pete roper

That was a bit cruel. Posting that without a safety warning for eye trauma! And in case anyone is wondering I was neither drunk, nor have I had a stroke. I always look like that......

Do lots of research on the CARC models. Once sorted they are pretty much bulletproof but they do have a couple of Achilles heels you need to be aware of. Pay particular attention to the throttlebodies before you make your purchase and learn what to look out for that will give the game away is they have been messed around with.

It's probably related to the catalytic converter. My Mana has very similar discolouration, it doesn't affect performance, it's just a bit unsightly.

It's worth remembering that the Quota was, and always will be, an orphan. It uses a whole load of stuff that is both weird and nowadays unobtanium to boot. The strange single throttlebody. The now impossible to buy TPS. The weird one model only gear ratios. Impossible to find bodywork. Crack prone wheel rims. Oddball forks and brakes. The list is almost endless. I'd rather set fire to my scrotum than own a Quota! Get a late model Stelvio instead. They're ten times the bike. With the 'Variable Distribution' mentioned on the V85? This has been discussed elsewhere and general consensus is that it isn't actually variable valve timing but the incorporation of knock sensors to allow for super-lean €5 fueling.

Decided yesterday that I'm pulling the pin. As of 21st of Feb this year I'll be handing off Motomoda, the company I've been running for 30+ years to Michael, my offsider. He's spent the last five years absorbing Guzzi knowledge and is more than up to speed on everything built this millenium. Most of our work in the last fifteen years has been V11 and CARC bike related and that will likely continue, although it'll be his business to do with as he chooses. Im 67 in February, I don't have the time or the strength to learn another whole generation of bikes and my health has been declining rapidly. I have no desire to die in harness as it were. I'll still be around as Michael can't ride or move the bikes around but the roles will be reversed. He's the boss and I'll just be the hired help! Please patronise him for parts and service. He knows his shit and will need customers and your support to keep the wheels turning. Cheers guys. Pete

Looks like a V11 Cali motor and forks. You can see the alternator cover at the front of the engine. The original Loops had a generator in the valley. I'm surprised the alt cover doesn't bash on the front mudguard as I'm told by others who have gone down the same path that this is an issue unless the front mudguard is modified but have no first hand experience. Front brakes look pretty fancy. Are they six potters?

I see your Jack Brabham and raise you a Stirling Moss

The reason I went to stainless in 2mm is because thinner alloy would fatigue and crack. You could find chunks in the sump! Not good. The 2mm option worked withou issue in most cases but 1.5 might be better and I reckon it should be strong enough. It is a good idea to make the bolt holes slightly larger than 6mm simply to allow for inaccuracy in the cutting.

Ah yes, the March of the (Noisy) morons! Performance gain? Zilch. Annoyance factor for people who hate motorbikes? Off the scale. Fatigue inducement factor? Probably an 8 out of 10.

I believe that the Scura owned by myself and subsequently Chuck which has now been passed on to another person had Mike Rich pistons. It is certainly a beast but the pistons were only part of a raft of modifications to it so I really have no idea exactly how much influence they had on its blistering performance. Certainly if I was going to go to the trouble of installing them I'd probably combine it with other work and at 80+,000 kms it could probably do with a top end freshen up as has been suggested. Chances are it will need remapping to get the best out of any mods.

Both V11's and CARC bikes are murder on their clutch fluid. I have no idea why for sure but looking at the broken spring in your pic I'd think water intrusion has to be part of it. Bottom line is that it is vital that the fluid be changed on a yearly/10,000km basis if problems wish to be avoided. On the CARC series bikes this is a breeze because the slave cylinder has a remote breather on the end of a hose under the seat. With the V11's of course you have the stupid nipple on the slave cylinder itself! The obvious answer to this is to make up a hose for the bleed side with a nipple on the end and run it up under the seat like the later bikes thus rendering the pain in the arse bleed a non issue!

