pete roper

Occasional visitor here too I believe. Johnny Myers from Cootamundra died on the way home from the Ragged Fringe rally near Gloucester in NSW. I have no details on the crash. Pete

I have to say that from what you have told me your service agent isn't exactly 'On the Ball'. Has he actually plugged the diagnostics in yet or is this more of the "30 weight oil and none of this modern nonsense" shit. As for being throw away in ten years? Greg, I'll betcha I can keep mine going, and if that is 'cos the wreckers are full of deaders so much the better!!!!! :-) Pete

Well that didn't work! from memoory the outer washer is about 3mm thick Are the driveshaft trunnions aligned? Is the needle roller in the RH end of the bevelbox clean and greased and rust free? Pete

So what's what? Pete

That's about right. Maybe a few more than 4 mill nowadays but not many.. About 1.5 mill of them live in Dorkland. It's a stunning place, fantastic roads and scenery. Pete

Dave, since I had to write it up for someone on WG I thought I'd cross post this here for your amusement; Once upon a time there was a man who had an 8V Griso. Despite never having any problems when the time came for him to get the cam recall done he decided it would be wise to do so. At this time a Dutch friend of his was coming to visit and wanted to borrow his bike. Unfortunately, because the cam recall hadn't been done he couldn't lend him a Guzzi so he lent him another bike instead. When the Clog-wog got to Sydney the other bike started blowing TCU fuses. Feeling guilty the man quickly did the cam recall as the bits had arrived ran the bike for a few minutes, flung it in the back of his van and took it up to Sydney where he swapped bikes with the Clog-wog and waved him on his way. A week later the Dyke-Thumber returned and the man thought the top end sounded very noisy so he whipped off the rocker covers to check the tappets, (Something he didn't have time to do before taking the bike to Sydney.) and found that one of the tappet adjuster nuts had jumped ship! Now on the 8V motor the engine is essentially liquid cooled with 'Air Assist', great torrents of oil are delivered to the heads and drain back down to the sump through substantial galleries in the side of the barrels and it was down one of thes galleries that the wretched nut had plunged sumpwards. "Oh Plop!" said the man, (Or words to that effect!) and he fished about down the galleries with a magnet in the vain hope that miraculously the nut could be recovered. Needless to say this was a pointless excersise, the nut was well gone. "Double Plop!" he said, knowing he was now going to have to drop the sump to find the errant nut. So off came the filter and he started undoing all the sump bolts. They all came out fine, except of course one, and that one was up behind the sidestand bracket. That one had obviously got a bit of grit on it or something and it only came out about four turns and jammed. "Tripple Plop! With knobs on!" He exclaimed, knowing that this meant that the comparatively simple job was going to turn into a right Bar Steward! But sometimes the golden eagle sh!ts and you get to stand underneath. The sump did drop a little eeny-weeny bit. enough to be able to peer into the gap. And there, lo and behold, was the nut sitting on top of the oil pick-up! Dextrous fingers grabbed it eagerly and then the sump was bolted back up. The nut was re-installed, the tappets were adjusted and nipped up 'Just a little tighter' than before. new filter and oil were added, starter button pressed and the engine had returned to it's usual raucous cacophony of rattling gears and whining chains but without the noise like a steam-driven jackhammer in the right hand head! Since that time the man in question has covered another 5,000 Km and there seem to have been no ill effects for all of it running around for yonks as a 7 valve motor! Tough these Guzzis! Names have been hidden in this post to prevent embarasment to the innocent and the stupid....... Pete

Thing is most of the people live in the thin strip down the East Coast roughly where the European countries end. The vast majority of them live in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne! Almost the whole area covered by Europe is a hot, dry, miserable desert full of nothing but Emu's, Roo's and lost tourists drinking their own urine! What makes us the 'Lucky Country' is the fact that the bit covered by Spain and the North Atlantic is basically a huge lump of Iron, Copper and Bauxite. The bit covered by the UK and the Republic of Ireland is essentially a big lump of Uranium! The bit covered by Bulgaria and the Black Sea is a massive lump of Coal! Our population is about 22 million of whom a good 2/3rds live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide and rarely leave them. That leaves plenty of space for the rest of us!!!! Pete

Could be the easiest, cheapest, safest thing to do would be buy the bloody gaskets and do the job yourself and not tell the bloke you aren't happy with. Gaskets ain't cheap though. Base is probably 20 quid and head is thirty. Odd thing is that here at least the three different thickness gaskets are all different prices! What's that all about??? Pete

