Lucky Phil

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

I love my granite plate Chuck, I bought it at an auction along with another which I gave to a mate that has an engineering business. As a matter of fact the image of the gaskets is taken on the protective cover for the plate. I also have another 2 steel plates about 2/3 the size of the granite one. One of these plates has a purpose made holder that has a role of wet and dry that you feed onto it and the paper clamps down onto the plate so you can flatten things on it, lovely. The advantage of the granit plate is that even if it gets damaged it will chip but still be flat unlike a steel plate that if damaged will have a raised part at the damage location. Ciao

Sorry I think I missed the first page of this thread and thought thelonewonder had bought the Grisso,hence my question about the roller motor which had been covered on page 1,doh. I'm a bit shocked that it was mid 2012 that they went to roller lifters, that long ago. My memory isnt getting any better obviously. Ciao

I used to think mine was the same, just one of those character details. Till someone reminded me that I could flatten them on a piece of plate glass. Stopped the weep.But I would prefer to have the reusable vitron gaskets that fit on the Griso I recently had the opportunity to check a piece of 10mm flat plate glass on my granite surface plate expecting it to be dead flat, it wasnt. Turns out it was around 0.002" out over about a 400mm length. Just for info purposes as I was led to believe a piece of float plate glas was dead flat. Would be fine to flatten a rocker cover though I would think. Ciao What !! This was a 1/2” thick, sorry 12.7 mm thick piece & I had it laying on the machined part of my sawtable. That’s as true as it gets in my shop. But good to know. It all depends on the degree of precision needed I guess. Yea, I was disappointed to find it wasnt dead flat as well. Ciao

New Zealand converted to metric in 1976, and despite predictions, we didn't revert to the dark ages. Australia got started in 1971, which probably was the reason that NZ got motivated.There are still 3 countries left on the planet who haven't officially adopted metric. However, there is plenty of room for non-metric measurements, for example the Helen, used as a unit of beauty. Helen of Troy is known as "the face that launched a thousand ships". Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship. Derived units such as the negative Helen (the power to beach ships) also exist. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement Also things like a wee dollop, a good biff, a handful, and a decent shot, don't conform to SI. Ha, I'll add the bees @#$$#! (small amount), the smidge, the @#$$#! in a shirt sleeve fit (loose) the grunts measurement of torque,1,2,3 etc, the fracamoondo micromeasurement. Sorry in advance. Ciao

I used to think mine was the same, just one of those character details. Till someone reminded me that I could flatten them on a piece of plate glass. Stopped the weep. But I would prefer to have the reusable vitron gaskets that fit on the Griso I recently had the opportunity to check a piece of 10mm flat plate glass on my granite surface plate expecting it to be dead flat, it wasnt. Turns out it was around 0.002" out over about a 400mm length. Just for info purposes as I was led to believe a piece of float plate glas was dead flat. Would be fine to flatten a rocker cover though I would think. Ciao

Try Pete Roper at Moto Moda ( or send him a PM) or Valpolini. http://www.valpolini.com/index.php/home-en/prodotto?&fID=1574 Sorry I spelt Valpolini with 2 "L's" in the heading. Ciao