Oh, they have a couple of brand new ones too. https://tlm.nl/moto-guzzi-triumph/011144000000-inlaatkelk-v11-uit-produktie

Oooh. Lookee! https://tlm.nl/moto-guzzi-triumph/us-01114400-a-used-inlaatkelk-v11-1100-sport-a Two in stock. Get 'em while they're hot!

Does it look like it has been cut/chopped/modified in any way? If not I'd think it's probably the original part. I can't remember exactly how they seal to the box. Usually it's some sort of lipped flange but if push comes to shove you could simply install the box and then seal around them with silastic. Not ideal but a zillion times better than pods.

If there are more than a couple send them to one address and get them distributed locally. If nobody else can be arsed send 'em to me and I'll sort and send 'em out.

I have no idea where to put this as it's not my bike but it might be of interest to someone here. It's a bit of a long story so I'll C&P another post I made about it elsewhere. The gist of the matter though is that my *friend* Victor Matei in North Carolina has died, quite suddenly, from Pancreatic cancer. From diagnosis to death was no more than three months, but that is by the by. His brother is over from Romania where Vic hailed from and is sorting out his estate which includes two Stelvios. Basic explanation below but if anyone is interested PM me. As far as I can make out his brother is looking for $4.5K but I expect that would be negotiable. For two Stelvios, one running and one in substantial pieces with an engine that has all the parts for a partially completed rebuild it sounds like a bargain to me. Both Stelvios are the same, big tank NTX's with luggage, just from different years.

It will be like starting with a virtually new bike. It will need the usual CARC bike stuff, swingarm bearings and shock linkages greased, check the drain hoses from the airbox are intact and plugged, sump spacer gasket replacing, (Optional but recommended.) and a full service and tune by someone who knows what they are doing. Apart from that. Press the button and watch the horizon come towards you. Don't buy 'Tuning' shit from charlatans and you'll be fine

How about "Stick this up yer arse you thieving Pommy scumbags!" Works for me.

I'm still around. I'm more than happy for others to manufacture plates to my design. What shits me is when I'm not given credit for the design and people pocket all the profit. By all means make a few bucks to cover your time and effort but if selling them to people add enough to the cost to make a donation to MSF. I don't think that's too much to ask? Simply stealing someone else's work without any by-your-leave like the pricks in Huddersfield did and selling it without any attribution or charitable donation shits me to tears but as I've said before, every morning I wake up in Bungendore. They wake up in f*cking Huddersfield! That fills me with great joy!

There has been an awful lot of bollocks spouted about the V7 Sport over the years. Anyone without blinkers on who has ridden one knows that. The 850 LeMans is a much better machine by orders of magnitude. Over the years I've worked on several, usually ones imported from the US that needed a fair bit of work to get them even remotely rideable. A lot of the owners simply couldn't believe after the hype what a slow, uninspiring and generally weak motorbike they are! 750cc, small valve heads, weedy 30mm VHB carbs. Bleargh! Sure they look pretty but that's as far as it goes.

To be honest I don't think there is an awful lot of point in trying to increase the performance of the V11 donk. It was the final iteration of the single spark pushrod motor, it used the same profile cam as the earlier 'Production Racers' which are very similar if not identical to the B10 or 'K' cam profile. It's warmed up about as much as it can be without beginning to compromise reliability and in reality a V11 never was, and certainly isn't any more, a 'Contemporary Sports Bike'. Oh there are some 'Hot' V11's out there. The 'Mighty Scura' I bought from a bloke here, then sold to Chuck and it has now passed on to another owner here, is a stupidly 'Big' engined motorbike but it has a whole raft of modifications including pistons, a lot of headwork, maybe a cam, I'm not sure? Anyway that thing is a beast, but it's the sum of its parts not the result of a simple drop-in cam. You also need to consider that if you change the breathing of the motor you will need to alter the fueling. While this is now possible a lot easier and more accurately now the mapping is an open book so you no longer have to depend on crude devices like Power Commanders it will still require considerable work, and I'd be extremely wary of any map supplied to be used in conjunction with the cam change because such things are usually a crude 'One size fits all' solution and often just involve flinging a whole load more fuel everywhere just 'Because'. Hopeless. A correctly tuned and mapped V11 is a lovely thing. Any performance gains you can achieve, even with something as radical as the aforementioned 'Mighty Scura' are really pretty much academic. Sure, if you want to pursue that rabbit hole by all means do, but a cam alone won't do a lot and it's very easy to start haemorrhaging money like there's no tomorrow if you do. Believe me. I've done it!

