V11 Modifications - Opinions?

[dlaing]

For my money, this sounds, looks, and costs far too much like the infamous Science Project Without End...Judging by my occasional peek at an ECU thread, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy...

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What ever happened to "Trust, but verify"?

PS do you know you can google for ratchethack trust and verify and get to right place to confirm his quote? And dlaing ECU also takes one to the happy place we call the forum.

 

Polebridge, you may have noticed Ratchethack and I do not see eye to eye on things.

He apparently has criticism of FBF and TuneBoy that I believe is unwarranted.

I am not here to win an argument with him, but to make sure you know your options.

If you get Eraldo to give your bike the treatment that he gave the bike in the article and Eraldo is successful, you will have one bitchin' bike!

If the results are not spectacular and you end up with pinging, I would recommend that you purchase TuneBoy or DirectLink so that you adjust the timing map to tune out the pinging.

But my guess is Eraldo will do excellent work.

If you can get him to map the bike with TuneBoy or DirectLink rather than a PCIII, I think you would be even better off. But I imagine that the PCIII is Eraldo's mapping tool of choice.

The PCIII just can't modify the timing to stop pinging but it can enrichen the mixture to slow down the advance of the flame front after ignition. If the flame front is too fast, you get pinging.

The price of enrichening it that much, is fuel consumption, and possibly other things like increased fuel in the motoroil and carbon buildup, but I am not sure of that.

Perhaps that is why Ratchet's friend went to racing fuel rather than buying a PCIII and enrichening the mixture.

Not running an air cooled bike richer than stoichmetric is a bad idea, and in my layman's opinion an even worse idea with high compression pistons.

My bike was dynotuned with tuninglink to a nice rich 13.2/1 fuel ratio and it still pinged with my stock pistons. Only a few of us have had pinging problems with stock pistons.

And for all I know, it may be due to faulty barometric or thermal sensors.

[Guzzirider]

Still waiting for my FBF pistons- I am going down the route of the Moto Euro bike and getting the local tuning shop Hobbsport (who used to own a Guzzi racer) to flow the heads and fit bigger valves.

 

I know that the stock valve sizes are 39.5mm (exhaust) and 46.5mm (intake).

 

The oversize valves that FBF sell are 40mm and 47mm respectively.

 

I am considering buying Raceco oversize valves from Corsa Italiana and just wondered whether any other forum members have fitted bigger valves, and if so, what size?

 

I will probably stick with the FBF sizes but am interested to see what others have done.

 

Will also get the advice of Hobbsport.

 

Cheers

 

Guy

[Guest ratchethack]

What ever happened to "Trust, but verify"?

PS do you know you can google for ratchethack trust and verify and get to right place to confirm his quote?

Look, Dave - I think differences of opinion are healthy to air out in this Forum format, because often valuable learning is the result. I've learned a lot here myself in just this way. But we need to communicate effectively for this to happen.

 

Perhaps some clarification is in order?

 

This is just me, but before I extend the rule-of-thumb, "trust buy verify", I first need to find something worthy of the investment of the effort of verifying that trust. "Trust but verify" doesn't imply that I blindly trust everything before I make the effort to verify! Let's face it - The world is full of time-consuming garbage that isn't worthy of the effort - as well as lots of valuable stuff that has no potential value for me, but to others, it may offer high value. For example, a nice new snowmobile may be the perfect thing for somebody, but as you know, I live where there ain't much snow. I have no interest in snowmobiles, so I'm just not gonna extend any trust OR effort to verify the value!

 

I'm not saying that Tuneboy has no value for anyone, and I don't think I've implied this. On the contrary, I'm sure that it offers value for many. Just as racing tires have value (for racers on race tracks), racing suspension has value (for racers on race tracks), and high compression pistons have value (somewhere, to someone)! One of my points has been that a great deal of the racing tackle that guys strap on their bikes, for example, evidently has little value and is out of place on the road for most riders, myself included - despite the fact that lots of "racing gear" is, and likely will always be SOLD to riders who have no reasonable, legitimate use for it on the road, IMHO. Square peg in a round hole...

 

What I try to do when evaluating a potential mod or accessory for my own bike is analyze and separate the potential value and the trade-offs that seem to so often get overlooked and/or confused, and/or distorted by salesmanship and ignorance. Some of those trade-offs result in the kinds of scenarios where people are surprised after the fact with results that they haven't prepared themselves for. I'm referring to the kinds of trade-offs that evidently made my pal's Sport so unrideable for the PO that after he made all the expensive mods, he evidently didn't ride it hardly at all, and finally lost interest in it completely, and sold it off. IMHO this kind of thing happens far too often. It seems to happen when people don't fully understand up front what they're doing! They're trusting, but not verifying! IMHO it's a bit of an expensive and disappointing trap that I've seen far too many fall into, but that's just me.