Oh Christ! OK, ask. The head gaskets come in three thicknesses 0.65mm, 0.85mm and 1.05mm. Now if your engine needs say an 0.65mm gasket and a 1.05mm one is fitted it will *probably* not make a huge amount of difference apart from meaning that one cylinder will work a bit harder than the other, there will be a greater chance of detonation on the cylinder with the *wide* squish clearance and it will produce significantly more pollution, most notably oxides of nitrogen. If, on the other hand it has need of a 1.05mm gasket and a 0.65 is fitted there is a chance, albeit slim, that when you thrash it, if there is a bit of rod stretch and crank flex and the clearance is too tight that the piston may contact the head in the squish area. It may not be enough to make a noise, it may not be enough to damage the piston by crushing the top land into the top ring and 'Locking' it but in a very short period of time your sump will fill up with lumps of big end shell and it'll make the 'Dogga-Dogga' noise. Yes, I've found that out the hard way on race motors I was trying to run minimal squish on ! As I've said before MANY, MANY times. I don't think that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the Nuovo 8V. In fact I think it is a MUCH better design than Toddero's engine used in the Daytona, Centauro and MGS-01, (I can hear the hysterical screeching of 'Sacreledge! and 'Burn the Heretic!' from here and see the mob armed with burning brands and pitchforks swarming over the horizon from the direction of Sydney airport as I type! ). Like Toddero's engine though it isn't as stone axe simple and robust as the pushrod donks and it is expected to be worked on by MECHANICS rather than bored 18 ear old army conscripts and members of the Carribinieri. (Q. Why do Carribinieri always hang about in threes? A. One can read, One can write and the third is there to keep an eye on the two intelectuals!). It's not even as if you have to be a rocket scientist or super-dooper-whizz-bang race-type mechanic. I'm certainly not and the number of people I know who actually have the 'Greasy Thumb' can be counted on the fingers of one foot, (Apart from Mike Haven I can think of few people I've met of whom I'm in slack jawed awe.). Guzzi supplies MANUALS, admittedly they aren't the best in the world, they are hard to navigate and in some areas they ARE woefully inadequate but stuff like instructions for checking and setting the squish are there, in black and white, and as long as you can read english at a rate higher than four, three letter words per minute and your lips don't move while you are doing so it SHOULD be easy enough to understand how and if you ARE a mechanic then you should already KNOW the WHY. That's the reason a decent tradesman can charge what he does. Not because he knows HOW to do something, but because he knows WHY he. (Or She.) is doing it. Any bloody idiot can build a motor. Building one that works properly takes a bit more understanding and know-how. One thing I respect you for Dave is that throughout all this you have dissed the company and the way its treated you, you have dissed your treatment by the Pommy importer and their rep but you haven't actually poured ill thought out shit on the machine which makes you at least three branches up the intelectual tree than a lot of the piss poor excuses for human being who've been whining away over at Guzzitech and sending my bloody blood pressure soaring . One way or another we'll sort it eventually. Or you'll move on to something else, which would be sad as I think the 8V Griso is a truly great bike and i'd like you to share the enjoyment I get every time I take mine out for a good thrashing!!!! Pete

Dave, since I did the cam swap I had the issue with the locknut fiasco, (I dunno if you heard about that but it as all my fault and not relevent but I'll repeat it if you'd like a laugh!?) but apart from that it's just been running and running. There is absolutely nothing *special* about my bike and I certainly don't baby it. It gets caned mercilessly on regular basis and if I take it out for a flog at the weekend on some of the better deserted roads around here it is very rare that I come home and the trip recorder shows a maximum speed under 200KPH. I don't bounce it off the rev limiter very often simply because there is no point but it does get a sound thrashing each and every time it goes out. What do I do to it? I use Penrite SIN 10 engine oil, a high quality, fully synthetic 10/70 lubricant produced in Melbourne. The gearbox and CARC get SIN 75 from the same company which is a 75/80 Hypoid blah-blah Synth. I've set the suspension up carefully, (Something I believe may well have a 'Bearing' on CARC damage.) and I put the best petrol in it I can get my hands on. That's it. The sum total of ALL I've done to it since the cam recall. Prior to that I set the TPS and ballanced the TB's and checked everything else out at the first service and now I'm at 18,000-19,000 odd Km I haven't touched any of that again. Every time I plug the Axone in the TPS remains resolutely spot on. My DAsh has a very small amount of misting in it that only shows up if the bike is left parked in the sun for a while and one day I'll take it to bits, dry it and seal it properly but really at the moment i can't be arsed, I like riding it too much! I'd really like to say that I did something *Special* or *Smart* to keep it running so well but I don't. I'd think most owners are far more anal about their bikes than I am about mine but I dunno? I just set it up right in the first place and it seems to have paid off as so far, touch wood, it's been everything I wanted and more. Incidentally you say that your bloke has ordered the head and base gaskets? He does realize that there are three different thicknesses of head gaskets to set the squish height accurately? Without taking the top end apart he won't know which one he needs will he? So I hope he's ordered all three as if the wrong one is used it won't run right and could cause serious damage to the bottom end. Pete

