pete roper

I’ve only ever seen one Harley doing what it was designed for with both style and aplomb. Back about twelve years ago now I did one of my ‘Big’ tours of the USA, how lucky am I? On that trip I was on my Mana GT and after buggering about in the Deep South I headed westwards. Towards the end of the trip I took one of the interstates across the deserts of either UT or AZ. Can’t remember if it was 15 or 40, it matters not. But somewhere out in the wastelands, (Which I love by the way.) a bloke on a Road King joined the highway at some god forsaken ‘West Frecklepork’ type of hamlet and we droned along for probably a couple of hundred miles or maybe more together. We both stopped to fuel up at a servo in the middle of nowhere and exchanged pleasantries while we got drinks, (No need for a piss! It was HOT and we both necked about a gallon of water and took more in reserve! Place filling our jackets with ice from the soft drink machine!) and then went on our way. I followed behind and the burble of the, not overly loud, Road King was a joy to hear. It was probably the perfect bike for just casually eating miles in the Desert West of the US. Eventually he pulled off down an exit to another bumfuck hamlet that probably the people who lived there had never heard of but he gave me a cheery salute as he did so and I returned it as I and the little Aprilia soldiered on for another couple of hours until I cried uncle and rested overnight in yet another tiny, shagnasty little town where the food was terrible, the bed uncomfy and the most memorable thing was the barmaid at the dive bar I went to had the most astonishing false tits I’ve ever observed in my life! Made even more fantastic by the fact that they were obviously several decades younger than the rest of her! No judgement from me. I’m no oil painting or glittering Adonis. But as an example of anthropoid artifice she was a stunning beacon of, well, something! She was also utterly charming and drove my slightly pissed self back to my motel and wished me happy travels. It’s memories like those that make a life worth living. And are also a reason not to totally despise Harley’s.

I think you are correct. Memory loss is a thing……who knew?

‘Gambalunga’ means ‘Long-Legs’ I believe and from memory was the name that was given to the 120* V-Twin GP bike. ‘Gambalungino’ means ‘Little Long-Legs’. The 120* twin was very innovative for its time and used offset crank pins for perfect primary balance. Something not used by other manufacturers until the 1980’s I believe.

Centy was granddad of Griso. How could I not like it? Certainly it’s appearance was ‘Challenging’ when it was launched but it was a brave move by a cash strapped company. Certainly it would be easier to start such a project from one of the ‘CARC’ platform bikes but because of their large, long swingarm all such ‘Specials’ end up looking like shit in my book. I still haven’t seen a ‘Custom’ CARC bike that looks better than a stock or lightly modified Griso.

If the dash is blanking out it means voltage is marginal. The dashboard has a built in failsafe protection that if the battery voltage drops below a certain figure, (9V? Can’t remember off the top of my head.) it will abort the start and kill all power to the ecu to protect it from voltage spiking if the engine does start. The ‘Service’ warning will sometimes appear if the voltage drops to close to that critical point and it may also trigger various error codes in the dash and ecu. The voltage drop is due to the current demand from the starter which is very high and if there aren’t sufficient CCA in the battery it will drop below criticality. Usually when the dash re-boots after this event you’ll get a code appear on the LCD screen ‘AMG’ something or other which will appear before the tacho does its ‘Sweep’. Off you’re getting any of these symptoms it is most likely just a very tired battery and hopefully the ecu isn’t fried. It’s unlikely but not impossible. Thankfully ECU’s aren’t terribly expensive on the Bay of Fleas.

Any odd behaviour from the dashboard? Does it blank out when the engine is cranking?

That’s a weird set of faults. The fact that it’s saying the phase sensor has failed is interesting. Didn’t you say the injectors are firing and the plugs are sparking?

As I said. NGK have ceased production. The end! No more! Any at any shop will be NOS. I don’t know about Champion.

I have done a useful video on throttlebodies I recommend you watch. it covers some important stuff about the 50mm TB’s and the W5AM system.

