pete roper

I've used Penrite pretty much exclusively for thirty years. If your clutch is slipping it's not the choice of oil. There are a host of possible causes but the oil type isn't one of them.

Was there a large washer outboard of the bearing? There should have been. If there wasn't that would of been a contributory factor as well.

For anyone else who needs to remove that bearing if you have an 'Old School' Guzzi shop nearby that has the bearing pullers for the old five speed gearbox the one for the internal needle rollers in that box works admirably for the bevelbox needle bearing on the V11 box.

Just exploring this a bit further. Have you checked the drive shaft trunnions are aligned? Also what movement? Where? Side to side at the wheel? Fore and aft? How is the bevelbox moving? Or what is moving in relation to it?

Quite. Unless they ingest some horrible shite why would they wear out? They're probably the best lubricated thing in a motor!

It's very, very unlikely to be oil pump. Possibly a loose filter or the old filter gasket wasn't removed when the filter was last changed.

Is it making a knocking/clanking noise from the engine when you open the throttle? If so I'm guessing you've run the big ends, especially given the 'Dirty oil' situation. Are you running a sloppage sheet?

All apart from a short series of the 1100 motors produced for the Cali series in 2002-2004 have solid lifters. As for your current problem I would first drop the rocker out on the valve that jumped the pushrod. Chances are it's bent and will just keep repeating the failure until it snaps. If it's straight? Don't bother monkeying about. Just pull the head and barrel and check lifters, lobes and valves/guides. If the lifter has failed so has the cam so you'll have to replace cam, lifters and probably at least one pushrod. Take the heads to a head shop and get them serviced. If it needs a new valve or two? So be it. K-line the guides if they are worn or damaged unless they are loose in the head. If they are replace them.

With the WC motor it's more the fact that the direct action cam drive from the DOHC's dictates that the throttlebodies will be in the valley and the exhausts out the side but of course it also allows for direct downdraught induction meaning far better cylinder fill and less wasted charge. How they ever got the old Hi-Cam to make a genuine 100RWHP I have no real idea? But it does. Witchcraft I reckon, but it has a terrifying thirst due to waste and could never hope to meet €5 emissions targets.

Yup, reversed camshaft.

Replace the airbox. K & N air filters don't and offer an easy way to diminish the life of your engine and offer zero performance advantage. The stock airbox works quite well. When I bought the 'Mighty Scura RC' many years ago the very first modification I did was refitting the stock airbox and both of the owners who have had it since I moved it on, (Chuck and Kidsmoke.) will attest that that bike, which has a fairly radically worked motor, goes like ordure off an earth moving implement!

It was tried in the seventies by an endurance racing team in Europe, a complete disaster, it shed the heads off exhaust valves like confetti. There's a reason the exhausts exit into the airflow. With the race team there was some crackpot theory about getting some supercharging effect from the bell mouths facing forward. With this bit of hubristic, dunderhead engineering even that doesn't fly because it's wearing foam rock strainers! This sort of nonsense seems popular with Germans for some reason.

When the starter draws current the voltage drops. If it goes below critical (10.5?) the program will abort. At least that's the way it seems to work with the W5AM. If it's different with the 15M/RC I'm sure someone will jump in and correct me. The actual interaction of the ecu and any of the Guzzidiag suite of tools is very low in energy demands. It will continue operating quite happily as the actual current draw is low. You can have a battery that s almost completely buggered and it will show 12.5V when it's not doing anything. As soon as you stick a load on it though the voltage will drop to nothing! charging it up probably won't help. Buy a new battery and make sure all the important connections are clean and then try again with a battery charger hooked up to the battery. That way you should have ample amps for the voltage not to drop past the point of criticality when you suddenly impose the big load of trying to start the great fat pig of a thing by pressing the 'Brumm' button.

Whip the tank off and have a look.

Breather hose is the most likely culprit but it could also be the hose to the airbox, a seized ball valve in the breather spigot or the rocker feed delivery hose or bolt. Check the cooler fittings as well and make sure the radiator isn't cracked.