Yup, they kept selling them until '17 and stated that as year of manufacture but I believe they were simply 'New old stock' from Italy. When I was at the factory in 2016 the only big block motors sitting around in crates, (I think by then all component build work was being done elsewhere, probably Noale and the finished components shipped to Mandello for the final assembly.) were Cali 1400's and Griso. They may of still been doing some smallblock building but I saw no evidence of it I can remember. Thing is this was, even then, not unprecedented. None of the 8V 1200 Sports were ever produced with the Roller Tappet top end. Now in markets they were sold in they continued to be sold and plated as a current model year bike right up until 2015 but all other models swapped from flat tappets in early to mid 2012. Late model, post 2011, Sports had all the changes to the motor that the last, pre roller, engines in other models had. Just small stuff like the rockers were re-designed and, from memory, that is the time the breather plate sealing system was changed for just two examples but they all still had flat tappets which suggests to me they were all manufactured prior to the swap to the roller top end. By then the factory knew that all flat tappet top ends would fail and as soon as they had spare production capacity after the initial sales spurt of the launch of the Cali 14 they started using the roller top end in everything else. Why not the Sport? The only logical explanation I can see is that by then the Sport was an exhausted product but rather than modifying them they decided, probably because they weren't sold in the heavily litigious United States, to just push them out the door in other markets to mug punters and let them wear the consequences.

The Big Blocks with the history that stretches back to 1967 are no more. I'm not certain when the last 1400's were built? I'd think 2018/19 at a guess. The CARC series ceased all production in 2016 but all models other than the Griso I think stopped in 2014 as none of the other models were built using the Cali 1400 sump which the Griso adopted in 2015. The truth of the matter is that the 'Nuovo Hi Cam' in both 1200 and 1400 form was never going to be able to meet €5. I love the motor but I'll be the first one to tell you that it is inefficient, thirsty and dirty! It's side draft porting and long cam overlap mean that cylinder fill is compromised in a large part of the rev range and pipe harmonics are crucial to performance, (Some of you may be familiar with my carpet-chewing, spittle-flecked ranting about the unsuitability of 'Shorty' exhausts put on Griso's for styling purposes!). Even at the optimal point there is still a considerable loss of unused incoming charge that, due to the head design, simply gallops across the top of the piston and exits the exhaust valves rather that filling the cylinder and producing work. That means fuel economy is shit and those hydrocarbons are wasted just dirtying up the environment. Even with air injection as used on the last of the 1400's they were a dirty thing, made worse by people putting loud, unbaffled pipes without Catalytic converters on them so they sounded like a shipping container full of farting elephants! No, the Big Blocks are gone and I reckon the Smallblocks won't be far behind. Thing is neither will I so it doesn't worry me unduly and within twenty years internal combustion, at least of fossil fuels, will have been consigned to the dustbin of history anyway! And good riddance! Anybody who is an 'Enthusiast' will still be able to get fuel for their old vehicles but as a day to day option they simply won't exist. That's fine, people will have newer and different vehicles and toys. I am always amazed though by how far things have come in my lifetime as far as vehicular propulsion has gone. If you'd told me as the spotty kid on his first moped that when I retired I'd be riding a motorbike that effortlessly made twice the horsepower of my dads car from an engine only two thirds the size I would of looked at you as if you were barmy!

A week or so ago someone on WG linked up a YouTube vid of some 24 carat dunce who decided to film himself riding from Denver to Colorado Springs on his Gixxer. T-shirt and tennis shoes + helmet. I looked up how far that was on Giggle Maps. The trip took him 20 minutes or so I think. Hopefully his distinctively painted bike could be identified and some things will happen to him. It was f*cking insane.

Thank you sir.