pete roper

Or you could find someone who knows what he's doing.

I made Jude a pair of earrings out of a pair. Sadly they are too heavy to wear really! If you'd like one to use as a 'Prince Albert' I'll happily send you a few. Just don't post pics eh?

Yup. Also the oil that came out of it, (And other bikes with these things fitted.) always stinks so heavily of fuel it's hardly oil any more. When 8V's eat their tappets one of the first signs is blackening of the oil. It doesn't stink of fuel though, a bit more 'Burnt' than you would expect but it doesn't smell fuelly though. Heavily contaminated oil also 'Feels' different if you rub it between your fingers. Believe me, I've seen it many times now. It's not just a random sample of one! Pete

Back on topic. We have a Griso in at the moment for rollerisation. It's been running a finbau forge O2 sensor fooler. 27,000 km and the tappets are some of the worst we've seen and the camchains are utterly rooted. Tops of the pistons are washed pretty clean so it's rings are history too. Why people fit these bits of shit is just beyond me.

60's good but to be expected with cold oil. The OPRV crack pressure is somewhere around 60 so it's working. When it's warm you'll find at idle it's really low but as long as it doesn't drop below about 40 when you're motoring in hot weather you'll be fine. pete

Yeah, sorry if I seemed a bit vehement in my response, it wasn't meant to be an attack on you Ray but after twelve years of dealing with W5AM bikes that have had these 'Simple fixes' used on them I know that they can not only be ineffective but also downright damaging. All of these bits of shit work on the principle of 'Fooling' the ECU into delivering more fuel. Many of them, an example being the 'Fat Duc' product are a variable resistor that goes in between the narrow band O2 sensor in the exhaust and the ECU. This supposedly 'Tricks' the ECU into thinking that the engine is running lean and adjusts the parameters in the closed loop area of the map to make the injector pulse with longer. The problem is that what it really does is simply confuse the ECU and it can end up going into a tailspin where it adds far, far too much fuel. It then recognises there is a problem and throws up a 'Service' warning on the dash and drops the bike into 'Limp' mode. You can feel when this happens. It feels like arse! The overfuelling can also do substantial damage over time. The Mistral device is also simply an variable resistor only it goes between the air temperature sensor and the ECU. This is even more spectacularly useless. When initially installed it will create a rich condition, once again very crudely, but the problem is the O2 sensor will detect the rich condition and then, over a short period of time, will pull fuel out of the pulse width until it recognises the mix is what it thinks it should be. All these horrid little widgets tend to thrive because a.) People are wary or downright scared of Fuel Injection. And b.) People think they are a cheap and easy magic bullet. They are neither! The air temperature fooler device could be used to, very crudely, enriched the mixture if you download the map, open it with a tool like Tunerpro and turn the lambda function, (The O2 sensor input.) off and re-upload the modified map. The thing is you wouldn't want to. The common belief is that 'Modern bike's are mapped lean to meet emissions'. This is in fact the almost exact opposite of the truth. Most maps are rich and then rely on the lambda input to pull fuel out of the map to meet the emissions target. If you turn the lambda off in most of the map the very last thing you want to do is put more fuel in! The other thing is if you are going to turn the lambda off you have to read the map, modify it and re-upload it. If you are going to do that why not just get, (Or build.) a decent map for your bike and upload it? All you need is Guzzidiag, Reader and Writer, two cables and a beater laptop! The map will probably be cheaper than one of these shitty widgets and you need to have the cables and laptop for tuning the bike anyway. Sorry, I didn't mean to jump down Ray's throat but these things, and the people who spruik them, really piss me off. Pete

No they don't. You may initially see the bike behave differently but the W5AM controller simply trims around it in a short period.

I have to say that I wouldn't put a chair on either a Spiney or a CARC bike. They simply aren't designed for it and I'd be worried about something breaking. There are also a host of fitment problems. A Cali is a far more suitable sidecar tug. That's why I'm using one for mine. Pete

I've got a twin plate assembly hanging around if you're interested.