I may be wrong John, I'm old. But, I seem to remember that the bikes were sold as either 'A' or 'C' kitted bikes. In fact I never actually knew of a 'B' kitted bike or indeed a separate 'B' kit being sold. Cogitating on it for a couple of minutes I'm certain there were 'A' kitted RS's because the 'C' kit couldn't be made to work in the US with its pollution regs. One of the RS's I had through was really weird. Even with the help of probably the most experienced Hi-Cam man in Oz we couldn't work out what was wrong. It wasn't *Bad* but it wasn't right. Turned out that a fresh pair of eyes found that one side had an 'A' kit cam and one a 'C' kit. Absolutely typical of the period. Bloody hopeless.

Really? You think? Fair enough, but I wouldn't say they were that special. If you want to hear something outrageously tasty we currently have a 2 valve 1200 Sport in that has the 'Facory' performance pipes on with the dB killers out, it has a map developed by Tony Mowbray and it is absolutely f*cking awesome! Most of you know I'm not a fan of *Loud* bikes but this one has that truly magnificent 'Basso Profundo' note usually only acquired by V11's and VTR's with a full Staintune system! It's aural heaven on a stick!

One thing being overlooked here is that the various bevelboxes are different and most 'Vent' differently. On Loops, Tonti's and the Quota the pinion and its bearings aren't sealed. This means that theoretically the air in the box will vent through the bearings and into the swingarm and thence through the splines of the shaft and universal joint into the UJ housing where any 'Pressure' will simply cause the boot between the swingarm and gearbox to swell a bit. There is also that the extra volume of the swingarm etc. means that the pressure rise is proportionally low. We'll come back to this. On the early Spineframes, Daytonas, Sport 1100's and Centy's what was essentially the same bevelbox was used but due to the shaft not being enclosed the pinion was sealed. On these boxes though the factory never fitted a breather and consequently seal failures due to pressurisation issues are fairly common, not helped by the sealing surface at the pinion being exposed to water, grime and not being rust proofed in any way! When the V11 series arrived they'd had enough time to have a think about it and coupled with changed internal ratios in both gear and bevelbox the sealing mechanism and pinion bearings were redesigned and improved and a breather was added to the bevelbox that was also enlarged to take more oil and greater volume. One of the biggest problems with the V11 series breather set ups is actually on the gearbox where some genius in the design department put it in the centreline of the gearbox directly in line with the spray line from the rear tyre when it's wet! With no hugger or spray protection riding in rain can and does result in the gearbox filling up with water! Later still the CARC bikes have another system where the pinion is sealed but because the entire bevel gear system sits within a reactive bridge with the bevelbox casing as well as the pinion being sealed there is another 'Rubber' boot that seals the front of the box ensuring the interior of the swingarm remains 'Dry'. The CARC bevelboxes have a breather at the front of the bevelbox case above the pinion bearing part of the reactive bridge. It too is prone to water intrusion from wheel spray but, inexplicably, not on all bikes! The only reason I can think of is different spray patterns from tyres with differing sipage! Anyway, a remote breather to replace the shitty little 'Top Hat' breather is commonplace on CARC bikes. I in fact designed and marketed a very neat and unobtrusive system for the CARC early on but, as you would expect from Guzzi owners, they whined and complained that it was 'Too Expensive' so nowadays most people just use a banjo and a length of braided hose run up the swingarm and up near the airbox to allow the box to vent without the risk of water intrusion. Cali 14's, V85's and other Smallblocks all have sealed pinions and breathers. To return briefly to the subject of Quotas, (And others with the early *Unsealed* pinion bearings.) the thing is that although in theory the box should be able to vent through the bearings into the swingarm reality is such that sometimes, for whatever reason, the box will pressurise and the seal/s pop. I've experienced it myself with weeping seals that when you push in the seal hook to extract them you get a hiss of escaping air! Far more than you would expect if the full volume of the swingarm etc was available for expansion. Anyway the 'Why?' Is by the by but I'd think that the reason why the Quota in question has the breather fitted is because it's one of these *Inconvenient* pressure prone boxes. You could always remove it, get the box good and hot and then 'Burp' it and see if it has excess pressure. If it doesn't? Leave it be. If it hisses at you? Reinstall the breather post haste!