The problem with a lot of gear sets that have been, and in some cases still are, offered for the venerable 2V motor is that they are utter shite. Shite material, shite production, shite tooth form or a combination of any or all of the above. Twenty years ago I ended up being abused and sometimes physically threatened by people who swore by the wretched things . I was told all sorts of guff, the funniest being that I had ‘Installed them wrong’! It’s three wheels on sticks! How hard can it be??? There were various commonly available types. Full alloy sets, sometimes made of Ergal, which is a particularly tough form of aluminium alloy, but often just seemingly any old cheesy junk. Then there were alloy/steel composite sets with a steel crank gear and aluminium oil pump and cam gears and finally a set with a nylon crank gear and aluminium pump and cam gears. Now ‘Back in the day’ I too was a dyed in the wool ‘Gears are best’ person and indeed, if made correctly from the correct materials, they really are. I spent several years exploring the different options but unlike many of the ‘True Believers’ I didn’t just fling them in and forget about them. I’d put them in and then regularly reopen and examine them for wear and damage. What I found was very disturbing. They ALL started failing almost immediately! Even when I tried modifying the timing chest so that the pump gear ran in an oil bath to assist in lubrication of the teeth they all failed. I actually have a ‘Rogues Gallery’ of a few failed sets of different types in my Flickr gallery, these include some pics taken by Joe Caruso of similarly buggered sets he’s removed. These include some of the Ergal sets made by Agostinis that some of the more wild-eyed swear by! I have terrible trouble getting pics to post on V11 LeMans.com but I can probably send a link to the gallery if anyone is interested? The end result is I refused to install them. They were and are, engine wreckers. No ifs or buts! This doesn’t mean I don’t think gears are ‘The Best’ solution. Simply that these comparatively cheap commercial sets aren’t it! FWIW back in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s you used to be able to buy helically cut steel gears with quite a fine tooth pitch. I shelled out for a set of these way back when and they were brilliant. I clocked up an astonishing distance with them in my ‘Primary’ bike and used them in my short stroke hot-rod. While the helical cut meant they would sap a bit of power it also gave you the advantage you could shim the cam gear to finesse the cam timing to a ridiculous degree and with the cams I was playing with every bit helped! I ended up giving them to a bloke called Steve Harney, (I think?) who was racing at the same time as Rob Johnson and I were in the early 2000’s. I’ve no idea where they are now! These weren’t common, have long been unavailable but if you want gears Joe’s are certainly the only ones I’d be bothered with. For most everyday riders though keeping the chain and running a Valtech blade type tensioner is perfectly adequate. A new chain and tensioner will probably be required every 140-150,000 Km in normal use. If you throw a new set at your engine at 100,000 your sprockets will probably last until the sun shrinks to become a white dwarf so longevity isn’t really an issue! The cost is also paltry compared to Joe’s gears. So really, it’s down to choice really, and the depth of your pockets and how obsessive you are. As for the noise? I love the noise!

If I were going to be building another 2V engine I’d be all over these like a rash. For *ordinary* people who are just riding their bikes gears are really a bit of overkill, but like the fact that twin throttle bodies appeal to my sense of ‘engineering purity’ rather than a single one I’d have to say I’d like gears. I am though, a complete twat!

One thing I often get is some wild eyed idiot telling me that his shitty, poorly maintained, Cali 1100 can out handle my CARC bikes. Even better I’ve had people saying their early LeMans is faster! I’ve even had these people challenge me to a ‘Race’ to prove their point! What sort of lunatic is going to respond to a challenge like that FFS? I’m knocking on the door of seventy! These toothless imbeciles are usually older than me! And they expect me to engage in a ‘Race’ with them? On a public road? With all of the associated imbeciles and road furniture mixed in? Nah, they’re right of course. I’m just too pusillanimous to engage their visceral manliness and their wheezing bags of shit are just too good for my crappy ‘Modern’ motorbike with its plastic tank that has been strangled by government legislation and overreach! Give me f*cking strength……..

Caps. http://kandstech.com/productreleases/sprc.pdf Note. This will be useful for V11 owners too as you will probably need new caps after you bin it. From memory the NGK’s were SB05’s caps.

They are copper core wires and yes, resistor caps. The resistor can be damaged by careless prying but in this case I’m pretty certain the problem is down to the rubber of the cap being torn. The fact it was raining when the problem arose is one indicator. Thing is when damaged the caps quite often don’t start arcing immediately. It seems to usually take about five to thirty Km for the problem to appear. Just far enough for it to be bloody inconvenient! Once the arcing happens though it’ll form a carbon track through the crack in the rubber and it’s all over red rover! Taking the plugs out and putting them in the caps and testing them against the heads is fine. You’ll still get a spark at the plug because the crack in the cap is away from the head and the spark isn’t being stressed. Electricity takes the path of least resistance and outside of the engine jumping the plug gap is easy. Once the plug is in the head the conditions, heat, compression etc. are far more hostile and so the spark looks for an easier route to earth. A nice damp crack in the boot of the plug cap is perfect! Wham-Bam-Thankyou-Mam and it’s all over bar the shouting. It’s really important NOT to ride in this condition as the uncombusted fuel from the dead cylinder gets pumped through into the exhaust where it can combust in the catalytic converter. That as you can guess is when the fun really starts!

Worth a try but I don’t think it will be long enough.

Well, that is likely your problem. The caps are very soft and tear easily. Levering them off from the top as shown almost invariably damages them. It may not be obvious at first glance but if you remove the lead covers and spin the bike over in a dark garage you will likely hear, and probably see, the spark *Snapping* to earth between the right angle of the cap and the rocker cover. The factory supplied, at enormous cost, a sort of grabby tool that you could slide down the cap to grip it and pull it up. I’ve never seen one! Ain’t nobody gunna pay for that nonsense! The way to remove the caps without damage is to get a long, thin, flat bladed screwdriver and poke it into the cooling tunnel in the head just above the exhaust manifold. Prod around with it and you’ll feel the soft rubber of the cap. You can then hook the end of the blade under the bottom of the cap and lever the cap up, off the electrode. Once the cap’s clip is clear of the electrode tip then and only then do you grab the cap at the top and wriggle it out with a gentle twisting motion. When reinstalling give a light smear of rubber grease around the sealing ‘rings’ on the cap to make it easier to slip out next time. Now the common replacement for the rather delicate original caps used to be NGK SB05-E or F caps, the suffix letter denoting the fitment for the tip shape of the plug centre electrode. Thing is NGK have ceased production of plug caps due to lack of demand, (Everything having moved to plug top coils.) but nature abhors a vacuum and there is another mob whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head who have stepped into the breach. I think though I put a link to their site up on Griso Ghetto, (Which is probably your best source for 8V info and yes, we like ALL CARC bikes so you won’t be ostracised!). The NGK caps don’t have the right angle tops and you have to bend the HT lead over to fit it under the lead cover which looks a bit ugly but it works. If you’re lucky you may find a set of NOS NGK caps on fleabay or the like. Next up in your steep learning curve will be understanding how the W5AM ECU controls the engine and why you should never move the ‘Sacred’ throttle stop screw while tuning it!