Yes it will, but only until the fluid in the now 'Closed' system heats up. Then, not being able to bleed back to the reservoir due to the priming port being blocked by the master cylinder piston the expansion caused by the heat can only make one thing move. That's the piston in the slave cylinder which will preload the release mechanism making the clutch slip and eventually, if the situation isn't rectified, burn out.

It's a cable system with two adjustment points. One at the handlebar lever. One on the arm on the back of the box. Your understanding of the workings of the hydraulic system is a bit off too. While it is possible to 'Close' the system causing problems due to heat it won't pump up like a hydraulic jack.

Yup. User code which is five numeral is programmed by the owner and stored in the dash. It's not the lock tumblers that prevent the bike starting, it's the dash logic. If the dash doesn't recognise the chip it will ask for the user code before unlocking the start up protocols. Don't know the code? It ain't gunna start. Pete

As Chuck says, Mark is a top bloke but the last two times I've visited I sorted a Griso and a Cali EV with fueling issues because he just refused to countenance working on FI. (Shrug?) He is what he is. pete

It's advisable.

No bevel gears on Parilla. Hi-Cam design with cam driven by a gear train, one of which was a fibre gear.

There are all sorts of sets, or there used to be. I've had long arguments with a lot of people who claim that one or other manufacturer's gears are good and all the rest are crap but in my experience they are all crap, untrustworthy and I wouldn't put them in my two stroke lawnmower! As far as what pump is used? Most of those sets use the stock pump with bearings and a straight shaft. The gears used in the Hi-Cams which are also failure prone tend to shatter before they gall up and fall to pieces but this is more because the pumps don't have bearings supporting the driveshaft,the pump bodies are machined with poor tolerances and the shaft and it's attached gear flop about until the gear shatters. Engines that get a lucky good set of gears and pump seem to last a long time but Guzzi use some weird toothform that hasn't been used by anyone else since Noah was building the windlass's for the Ark! Whether that is relevant though I have no idea? If I had an early Hi-Cam though I'd piss the gears off and go to a well tensioned chain. Pete

Not a fan of alloy or alloy/composite gear sets. No doubt one of the shouty brigade will be along in a minute to tell me I'm wrong.

Yeah but Mark doesn't like to have anything to do with FI.

The o-rings seal the pipes on the oil filter/OPRV valve. Normally they will still be malleable and undamaged so they can simply be re-used but hey? They're o-rings and cost pennies. Might as well do them if you remember to order them. Pete

No idea where they are assembled now. Last time I was In Mandello in 2016 the very last of the 1200's were being assembled along with smallblocks and the MGX but while the vehicle assembly lines and various other pedestals for assembly of fairings/stereos/clocks etc were on display there didn't seem to be any dedicated areas for engine, gearbox or final drive assembly so I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that these components were being assembled remotely at Pontadera or Noale or some other Piaggio facility and then shipped to Mandello for final assembly into whole motorbikes. I've since seen pics of workers assembling smallblock motors purportedly taken at Mandello fairly recently but there is nothing actually in the pictures to identify the location as Mandello itself.

Rolf, we knew what you meant. (At least those of us who can read tabloid headlines without our lips moving?🤪). 👍

Indeed 👍

It's also the same style of tab washer that occasionally gives up the ghost on the pinion of the bevelbox on CARC bikes. They are only torqued to a really low preload though so if the bearings ' Settle' after the nut has been torqued they'll loosen off. Thing is with these ones they're all supposed to be done up 'Till you fart' tight so what happened here must be down to not having the right tools or the like. Anyway, thanks to Rolf I dropped into my local SKF dealer where Tony the goat f*cker, (Don't ask me! He's been Tony the goat f*cker since I moved to Canberra thirty plus years ago, still working behind the same counter and for all I know still f*cking goats!) looked at the nuts and washers and uttered a series of grunting noises that I, due to long association, was able to translate as an admission of recognition. Long story short I've ordered ten of the KLM3's and five each of the 4's and 5's plus washers to suit because that's how they are sold so if anyone needs them and doesn't want to pay the usurious Guzzi price just give me a hoy. Pete

Excellent, didn't know they were generic. As they say, the day you stop learning is the day your arse no longer points to the ground!👍

Ta!👍