A few years back I had three Daytona RS's in the shop at once. Two 'A' kit bikes and one with the full 'C' kit. The 'A' kit bikes were much nicer to ride. The reality is that a V11, any V11, is a much nicer and better bike than any of the early Hi-Cams. They are lovely to look at though.

At not 4K miles it is unlikely it will of had chance to shit itself in a major way. It will require the heads to come off though which on a small tank Stelvio is a PITA because most of the front plastics need removing to get the tank off and the tank needs to come off to allow access to the brackets that bolt the heads to the frame. Then there will be the need to grease the swingarm and shock linkage bearings and it is wise to replace the sump spacer gasket between spacer and block. The advantage of acquiring such a low mileage example though can't be overstated. Basically it is unlikely that it has had the opportunity to be monstered by 'Harry Hometune' so as long as the airbox drain hoses are undamaged and have been kept plugged chances are the throttlebodies will still be both undamaged and unmolested. The Small Tank bikes do have the beefier 50mm forks and it is very important to check that the pinch bolts for the front wheel spindle haven't been overtightened as the castings on the bottom of the legs are crack prone if they are torqued too zealously by a shaved ape. I've owned both a 'Big Tank' 2012 model, that's the one I built the big port, single spark 1400 motor for, and I am currently refurbishing a 2009 'Small Tank' model for sale. Both have their good and bad points but both are excellent motorbikes if mapped correctly and have had the 'Remedial' work done. I'm a Griso Guy so I won't be hanging on to the Stelvio, although it's tempting, but put simply you can't really go wrong with any of the 8V CARC bikes as long as the now well known problems are dealt with, first among them being the flat tappet fiasco! I remain puzzled as to why they never sold in much greater numbers? I think the answer lies in the fact that as well as the dealer network being a joke there were, and still are, few mechanics willing to learn and understand how the W5AM controller worked and as a result there were and remain large numbers of examples running around that have either never had a proper tune up or, alternatively, have been 'Tuned' by someone who doesn't know what they're doing and actively damages them by playing with things they don't understand and shouldn't be touching! The tragedy is there has never been a bike easier to tune than a W5AM Guzzi! But what can you do? Even after they've been out of production for seven years we're still getting them into our workshop 'Freshly Buggered' by 'Tuners'. If the 'Tuner' has a Dyno the results are usually much, much worse!

Can we just clarify. This is a Spineframe? Not a Cali EV?

The CO trim function is really pretty easy to understand. For every increase or decrease in the number the ECU adds, (From memory?) 100 microseconds of pulse width to the injection period. The thing is that it does this as a blanket increase across the map so at idle, when very little fuel is being delivered it makes a considerable difference but at wider throttle openings where fuel delivery is already high the effect is negligible and generally is only noticeable in increased or decreased fuel usage over a period of time. If you are running a bike with lambda input you can screw about with the trim to your hearts content but the moment you disconnect the tool the trim will default to 'Zero' and it will trim to the lambda signal. If you turn the lambda input off in the map you can then adjust the CO trim and save it. Now this isn't my area of expertise and I'm just repeating what I've been taught by the likes of Beetle, Paul and John so if I've got it wrong I'm sure they will descend on me like a pack of furies and tear me an extra arsehole!

The V11 series use the 15M or, if one of the later models that runs a lambda sensor, the 15M-RC. The Guzzidiag programme covers all ECU's it is compatible with but the 'Reader' and 'Writer' programmes are ECU specific.

Yes, enraging isn't it. I've searched high and low but to no avail. The really annoying thing is that the bearing itself is as common as muck! It's the odd sealing system that makes it unique. What is even more enraging is that the same sealing system isn't even very good!

Do you mean the swingarm bearings in the frame?