AndyH

Bad timing indeed! Your journeys are invariably informative... :-) Good luck.

A bit late I know but the 2014 Bristol Italian Auto Moto Festival 2014 is taking place tomorrow. Featured 2 wheeler marque this year is Ducati and 4 wheeler, Maserati (lovely!) but all sorts of other Italian marques will be present. Perhaps an Ercole will represent the 3 wheelers? For anyone without plans for Easter Saturday this could be a good last minute excursion: weather chilly early but bright and dry all day. Last year as I recall Italian bikes got into the display area for free, others parked outside. See you there http://www.biamf.co.uk

Done, sorry I missed the main love-in. (House move stuff) but sorted now. Thumbs up to you guys A

These ar the things I encountered when I bought my early V11. I understand there we're recalls on early ones including big end bolts (can anyone else confirm?). I didn't get any recall paperwork with mine but ask the vendor about recall work. There should be stuff on this forum about the recalls. That said, I've thrashed mine for the last three years and it hasn't gone bang.... Yet. It may well have a Sachs Boge shock at the rear end. Check the eye at the swing arm end: it is prone to cracking and opening up from an O to a C. Hard to spot if you don't know what to look for as the issue will probably be hidden by the hugger. You may have to feel around to detect it. If so, needless to say, you'll need to replace the shock. Check the speedo is working properly. Low mileage may just mean the clock wasn't working for a while. Possibly the angle drive at the gearbox end was o/s for an indeterminate amount of time and got fixed in time for sale. If the cable isn't routed straight and free running it'll keep trashing angle drives and they're quite expensive. Check the brackets on the oil cooler: originally made of alloy, they tended to fracture and Guzzi issued steel items instead. If still alloy they may well indicate true low mileage, but be prepared to replace them. I think the shock eye was the number one shocker for me as I only found it once I'd taken the swing arm off after a few hundred miles: that hard to spot. Could have been catastrophic and demanded immediate outlay.

I think there's been a diesel Enfield knocking around for a few years (literally!).

(here we go...)

Those manuals do tell you what you need to know, but not all of what you need to know! I'm not sure I entirely trust that list either. They might have simply forgotten to put the specific value for that part in the relevant text and the true value might be quite different from the value in that list.

Hard to arrange mainly perhaps because the import tax is punitive from the US? I got a second hand tacho from Dave (he of the fab special V11 2000 that hit a deer) and the tax was nearly 100 quid. Had to pay up before the Post Office handed over the goods.

Like the idea! Are you using some kind of proportioning valve and is the rear master cylinder the right diameter for this as well. Strikes me that the V11 original might now be too small to drive two slave cylinders and need too much travel to apply the requisite force. Any thoughts?

The casadimoto repair cost around 150 EUR and the Peter Bond fix was more than twice that. I've kind of lost the appetite to throw more money at the problem for now. Once I've completed my planned house move this year I'll probably get it back (the appetite, that is)

Oh, and the Silver ones are indeed the best from 2000 (sorry Hubert!)

Flinky you say docc? That's charitable. I've had: 1. the counterweight fall off (reads 12k rpm at a standstill and full bore), 2. After a spare from dave (on this forum) broke down, reason unknown, it was repaired by casadimoto via Stein-Dinse, the coil and electrolytic capacitor burned out, showing 0k rpm. 3. After that was repaired by peter bond, with a new pcb, it does what yours does. I got the message: forget the tacho and enjoy the ride! Change up when the rev limiter cuts in. AndyH

I've got straight bars, not clip ons and somehow they weren't bent at all. I saw the CCTV footage today and the UPS man (for such he was) picked the bike up like it was a mountain bike! I won't be arguing with him if we meet.

Talking of incremental improvement, I suffered the opposite today when someone knocked the bike over at work smashing the right side lever, bar end weight and grinding the head guard. They didn't fess up and we're hoping the CCTV footage will do that for them. Someone's karma ran over my dogma for posting stuff about pies! Got me more interested in a new rotor to reverse the trend now

No offence intended. My apologies if some was taken. Don't get me wrong, I'm on the same programme of incremental improvement of my bike, perhaps more half-heartedly, I'll confess. And I'm not pie-shy either. Just commenting on the juxtaposition of some apparently contradictory human behaviours to which people, myself included, can be prone. Evidently off the mark. Sorry.

And you hadn't noticed the dip was off to the right either?

A pound off this using exotic materials, a pound off that drilling lots of holes, but I always say: 'eat less pies and drink less beer if you want to go faster'. No one seems to take any notice though. Can't work out why...?

My cover is now so fragile (rust etc) that it needs protecting...

Yeah, they're really hard to find. Knitting needles finds them as you say. Kind of pointless then!

Yep, Ago. The guy who owns it asked Ago to sign it years ago. His son said, 'that bike is my heirloom. If I don't get anything else, I don't care!' Couldn't agree more.

Let us know how the Mistrals work out - I'm considering them myself, now I have the PCIII. Can't see from the pics... standard X-over or Mistral?

A bike spotted at a local pub hangout last summer. MV 750s America, but whose signature is that on the tail piece?

I saw the stuff on this and I was intrigued. I particularly liked the rear shock position concept but in practice it would get filthy right next to the rear wheel.

The fuel may be clean but you don't know where that nozzle's been!

Agreed, a bit wrong. Now, Italians would never commit such a design faux pas!