Dave, while at this time of year for you there will likely be no problem if you wre to go touring somewhere in Europe where ambient temps are much higher I would think that there would be an increased risk of problems. (Whoops! It's summer with you innit? Better I wake up before I hit the 'send' button! ) It has to be remembered that the 8V motor is essentially liquid cooled with 'Air Assist', the oil is being asked to work very hard. If its high temperature VR is 40 then it is not going to be able to offer the same film strength at a high temperature as an oil with a high temp VR of 60 or 70. At the end of the day it will probably be fine. The main reason modern vehicles use very *thin* oils is to allow rapid delivery to distant parts of the engine which isn't relevant to the Guzzi donk and to decrease frictional losses and thereby increasing efficiency/fuel ecconomy. As you've observed the 8V is a thirsty beast so that's a bit of a joke! There have to be SOME readily available oils that meet the specifications and regardless of what your agent says I'm afraid that using a full synthetic is, IMHO, not only wise but neccessary as the oil does a LOT of heat transporting, there are very, very high delivery rates to the heads for cooling and the actual roofs of the combustion chambers are quite thin. The heat is carried away by torrents of oil flowwing over them and that oil will be reaching it's thermal limit on occasions. Using a proper, high spec, full synth will offer far greater resistance to carbonization and oil breakdown than even the best mineral oils. It really sounds as if your bloke doesn't understand how the engine is cooled or really how it works. No doubt he and the importer will probably tell you not to believe everything you read on the internet but one has to wonder if they are so lacking in understanding of stuff like this what other fundamentals are missing from their knowledge armoury? Pete

Dunno if you checked on the Illuminati board Dave but apparently Mike is going through the same shit at MPH with a Breva at the moment. Dash replaced with no success so next stop is the ignition lock antenna as that is next in line. Needless to say this isn't available as a separate part! As Todd says there is ZERO information in the manuals about the system so troubleshooting is hard. pete

Awww! Shit. Is it STILL causing you grief??? Haven't they fixed the leak yet??? Jesus! OK. First the leak. I did the cam recall on my bike and did NOT replace the head and base gaskets. I was REALLY careful though that when the cam boxes came off that a.) I had the piston at TDC and b.) I didn't move the crank at all or knock the heads and/or barrels while they were 'Unsecured'. Now not moving anything is unfortunately not listed in the instructions but I would of thought it was pretty obvious that on something with incompressible steel head and bas gaskets that any sort of disturbance is going to be bad news and be asking for the possibility of a leak to develop. Talking to another shop owner in Bega he said that when they had the importers Stelvio demonstrator down for test rides it started leaking and they got up the bloke who had done the replacement for not replacing the gaskets. It is my belief that as long as you are super careful it SHOULDN'T be neccessary, but if one does fail then the only answer is going to be to replace both head and base gaskets. Now while the top end of the 8V is a bit more complicated it really ISN'T a huge job. I know you've had issues with the 'official' bloke near you but surely there must be SOMONE around who has half a clue? Now the immobilizer issue? The thing is the dash won't allow the bike to start if it doesn't recognise the key. In the switch there is an inductive coil that will create an EMF that is sufficient for the microchip in the key to be recognised by the switch and this will send a message to the dash telling it to start. That's my understanding anyway. So there arethree potential problem areas. 1.) The key. Unlikely as neither key works. 2.) The switch may have a faulty inductive coil but you'd expect it to either work or not, not to give an intermittent signal. 3.) The dashboard. Now this would seem to me to be the most likely suspect and if it was in my workshop I'd slap in a warranty claim for a new dash. If that failed I'd slap in a warranty claim for a new lock set. What I can't understand is why your man hasn't simply submitted a warranty claim for the dash? You do it on-line, it takes only a few minutes and it isn't like a failed bearing or something where they can demand that you submit pictures as there is nothing to see. It's throwing up erroor codes for the dash! Piss it off and get a new one! The only way we're going to get Piaggio to start buying better equipment is to make using the cheap shit they use now counter-productive and uneconomical! Now I DO have a spare Griso dashboard, it's off an 850 and seems to have a different part # to the one for the 8V. I can't for the life of me see why they would need a different dash though? Perhaps Todd, Mike or Greg might have some ideas? Thing is that if you want I can send it to you and you could try it and see if it makes the problem go away. You'd probably need to do the 'Code Recovery' thing though as I haven't a clue what its user code is and I don't know if that is *Stored* in the dash or in the ignition switch but I'd guess the dash. I find this all incredibly frustrating. I think the 8V is a superb bike. All the ones I've heard of that are giving problems have a history of being #@$&@#@ about with by idiots who don't know what they're doing and are too proud to ask for help. It shits me to tears! Oh, and finally the oil pressure things. The sender fault may well be genuine, as you know the senders are crap. The pressure fault is probably down to whoever serviced it not filling the filter before it was put on or only partially filling it. Even if it is filled completely though they sometimes chuck up a low pressure error though as it takes a few fractions of seconds to prime the system up after an oil change. If it goes away when the errors are cleared that is almost certainly it. Pete PS. Did a cross-check. Dashes are the same 8V number superceeds earlier one.