 

My point made earler in another thread is that my Guzzi seems to run perfectly with the mods I've done with an off-the-shelf PC III map. By this I mean that it runs very smoothly, without any trace of hesitation or flat spots, pulls strongly right from the bottom on up, and gets decent mileage. Being a self-confessed Road Geez, I have no perceived need to make any improvements on this. I'm not chasing peaks on dyno charts or land speed records. I'm certainly not able to justify (nor would I have any reason to justify) spending many hundreds of dollars and many dozens of hours (at a minimum!) on custom mapping - since I have the expectation based on the experience of many others (including you, Dave!), that any improvements that may come from this would likely be so minute that they couldn't possibly be important to me. Others will have differing views and different objectives, but I'll bet a significant number of Guzzi owners fall into the same category as myself.

 

Ratchethack......apparently has criticism of FBF and TuneBoy that I believe is unwarranted.

I have no criticism whatsoever of Tuneboy (see above). I'd much rather be riding than going blind, juggling huge fields of cells at the keyboard, but that's just me.

 

As far as criticism of FBF, the only really negative comment I had directed at FBF was Eraldo's "blatantly unsubstantiated" claim (see post #8) that he can get an additional 7-8 bhp out of the bike in question by going to pod air filters. That, and his "half-baked" IMHO comments on rear suspension. Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that at the time he was quoted as saying this, he had evidently not actually achieved any such gains in bhp with pods whatsoever! That's exactly the point! Sure it was a long time ago - at the time of the article, he said, "We're working on that as we speak." IMHO, he never should have made such an irresponsible claim, not having actually achieved it first, his depth of experience with other marques and expectations based on this experience notwithstanding! Putting this kind of claim out ahead of the proof would seem to be a bit of a credibility killer, particularly in his business, wouldn't it? As I pointed out, the experience of those with extensive dyno hours on the V-11 would indicate that Eraldo was significantly out of line with his claim. If you consider my criticism of Eraldo here unwarranted, we'll certainly differ on this point.

 

I have no problem with FBF products at all, in fact I have FBF oval carbon mufflers on my own bike and I think they're the dog's danglies!

 

I imagine that the PCIII is Eraldo's mapping tool of choice.

The PCIII just can't modify the timing to stop pinging but it can enrichen the mixture to slow down the advance of the flame front after ignition. If the flame front is too fast, you get pinging.

The price of enrichening it that much, is fuel consumption, and possibly other things like increased fuel in the motoroil and carbon buildup, but I am not sure of that.

Perhaps that is why Ratchet's friend went to racing fuel rather than buying a PCIII and enrichening the mixture.

I'm not entirely sure of what you're saying here by imagining what Eraldo's mapping tool of choice is, Dave. If you read my posts above, you'll note that I clearly stated that my pal with the 11:1 FBF pistons has a PC III installed (see post #13), and as I noted in my last post, his bike neither pings with race fuel, nor is the map evidently set lean OR rich.

 

My pal has evaluated the "trade-offs" of 11:1 CR pistons, and, like the low clip-ons and 180 rear tire, has decided they aren't a good fit for him. He's discovered with some painful realization that there's NO race gas available near the mountains where he likes to ride. It's a considerable limitation for him. In fact, after living with it for awhile, he's found that the down-side trade-offs of the 11:1 pistons are so negative for his purposes that he's motivated enough to spend time and money to get back to stock pistons. So what's the problem?

 

BAA, TJM, & YMMV

[dlaing]

I'm not entirely sure of what you're saying here by imagining what Eraldo's mapping tool of choice is, Dave.  If you read my posts above, you'll note that I clearly stated that my pal with the 11:1 FBF pistons has a PC III installed (see post #13), and as I noted in my last post, his bike neither pings with race fuel, nor is the map evidently set lean OR rich.

 

My pal has evaluated the "trade-offs" of 11:1 CR pistons, and, like the low clip-ons and 180 rear tire, has decided they aren't a good fit for him.  He's discovered with some painful realization that there's NO race gas available near the mountains where he likes to ride.  It's a considerable limitation for him.  In fact, after living with it for awhile, he's found that the down-side trade-offs of the 11:1 pistons are so negative for his purposes that he's motivated enough to spend time and money to get back to stock pistons.  So what's the problem?

