pete roper

The pisser is John, that Jude and I were hoping to be over in the British Isles, (Hardly the UK any more!) in September/October and I was hoping to get in touch and spend a couple of days with you and Charlotte with the idea we could skive off and have a bit of a look at this. Sadly Bat Flu has put paid to that for a year at least. Arse!

I had a 'C' kit RS in a while back and had Phil Arnold come up from Tassie to assist with degreeing in the cams as it had never run right. It gave us kittens and while we knew we'd got it timed spot on it still wasn't right. The owner took it to a bloke whose name I know but can't remember and he pharted about and ended up graphing both camshafts and it turned out that this 'C' kit bike, that had never been apart, had come from the factory with one 'C' kit camshaft and one 'A' kit camshaft! No wonder we couldn't get it to run right! As Chuck says of bikes of that period the only reason they bothered assembling them at the factory was to make sure you got the right number of parts. No guarantee they'd be the right parts though.........

Way back in the mists of time you used to be able to get helically cut steel gears that fitted the motors with the oil pump with roller bearings in and a (?) straight shaft but these were unobtanium by the 1990's as far as I know. The earlier 700, 750 and early Eldorados also used gears but the oil pump gear for these had a (?) tapered shaft and would not fit the later oil pumps. Now from memory the story with these, (Early type, not the ones available for later bikes.) gears was that they were cast steel of some sort and quite high carbon. This made them very tough but unfortunately also frangible. They were fine if you used them in a standard motor with the 'Lawnmower' cam, small valves and teeny-weeny 29 or 30mm VHB carbs but if you tried to 'Hop the motor up' in any way they were prone to shattering the cam gear. I had a set of the steel 'Factory' gears available through the aftermarket in my SP 1000 that over some 20+ years morphed into my little short stroke hot-rod. Being helically cut as well as being vernierable it was possible to shim the cam gear for incredible precision for cam timing which was a bit of fun back in the day, especially with a couple of the cams I ran back then! By the time I'd finished with it it was producing close to the 'Mythical' 100 hp/litre but I had to rev it so hard that it's oil pump would cavitate and big end shells were limited life items! The gears never gave me a moment of issue and when I wrecked the motor out in about 2008 I gave them to another bloke to use in his post-Classic racer where, I assume, they are still doing stirling service. That type of gear though are long, long gone. Nowadays the choice is chain or Joe's gears. Unless you want to play 'Timing chest lotto' with any of the execrable aluminium or alloy/steel composite sets.

More crappy gears by -convertpervert- More crappy gears by -convertpervert- More crappy gears by -convertpervert- image by -convertpervert- from Joe's munt pile. image by -convertpervert- image by -convertpervert- Bad gears by -convertpervert- broken gears8 by -convertpervert- Ago gears2 by -convertpervert- timinggears1_sm_sm by -convertpervert- broken gears 7 by -convertpervert- broken gears6 by -convertpervert- broken gears5 by -convertpervert- broken gears4 by -convertpervert- broken gears3 by -convertpervert- and some of the results. broken gears9 by -convertpervert- image by -convertpervert- image by -convertpervert- Alu G 005 by -convertpervert- Yeah, I've got a load more. I'm not willing to argue the point with anyone, there is no point. sorry for not cutting off the extraneous bits of the photo links, I can't be arsed.

Don't be tempted by any of the alloy or alloy/steel composite sets available. They're all garbage despite what their fanboys will try to tell you.

I've actually done some fairly thorough testing on this and generally with the 2V engines even running them hard on a rolling road while holding the rocker cover on by hand until they were scalding and then whipping the head off and finding TDC immediately the gaps would remain virtually unchanged on squarefin motors with the alloy rocker covers and would close up *A bit* with roundfins with cast iron rocker carriers. The only time I know of the clearances close up enough to cause problems is on engines run with the mid nineties 'US Emissions' clearances of two thou inlet and four exhaust on the squarefins. If engines are run really hard with these clearances in hot weather for extended periods the will stall if they come to a halt quickly, indicating, one would guess, that the tappet is riding the cam and the exhaust valve is being held off its seat. In 'Normal' use it isn't an issue. With the roller tappet 1200 8V's the gaps will definitely open up as the engine gets hot and gets bigger the hotter it gets. If you look at the construction of the heads, valves and camboxes it is self evident why.

No.

Note that the Gutsibits kit uses Surflex friction plates which will eat the splines in the center of the plates in short order. To be avoided. Unsurprising they sell shonky shit given their history of thievery. The single platers use a single diaphragm spring for pressure and incorporate anti-rattle springs in the centre of the plate. That one looks like one from an 8V.

All big blocks up until the 1200-8V's yes. No, they are not a redundancy, they collect stuff too small to be filtered. Take the plug out of a high mileage crank and you will find the trap filling with crap.

A very large number of infections and deaths in Oz can be traced back to passengers who were rapidly and unceremoniously disembarked from one cruise ship in Sydney with no health, or even immigration checks! Someone needs to be held accountable for that. One has to think it was a case of 'Shit! Make this someone else's problem! Fast!' and the supervising agencies dropped the ball or simply didn't care. Someone we know came back just before the border was closed and saw people completely flaunting the all ready imposed social distancing requirements at the arrivals lounge in Sydney airport. She approached a couple of Border Force boot-boys who were looking on and asked why they didn't try and do something bout it. Their sneering reply was, "Not our job. That's biosecurity." What a pack of bloody jobsworths! Not really surprising though. Look at the Minister responsible for their oversight. Dutton the Potato-Head! A slovenly would be autocrat with the social skills of a worm farm! God help us all!

Staintune are closing or closed.