You can't re-set it without one of the software options. Pete

At somewhere about 7,500 on the tacho there is a line on the dial. Probably orange or yellow. That is your gear shift indicator. No you don't *have* to take it to there before you change up but pobbling about below 4,000 on a whif of throttle the engine is going to be running most of the time on a rich mixture. Unless traffic is so heavy you can't pick a gear where you can keep the revs between 3 & 1/2 and 4 & 1/2. It's much kinder to the engine in all ways. Pete

when did it last get a decent tune-up? Like Hubert I also need a more comprehensive description of what you call 'Dry Fouling'? Pete

Only available in XXXL because as someone else says. "You have a Tenni because a Niney is too small!" Pete PS. I know nothing of this horrid piece of parasitic bling. Consign it to the dustbin of history where it and it's horrid Piaggio/Market driven promoters deserve to be.!

And Hubert is what? A precious politically correct pillock with no sense of humour? Who would of guessed! Pete PS I corrected your spelling, but you're forgiven

I think that the ones with actual descriptors are saying "Use a a BPR6ES gapped to 0.7mm" The German one probably says "We have invaded Poland many times since the invention of the internal combustion engine and we just stick spark plus in and go. Unfortunately we have yet to get to Moscow before the snow starts!" Pete

ARRRGH! But it's not anything special?? Just standard automotive practice?? There has to be SOMONE in Ireland who can replace a head and base gasket for f@cks sakes??? Pete

And that is really sad but I recognise the sentiment oh-so-well. They need a 'Sporty' styled model to attract those who want one but most importantly they need to stop buying componentry from shitty suppliers and provide the service back-up that is needed. As I have often before said though one of the problems is finding people who have the skills and understanding to perform anything other than oil, filter and tyre changes. Being able to do those three things seems to qualify you as a 'Technician' nowadays in most bike shops...... The sad thing is that the new 8V motor is a lovely thing when set up right and mine has been dead reliable and needed only basic maintenance to keep it sweet. It's still a ditchpump, not a Desmodecci, it shouldn't be too hard to build or fix??? Pete

Very misunderstood bike the Griso. All you have to do is look at the hardware attatched to it and you can see its meant to be as close to a 'Sportsbike' as a Guzzi is capable of being. Thing is because it doesn't make you bend into the 'Dog Shagging a Hockeyball' riding position and isn't enveloped in acres of plastic it is pidgeonholed by retards as a 'Naked' or 'Muscle' bike or someother equally meaningless name. Their loss, not mine If you want to really go hell-for-leather raising the pegs a tad will help but for most spirited road riding I just accept mine are going to grind! Pete

While some of the Sport i's had the straight cut box the big difference was that they had a cush drice in the rear wheel that was missing on the Sport c. This is usually sufficient to protect the gears but if you have any doubts I'd take it out for a looksee anyway. They still have the crappy 3205-ATN9 bearings in. Double check your driveshaft alignment and the UJ trunnions for play as well. Pete

The rocker support/cambox assemblies are retained by the same studs and nuts that go right through the head and barrel and into the block. The bolts that hold the cambox 'Halves' together are something else entirely and will have no effect on gasket sealing. Why this has happened is really a moot point. The fact is that it needs to be fixed and that will require removal of the head and barrel. Make sure the bloke who does it understands that the gaskets come in a variety of thicknesses for accurately setting the squish so he should MEASURE the old ones before ordering. I'd also be very wary of applying much goop to them as the oil feeds both for cooling and lubrication pass up one of the studs that penetrates the gaskets you don't want that gallery getting blocked with muck. Also ensure that the tab plates on the inner rear (?) studd are installed correctly as I believe these have a centering function for the stud in the gallery. Pete