Lucky Phil

Nobody can tell you are wearing them unless you are silly enough to ride your motorcycle in skin tight stretch jeans instead of a "comfortable fit" jeans/trousers. Nicks are padded more in the crutch and the bone of the pelvis that contacts the seat when sitting down not the glutes. Anyway have you ever looked at the arse of full leathers or leather riding pants? Unless you're a GP rider with the race suits with lots of inner stretch panels then they aren't exactly a great look around the rear. People commenting on things they have never tried just imagined! I offer a cheap and practical solution but people would rather imagine things and spend tons of money on impractical stuff like leather seats, lambswool covers or heaven forbid wooden bead covers. @Kevin-T mentioned he has no interest in "dragging his knee" with regards to the seat shape! Good lord you don't need to even attempt to drag a knee to use shifting your arse two inches either side of centre for better cornering control. How the hell do people ride their bikes in the corners? sit there rigidly centred and act like the mast on a sailing boat?

I've often wondered about that but I think it's an American freedom of speech/information thing isn't it? Not the same as the draconian EU laws on just about everything you can think of. Phil

No idea docc. I haven't actually experienced a blown fuse in years and years. Phil

The new fuse is cracked not blown. FWIW you should never use cheap and cheerful ebay or cheap auto parts fuses always go for the best quality and don't penny pinch on fuses.

Except a broken cable. Phil

If we are having a discussion about what makes sense and is practical and cost effective then the seat shown here misses out on all counts. It's leather which has practicality issues, it represents about 20% of the total worth of the bike and the shape is wrong for a sporting motorcycle as well. The idea is to have a flat to slightly rounded seat on a spots bike so the rider can slide himself laterally from one side to the other a little or a lot depending on the riding style. The sporting motorcycle seat shape is designed to NOT lock your arse into a little bucket like a mini lounge chair. If your V11 Sport is fitted with a centre stand then this style of seat basically turns into a bird bath if the bike is left in the rain as well. If you want long distance comfort then as I've mentioned ad nauseum you buy these and wear under your riding pants(see link) They make sitting on a bicycle seat all day relatively comfortable so on a motorcycle seat they are perfection. The cost is dirt cheap, they add no weight to the bike they allow the rider to still move around the bike for proper control and you chuck them in the wash with other stuff to clean them. For some reason people lose all rationality when it comes to motorcycle seats. Forget practicality, forget purpose, ignore the massive investment in dollars and the additional weight. It's like trying to make a sensible argument for a leather jacket over a jacket made of modern materials for road riding, pretty much impossible. I own 2 of these custom seats, one for the V11 and one for the Ducati 1000ss and both are stored under the house gathering dust. Both came with the bikes when I bought them and if the bikes are sold will be passed on to the next owner someday I guess. The rational, thinking mans choice, or any other of the thousands of similar versions. Aussie dollars remember, so about 5 bucks USD on Amazon in the USA I guess. https://www.99bikes.com.au/knicks-endura-xtract-lite-grey

If you are going to do home maintenance (and who doesn't) the first thing you need to do is down load the parts and shop manuals, they are free and the answer to your questions are there. As for removing the tank. In a perfect world no but in the Guzzi v11 Sport world probably. Phil

Nor did I until they got smart people designing them. Phil

So docc by my calculations the GB500 @170kg DRY and 39hp has a power to weight of 4.3kg/hp The RE @230kg DRY and 47hp has a power to weight of 4.89kg/hp BUT the RE 650 makes a lot more torque than the GB500. 41nm @ 5500 rpm V 52nm @5650rpm. The RE would feel a way faster ride and you can shed 12kg off the RE with a $750usd full exhaust system and make more power still. Plus the 650 twin is silky smooth and has less vibes than the V11. Phil

$700usd, yikes. Plus why people chose leather for a motorcycle seat is beyond me. It's not waterproof to start with and requires constant attention/maintenance to keep it even half way able to last. My Vinyl seats last forever with a wipe of Armor All every 6 months or so. As a matter of fact the seat foam usually gives up before the vinyl seat cover. Sorry for the differing opinion on this but to me it's an expensive and poor material choice for a motorcycle seat. Phil

You know docc you forget how overrated horsepower is until you get on something like the RE. I'm sure your GB500 with slightly less hp/lb compared to my RE650 with the same engine is fun to ride is it not. Phil