Who has been servicing it? How were the plug caps removed?

Sorry, I missed this. I have a couple of ideas. I’ll cover them in a bit when I’m not on my phone.

From a purely mechanical and electronic perspective the 15M ECU doesn’t have the potential to support the ABS functions required. The W5AM does and I have, as I’ve aged, seriously considered fitting a pump and sub-harness to the loom on the Griso so I could do it. It’s been done in Europe I know. Thing is it would be an enormous hassle and my ‘Touring’ bike already has ABS so, despite the fact I’d like to have it I’m essentially too lazy, and not risk averse enough, to be bothered with the Mighty Griso.

Sorry, that sort of sentimental mumbo-jumbo makes me want to puke! And ‘Rush’? Give me strength! Even when they were *Big* they were more ‘Hobble with a Zimmer Frame’! A mob of talentless mouth breathers with the sophistication of a pit toilet! I fart in their general direction!

Depended who they were. Some of the wisest people I knew when I was a teenager were retired tradesmen who encouraged my interest in things mechanical. Snooty, mealy mouthed busybodies always trying to get into other people’s lives and business, (And there were a lot of them around in the seventies!)? Not so much.

Yup, and, providing the world doesn’t end, IC vehicles will end up being an ‘Enthusiast’ hobby, a bit like steam trains are. Oh, they will, at least for the foreseeable future, remain a lot more popular than steam trains simply because unlike steam locomotives IC vehicles were, and are, ubiquitous and everybody in the western ‘Developed’ world will have memories inextricably woven in to the fabric of their lives that will involve them. Be it memories of family holidays as a kid or that thrill of discovery when you took your first trip *Away* independently on your first motorbike or car? Almost everyone will have those and ‘We’ and the generations up to the present will wish to preserve those memories and the items associated with them. I don’t think IC will need to be legislated out of existence. I think it will just fade into the background. What will replace it? Who knows? Whatever it is will still have the potential to be just as exciting, if society wishes it to be so. As it is more and more people nowadays, and not just young people, seem to be more interested in consumerism and living out a ‘Fantasy’ life vicariously through the lives of others on a small, glowing, screen. Is that wrong? Or bad? It’s not really my place to say. I’m an old man at the end of my (Enormously lucky!) life. The world I am bequeathing to my children is pretty f*cked up! If I were young I wouldn’t listen to a godammed word people like me say!

Well, off the top of my head…….. They used a very tall final drive. Enormously tall. Compensated for by lower internal ratios in the gearbox. The driveshaft and universal joint are a ‘One piece’ unit and they use the 20 tooth spline form used on the V11 and later bikes rather than the ‘Standard’ 10 spline system. It is critical to keep the ignition timing spot on as if the motor ‘Kicks Back’ while starting it has a tendency to round off the hexagonal key that drives the torque converter fluid pump. Drive is then lost as the fluid overheats. They are also very touchy about what type of ATF to use. Early ‘Verts had a lightweight, pressed steel, flywheel that tended to rip its centre out. Later ones have an enormous forged steel item that weighs about as much as a neutron star! As well as the standard ‘Vert, which closely resembled a T3/G5 with cow-horn bars and a weird tail light, the engine and transmission were also used in an automatic version of the California II. All their owners are strange, hump-backed midgets, usually with a withered arm, buck teeth and rickets. They tend not to bathe often and may or may not have communicable diseases so it’s best not to touch them. In fact try and keep them at arm’s length and stand upwind of them if possible. I am, obviously, the exception that proves the rule……….

I have to say I also thought that figure was most likely a ‘Pulled out of my arse’ statement rather than one that has any statistical veracity. I’m sure some people commute on two wheels but the numbers would probably be small percentage wise. It’s also important to realise that an awful lot of European countries have much, much more effective public/mass transport systems than most cities in the US or Australia. Even the UK which generally lags behind and has shit public transport due to decades of ‘Privatisation’ and lack of investment coupled with high fare prices still offers services that mean that old friends who live there, while they may own a car for personal transport, only use it occasionally and if travelling between towns of any size will generally take the train and then taxi or Uber it at their destination. For an awful lot of travel one’s own personal vehicle simply isn’t a necessity.

From a member on WG I believe?