Obviously so loud they've given you brain damage so you have to tremble post.😆 I'm NOT a fan of loud pipes per-se and can tell you that loud pipes on a Nuovo Hi-Cam will gut the bottom end and midrange while giving you next to no top end so they're a dead loss. V11's are though, for some reason, able to make a truly glorious sound with the right pipes. The S'toons on Chuck's Scura sound awesome but that's a pretty special motor as well. I've heard some very nice carbon pipes on a few of them too but fully open ones are just painful! Both V11's and VFR's with full Staintune systems make a truly glorious noise. Those who have them, look after them as there won't be any more.

I've handed the baton of plate production over to 'Pressureangle', another forum member here. It is far easier and cheaper for them to be manufactured closer to their main market, a donation for every plate sold is pledged to Medicienes sans frontiers. My business has moved to principally being with CARC bikes and I hope to hand that on and retire soon but as far as I know plates are still available. A plate will prevent this happening again.

The usual reason for these engines running their big ends is oil pick up exposure during hard acceleration. There is a fix for that. As for the crank? Although Guzzi don't supply undersize bearings for the V11 the journals are exactly the same size as other models that you can get oversizes for. Cali 1100 first, second and third undersizes are readily available. Even if the crank can be linished back to standard I would suggest getting the rods re-sized and mated to the crank.

Thanks mate.👍

It's not so much the Millenials as the generation before who are late twenties to early thirties that bug me. They seem far more glib and 'Entitled' than the millenials, most of whom have been busting their arses in a casualised 'Gig' economy with no security of job or accomodation. My kids are 36, 35 and 26, sadly we're estranged from our oldest boy, (His choice not ours.) but the two younger ones are both helping out their neighbors and stuff. The youngster lives in Fitzroy and has for the last fortnight, (After he had to self isolate for a fortnight because a job site he was working on had bloke's who came to work after being diagnosed with the wretched virus.) has taken his 90 year old, tiny Polish woman neighbour under his wing and has been doing her shopping, taking her bins in and out and arranging nursing visits for her etc. because it's difficult for her to go out and of course everything is a shitfight at the moment. He's as hipster and millennial as they come, (Although he'd tear me an extra arsehole for saying so 😂) but he's a good kid. I reckon we drug him up well enough!😎 I just Hope kindness and compassion gets to be a bit more common and it's less about MEEE-MEEE-MEEEEEEE! Anyway, enough! I'm going to go outside and start the Mana again just to hear it purr! I've missed it during the three or so years I owned the Stelvio and strangely enough I now miss the Stelvio not a jot! It was fun, but it didn't 'Speak' to me.

He's giving us a run down on another board we're both on. Ask nicely and I'm sure he'll post it up here too. The Man's just too godamned smart for smart for his own good!

It is what it is. If we have to sit around entertaining ourselves at home for six months to a year it will be pretty drac but it's better than risking going out and infecting someone who then dies. At the end of the day it's not about *Us* as individuals. If one good thing comes out of this it will perhaps be that people will start thinking about each other a bit more. I'm also hoping that just maybe the disastrous economic fallout might make people reassess what is actually important in their lives and lower their expectations a bit. I've been very tired for years of overhearing 'Yummy Mummies' complaining about how tough they are doing it when their first house is a new five bedroom McMansion, they're driving a Range Rover as a grocery-getter, their husband's all have boats and Harleys and they themselves have $20,000 of fake tits nailed to their chests! It's all on the never-never and I'll bet they have credit cards that are all maxed out too. Sorry, if you're that profligate and incautious I find it very hard to be sympathetic if you can't pay your mortgage or electrickery bill when the world goes to shit. Look after yerselves, look after others, especially the oldies, (Yeah, even older than us!) wash yer hands, don't go eating other people's boogers and stay the f*ck inside. It's not rocket science. Chuck's building an aeroplane to keep himself busy. What are the rest of you lot doing?

Due to both Michael and I being in the High Risk category for complications I've pretty much shut the business down for the duration. We've got a couple of small jobs to do of our own but apart from that we're going batshit crazy at home. Good news is the Mana will be ready for rego this week. Bad news is I won't be bothering until we're allowed to ride for fun again and that could be months off! Griso remains stone axe reliable so I can't do anything to that, (I could 1400 it, I have the parts but not the money right now.) so I suppose I have no option but to try and finish off the wretched Cali. Boy I wish I'd never clapped eyes on it! What was I thinking??? At least the stats seem to be indicating that Covid numbers are stabilising. Things won't get back to anything like normal though until there's a vaccine and that's a year away. I reckon we'll all of gone bonkers by then! Arse!

Yup, really good bloke. I met him in Mandello at the 95th. He's the tall thin, better looking one.

OK, thanks. Hadn't seen it.

I haven't seen it mentioned here. Are people aware Paul Mineart is gravely I'll in hospital with this wretched disease?

Nope, not I. At least not that I remember but 1995 was a long, long time ago. I'm pretty sure the first time I saw the description used I smiled at how apposite it seemed.

The term 'Pork Chop' was never derisive. It was a simple observation of the plates on early Spineys like the 1100 Sport C and Daytona 1000. They look like a pork chops! Well, sort of....... The name just stuck after the design changed and no longer had the 'Eye' in the middle. Even to this day, long after the Spineys and CARC bike's are historical artefacts if you ask their owners what the footpeg hanger plates are called most will call them 'Pork Chops' even if they don't know why. Its just another one of those 'Guzzi' things like the frame series of the big twins being called, Loop, Tonti, Spiney or CARC. Pete

It looks unbelievably awful you bastard! Really, it's stunning. I'm awestruck