How fing ugly is that active cruise control radar box on the front! Like an after thought, Seriously. Phil

Yep they used to do that. Phil

No it's, either a Stucchi or a Stucchi copy. They Mistral cross overs are rubbish as were the FBF ones. Phil

My grandfather lost vision in one eye totally as a child but he seemed to live a normal life with regards to depth perception. A guy my age in the office back when I worked also lost an eye vision wise totally as a child and he road bikes and raced as well. Another guy I knew back in the 80's who was a Ducati rider and racer only had one eye physically. He lost one in a racing crash when his glasses frame pierced his eye. He still road and raced and also was a crazy keen free rock climber. His profession was a bride player believe it or not. I don't know how any of them dealt with the depth perception issue though.

I'm trying to remember if the plates are cast or forged and unless something has changed over the last 10 years you'll not have much luck anodising them if they are cast. Your local anodiser won't usually touch any cast part because the surface finish never turns out well and will be powdery and blotchy. The Italian manufacturers such as Brembo have some sort of special anodising process for cast parts such as master cylinders and callipers etc that your average anodiser here and in the states does not. It's the reason cast ally car wheels aren't anodised but usually power coated. Billet and forged parts are different though. These days you can get powder coating that closely replicates an anodised finish anyway.

Oil either passes through or bypasses the oil cooler governed by the thermostatic valve in the oil distribution unit in the sump depending on the oil temperature. Phil

The other day I was mounting this C-tec remote charging thing to the car. It's mounted behind and under the back of the hood and has 3 LED's that blink once/second depending on the battery state of charge. Green/orange/red. I got sick of opening the hood to connect the battery tender so I installed this which required cutting the wires and re soldering them in this particular instillation. My pet hate/nightmare is soldering loose wires together insitu, it's a propper bastard. There's a few options out there for the job on the bench but I wanted something for the bench and in situ. Here it is, brilliant. The tongs have spring loaded blades to hold the wire halves and you simply squeeze the pliers and guide the bared ends of the wires together as the strands mesh then when you have the mesh correct you lock the pliers. The ends are held firmly in place so you have 2 hands free for the soldering and the joint doesn't move. Brilliant and worth the $15aud or 2 cents USD. Well worth the expense. The Ctec thing is also great. I don't like leaving anything on a tender. I've seen them fail and destroy the battery and surrounding stuff so I connect the tender and when it's charged the battery I remove it.

Your readings "go off fast" because they are never correct the first time and here's the reason why. This is what a set of rocker arms look like at 40,000klm on a well looked after V11 sport engine. What are the chances of an accurate valve clearance check repeatability when the rocker pads look like this and the feeler gauge blade straddles this wear area when you check the clearances? You wont actually get the gap where the pad face meets the valve but some sort of average between the unworn and worn spot which will be less than where the valve stem meets the rocker pad on the wear area. So set your valves to 0.15 and end up with around 0.2-0.25 or so. Next time you do the clearances you have the gauge slightly off centre and on the worn area only and bingo a totally different reading and you scratching your head about clearances. You either need to use the feeler at the wear point or replace the rockers. It's a common issue. Pointless analysing Gauge "feel" until you've dealt with this.

Some colours respond well to photographing in certain lights and a fill in flash can make the paint "pop" as well. Silver V11 Sports always look great to me in images but not as impressive in the flesh. Not bad or anything but never as good. Thats why I don't choose car or bike colours from the computer, I always want to see it in the flesh. The only colour Supra I could see in the flesh was a red one so thats what I bought. I mean you can't really go wrong with red but I'm not choosing a car colour off a brochure or computer image. So now we have 3 red cars! When the wife says "do you want to take the Red car for a spin" I still know what car she's referring to though.

Worth a try but if it's rusted together it's unlikely to work. A grease gun can only exert so much pressure, certainly less than a pair of hydraulic jacks plus my brand new shaft assy isn't totally sealed. When you slide it apart you can feel air escaping. There's a bleed hole somewhere. Phil

Heat and working it back and forth and some penetrating oil/concoction of your choice. Two things. You need to destroy the oring in the sliding section so the penetrating oil can access the splines and the heat needs to be applied to the bevel box end of the shaft as the female end is just a shield over the splined portion.