guzzi owners. Is it because of the bad design, the bad looks, the bad prices, the bad parts situation, the bad quality, the bad situation in general? Because you feel being in good company when it comes to Guzzi bashing? Better be easy with them, maybe they just don't have the right handbooks down there at the lake. Wow, tell us how you really feel:) Pete Roper is all over this and has been since day1. Two things, the engine happens to create a bit of engine oil mayo in cooler weather due to overcooling and this goopy mayo can drip down onto the cam lobes under certain conditions. The other is the DLC coating on the lifters, not a good idea. Not only is it a poor choice of surface treatment for this application but when it does start to fail the liberated material takes out the rest of the bearings in the engine eventually. So poor design to an extent and poor materials choices. Ciao