V11 Engine Hot Rodding advice

[LowRyter]

On 2/19/2019 at 7:11 AM, GuzziMoto said:

Ducati bodywork will do that to you.

I am lucky, the only street Ducati I have to deal with nowadays is the wife's 1100 Monster.

But I have had my share over the years.

Actually the body work fit like a glove and came off easily despite being flimsy.  By comparison, my half naked Suzuki Bandit is much worse in the tupperware dept.

My issue with Supersport is that it feels slow but goes fast.  I think it's a tad overgeared and am going with a smaller front sprocket.  Anyway, it needs a shot of something to liven it up.  It needs  to "feel" as fast at it looks.

[LowRyter]

6 hours ago, Kuni0 said:

Ok, so a bit of an update to the thread.

I talked with Mike Rich about porting and polishing the heads, but unfortunately the turnaround time is too long for my goals. Instead I'll have a friend who's a master motorcycle mechanic and experienced hot-rodder to do the porting. 

I've dropped in a Megacycle 620x9 cam (along with new tappets) and a roper plate. I have the new clutch/ intermediate plates, springs and will be keeping the stock flywheel. At this point, I have everything I need engine wise besides the porting, and just need to go through it and make sure everything is torqued down and replace the engine consumables (rings, gaskets, valve stem seals) 

I also took this opportunity to take off the Ohlins and get them serviced (JpH suspension) and will go back to him for further adjustment when everything is back together. 

r3datom9,

I'm more then willing to trade bikes when everything is back together and explore what riding the north bay has to offer. It'll be interesting to compare the bikes once all is said and done.

I am interested to see the results.  The spineys could use a little more kick in the top end and maybe a little more rev range.

[Kuni0]

Update to this old thread. 

My Rosso Corsa is almost all together now. Engine wise, i went with a megacycle 620x9 camshaft, installed a roper plate, and simply cleaned the piston and cylinder heads and valves (as well as lapping them). Upon inspection of the intake, it seems that someone had done some porting and polishing in a previous life. I've put everything together now basically after much trial and error. Ran into a few issues (stator wires broke apart so I re-soldered it together) and general difficulties of getting the bike together by yourself, but finally it started yesterday! After chasing down an issue that turned out to be a loose ground wire behind the transmission, she started right up! God I miss that sound!

But.... now the clutch doesn't seem to "engage". The clutch lever has no pressure to it, and it doesn't sound like it's engaging at all when the bike is on. The master cylinder was disconnected from the clutch line while I was working on it, but I've bled the entire line through and still no pressure. From what I've read, it seems possible the the clutch pushrod is actually fully engaged and that's why the lever has no pressure to it.

Any thoughts or ideas to try? I'd really like to not drop the motor again if possible to remedy this. I was thinking about opening up the transmission side case (have to anyway) and seeing if I can move the pushrod from there or not. One of the three screws on the slave cylinder is horribly stripped, so taking that off would be a big PITA. Any thoughts are appreciated!

[Lucky Phil]

On 6/14/2019 at 10:29 AM, Kuni0 said:

Update to this old thread. 

My Rosso Corsa is almost all together now. Engine wise, i went with a megacycle 620x9 camshaft, installed a roper plate, and simply cleaned the piston and cylinder heads and valves (as well as lapping them). Upon inspection of the intake, it seems that someone had done some porting and polishing in a previous life. I've put everything together now basically after much trial and error. Ran into a few issues (stator wires broke apart so I re-soldered it together) and general difficulties of getting the bike together by yourself, but finally it started yesterday! After chasing down an issue that turned out to be a loose ground wire behind the transmission, she started right up! God I miss that sound!

But.... now the clutch doesn't seem to "engage". The clutch lever has no pressure to it, and it doesn't sound like it's engaging at all when the bike is on. The master cylinder was disconnected from the clutch line while I was working on it, but I've bled the entire line through and still no pressure. From what I've read, it seems possible the the clutch pushrod is actually fully engaged and that's why the lever has no pressure to it.

Any thoughts or ideas to try? I'd really like to not drop the motor again if possible to remedy this. I was thinking about opening up the transmission side case (have to anyway) and seeing if I can move the pushrod from there or not. One of the three screws on the slave cylinder is horribly stripped, so taking that off would be a big PITA. Any thoughts are appreciated!

Taking off the transmission cover wont get you access to the clutch push rod. Did you reinstall the clutch push rod button in the clutch when you re assembled it?

If you mean the slave cylinder securing screw head is chewed out then you really should fix that by drilling the head off and then removing the other 2 screws ,pulling the slave cylinder and then extracting the remaining stud. If its the thread stripped then you can remove the slave and timesert or helicoil it. Either way you should really do it. It just requires swing arm removal for access which is fairly easy.

 

Ciao

[Kuni0]

Thanks ScuRoo for the message, thought it would be nice to give an update from my project

Everything is back together, and the bike (seems) to be running great. It turns out it was the pushrod button that had fallen out causing me to not have a clutch. As I mentioned in my post, the heads seem to have been ported in a previous life so I didn't need to do that.

