belfastguzzi

The Griso's design works best of the bunch, in making something of the way that Guzzi has chosen to present its mechanicals – all the big drive casing and boxy motor bits. The 1200s still looks like a potato(e), skimmed heads or no.

Bending a short bit of pipe and keeping dimensions right isn't as easy as imagining it! Not without a tooled-up metal shop anyway.

First: have you cleaned it – made sure that the pistons move freely?

You have the bands very close to the front of the cans. With some fiddling they can be mounted a little further back to give slightly better suport. Old picture here from old post I also lowered these a bit, so that they were away from the indicator lights that I fitted Oh, BTW, do you mean not parallel or not the same length? Not being the same length (or not finishing at the same distance back as well as not being the same distance out) is, unfortunately, a Guzzi feature. As in the old post: it's a pity that Guzzi don't bother to make the pipes 'handed' for each side, especially given the price.

as your story went on – I had a good idea that was coming

Horlicks

see you're using the English structure there JR. Allow me to try the American Montana where men weave dreams from dental floss the Eagle unlike lazy Hog flies at dawn J.R.T. like the wise Puffin sips fish stock

You've got a plan there, JR, of sorts. I suspect that you've been sampling your reserves of 10yr old fish stock and are temporarily overcome with 'inspiration'. Did you mean 'muffin', or 'puffin'?

A Northern Irish woman is putting a bottle of whisky that could be the oldest in the world, up for auction next month. – A rare Victorian Scotch thought to be over 150 years old: been in her family for generations. Label says, "Glenavon*** Special Liqueur Whisky Bottled by the Distillers" Glenavon closed in the 1850s Expected to fetch up to £10,000 (£300 a shot) when auctioned at Bonhams, London. Cancel the double garage.

I asked Madonna and she says she'll ask Michael Jackson

I like his black and white trunks. Must be a hassle being famous: even on the beach they're hassled for a handout by an emaciated drug-injector. Anyway, enough of James Dunt – what's the big dangerous 145mph bike selling for?

I'll ask Madonna

Tooters A tutor who tooted a flute Tried to tutor two tutors to toot. Said the two to the tutor, "Is it harder to toot or To tutor two tutors to toot?"

It's not this guy: 'cos he's James Hunt

Did you see the snippet in MCN? A V.11 that was owned by James Blunt will be for sale on ebay tomorrow. His record company insisted that it was too dangerous for him to ride, apparently. No axle nuts on it, or what?

Must have been pretty AMAZING.

It's in here, if you can work out the code: a propane torch should do it

Shouldn't that post have been made in the Quiz section?

DL, you can't get in there without a password ? What else is inside? Edit, oh yeah, there's a separate Downloads Area for the manuals.

On assembly, I'd use some coppaslip to make the job of extraction a bit easier next time. If the spacer is a bit short you would be best addressing that, so that the bearing doesn't get wrecked again. 113mm sounds right though. Can you determine if it is the right length for the hub or can you see another reason why that one bearing went south?

It's simple really, you'll know the problem when I mention it – can't get the staff these days – It's the troublesome world of sub-contracting. The day-job, as Lifestyle Strategist for Madonna, keeps me pretty busy, so to do my duty by V.11.com I have to hire in jobbing hacks (mostly from the higher orders of primates** and agile tree dwellers) to keep the daily column going. Some of these writer guys can be scurvy swabs, lazy as the day is long. They do nothing for weeks on end and I don't know about it until I get a nasty phone call from the Global Moderator, telling me Jaap's Euros are as good as anybody's and why haven't they had the pieces they've paid for...yak, yak, yak. On the other hand, some are just soooo serious. It's 'clocks' this and 'time' that. For them, tappets and cans and the density of seat foam are the doorways to paradise. One of these guys is so keen he works on after-hours, going by some crazy handles like 'Ratchethack' and 'D.Laing' and others that you may recognize. That boy sure is keen and I do think that somewhere along the line he's gonna have a REALLY IMPORTANT message for us all. Watch this space. Anyhows, in recent weeks I had to work out how Madonna could help the poor, NOW . So I was a bit busy. I think I cracked it, so the pressure should be off for a while. That means I can kick out the jobbing writers, rein things back in and get the V.11.com job in hand again. **In my experience, these primates might have their eyes facing forwards, but they aren't all they're cracked up to be. I hear that spiders are pretty diligent, so I'm gonna keep a few in the garage, so that they get a hang of the V.11 thing and then let them try working on a few of the threads hereabouts. I mean, could they be any worse? Sorry for your equilibrium. If you continue to be troubled, you could always do as JRT has done and resort to the refuge offered in the whisky bottle. Thanks for the opportunity to explain.

You've got a Tenni, right????

You've peddled this heretical scepticism here before Ratchet. To no avail. We still believe. We have the shiney windows and the shiney shoes as solid proof.

Looking further into Bike magazine, I see they have a Venn diagram type chart, showing what classification and overlaps new bikes fall into. From memory, they have the Griso along with Yam MT-01 and the Harley Street Rod. So those could well be 2 of the other bikes in the December issue Big Test. In fact it's a mighty good reason not to – I'll send the Scura round to bite you.