All of the modifications and work that's been done to my Le Mans are:

Megacycle 620x9 cam, Roper plate, cleaned the carbon buildup on the pistons/ head and valves (and re-lapped them), ported heads (don't know who though), new rings and gaskets, K&N pods, Mistral headers and crossover, and Staintune exhausts from a Guzzi Daytona. 

I kept the original valves, springs and pushrods, though I would like to find some chrome-moly pushrods at some point. The ECU is stock to my knowledge. It did have a dyno-jet, but I took it off as the engine fumbled between 1.5-3.5k RPM, though I may but it back on and play around at some point.

My goal from the beginning was to give the motor a refresh and add a little more power without sacrificing reliability.

I seem to have done that; it pulls harder and faster then before and is intoxicating to accelerate out of a corner. I haven't had it on a dyno, don't know who (if anyone) in the Bay area has a motorcycle dyno. I've only put about 1000 miles on since the rebuild so long term reliability will remain to be seen, though I think issues might be due to my own meddling rather then something wrong with the parts/ modifications.

I'm very glad it's so easy to work on the Guzzi! For the most part, a decent mechanics tool set can get most of the bike apart, and parts (including the specialty tools) are surprisingly available online. I would just add, make sure ALL bolts are properly tightened! I've run into so many issues with loose/ loosing bolts because I was so exited to have the bike running again.

[Kuni0]

Picture of the Le Mans as she is now

[Kuni0]

Didn't exactly use the right tools all the time, but you use what you got

 

 

[GuzziMoto]

Congrats on getting it back together and running properly.

I do think that one of the cool things about a Guzzi is that you can get more out of it with some basic tried and true mods. It is hard to get the same amount of improvement out of a modern Japanese engine, they are already pushing out most of what they are capable of. But a Guzzi engine isn't nearly as on the edge. So porting, a cam, more compression, better flow in and out, and you can feel the difference pretty clearly.

Anyway, congrats. Enjoy.

[po18guy]

My recent Japanese experience has been with GPz500s/Ninja 500Rs. They were hot-rodded by Kawi with good-sized carbs and reasonable cams, 10-something compression/4-valve heads and ports about as large as can be done. Young fellows are always seeking that big boost - and it just ain't there. 5%, maybe close to 10%  improvement with some free flowing cans, and air filter, a slight mod to the airbox and that is about it. They run about 53-54 HP at the rear wheel on dynos and given their relatively ancient architecture (in the Japanese world) dating to about 1985, combined with a long, whippy crank and thin cases and one soon finds the limits. I added WebCam (the old Webco) 245º cams, as one of my rockers ate the OEM intake cam. So  much for infallible Japanese engineering and manufacture. 

Guzzis strike me as being more like an air-cooled slice of Chevy/Holden V8. Basic mods can net a nice boost, but there is real HP hiding in there if one cares to go in $earch of it. Looking at the airbox on my Ballabio, I see two snorkels poking out of it, but not running quite far enough forward to be entirely out of the heated air. Daydreaming, I see some red silicone car turbo hoses with perhaps short velocity stacks capping them. Probably no real boost, but they might look very cool.

Q for the cognoscenti: Is there an air filter that is a good ompromise of both flow and filtration? Very familiar with K&N, but they tend to flow better than they filter. Uni makes a Guzzi filter, but only for some of the pre-V11s.  

[LowRyter]

po18- there is thread here about airbox mods.  Mainly three teardrops across the top of the box.

[po18guy]

3 minutes ago, LowRyter said:

po18- there is thread here about airbox mods.  Mainly three teardrops across the top of the box.

Cool. Will look it up.

[Rox Lemans]

The best performance mods I've done is the crossover and pipes and the ECU flash. I did the airbox top removal and put the aluminum frame to hold the air filter in on one v11 and airbox on the other. Not a big difference performance wise. But I will admit the sound of the air sucking into the motor sounds pretty sweet. 

 

But the best perfomance upgrade? The ECU. It just unleashes the bike. 

[docc]

1 hour ago, po18guy said:

Cool. Will look it up.

The best airbox investigation has to be that of PhilA from 2006. Bellmouth those intakes, boys&girls!

 

[po18guy]

Might be a bit of showboating, but am checking to see if red silicone turbo hose can be run from the airbox inlets to the cool air above the oil cooler, so as to breathe "not heated" intake air. Oh, and maybe some alloy velocity stacks to cap it all off.

[docc]

4 minutes ago, po18guy said:

Might be a bit of showboating, but am checking to see if red silicone turbo hose can be run from the airbox inlets to the cool air above the oil cooler, so as to breathe "not heated" intake air. Oh, and maybe some alloy velocity stacks to cap it all off.

Fun! Seems some others have done similar. Certainly, drawing the intake air from right above the exhaust side of the cylinder heads makes for rough running sitting in traffic in high ambient temps.

Here is a bit of the fun I had bellmouthing my intakes . . .