 

BAA, TJM, & YMMV

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Thanks for the clarification.

Personally from the evidence in that article, I would not slam Eraldo the way you did.

The reasons why:

1)It was a journalist's quote, and we know how accurate journalists can be.

2)We don't know if the HP improvement was above the stock box or the open box.

3)The quote probably occured before Todd Eagan or Doug Lofgren had dyno evidence that pods won't produce as much power as an open airbox.

4)We don't know if Eraldo, may also have been testing different intake length, which theoretically could change Doug and Todd's results.

5)We don't know how big of pods Eraldo was thinking of using.

6)We don't know if changing the cylinder offset in the ECU might greatly improve the pods dyno numbers.

7)We don't know if Eraldo had had experience with other Guzzis getting that large of an improvement from pods.

And sorry I missed that he has a PCIII. I thought I read that he did and I lazilly used the search page, but turned up nothing....my mistake.

So, the problem is that he should be able to fix the pinging on 91 Octane(I assume that it is pinging with 91????) just by enrichening the mixture.

You probably would not trust me to do it, but I'll bet Todd could have the pinging tuned out in under an hour, without overly enrichening it.

I believe that using TuneBoy's ability to remap the timing is the better way, but adding fuel works too.

If he wants to replace the pistons, that is also a solution, but going that route kind of boggles my mind.

Another solution might be to add a second or a thicker head gasket.

Perhaps we need a poll to determine what most would do.

(meanwhile readers are just rolling their eyes as we argue)

[guzziownr]

Just a word about Mike Rich and those Mr. Softy Valve stems. My 2000 Jackal was running perfectly at 25k (miles that is) when I pulled the heads to have the ports matched and the valves looked at.

 

Mike Rich used to be out on Long Island New York so I drove out to drop off my heads. Mike removed all four valves as I stood there and used a micrometer on them. All the valves were worn with the exhaust valves showing "significant" wear. I think he could sense that the numbers he rattled off were not meaningful to me so he dropped the exhaust valve back into its guide and held it up to the light to show me. It was so worn I saw a crescent moon of light passing between the guide and the stem.

 

2000 Jackal valves different from 2000 V11 Sport? Can't say...

 

I just hope my '04 Sport shows more durable metallurgy.

 

DW

 

Valve adjustment article

[mdude]

tuning without spending is all about PHP (Perceived Horse Power), just by making bikes more noisy the PHP rating will increase with at least 26% (german engineers have studied this at length, so has HDs marketing department).

I've met young owners of Opel Corsas with in excess of 800 PHPs in their horrid little cars.

 

I wouldnt doubt at all that Eraldo might squeeze 8 PHPs more out of the V11 by adding trumpets, pods or whatever. Because it adds noize.

 

High comp pistons on the other hand makes sense, cause it'll cost you and its difficult to execute.

 

Nothing wrong with PHP, though. Titaniums race cans and ECU added at least 30 PHPs to my bike. The word RACE alone accounted for 20 of those PHPs.

 

Does anyone make sense of this? need coffee....

[Guest Nogbad]

Does anyone make sense of this? need coffee....

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I understand completely. Who cares about BHP when you can have PHP; why do you think my Buell has a "race" kit! It's worth about 6 BHP and about 60 PHP!!

[docc]

I modded the silencer on my Honda 500. It was so quiet you could hear the piston going up and down at idle.

 

"PHP" went from 30 to 40 while BHP probably went from 30 to 27.

[Guest ratchethack]

Thanks for the clarification.

Personally from the evidence in that article, I would not slam Eraldo the way you did.

The reasons why:

1)It was a journalist's quote, and we know how accurate journalists can be.

2)We don't know if the HP improvement was above the stock box or the open box.

3)The quote probably occured before Todd Eagan or Doug Lofgren had dyno evidence that pods won't produce as much power as an open airbox.

4)We don't know if Eraldo, may also have been testing different intake length, which theoretically could change Doug and Todd's results.

5)We don't know how big of pods Eraldo was thinking of using.

6)We don't know if changing the cylinder offset in the ECU might greatly improve the pods dyno numbers.

7)We don't know if Eraldo had had experience with other Guzzis getting that large of an improvement from pods.

Wow, Dave! – that’s quite a list of reasons not to slam Eraldo for his blatantly unsubstantiated claim. In fact, your reasons above could also possibly explain another of Eraldo’s claims in the article:

 

“If a customer asked us for 140 horsepower? No problem.”

 

I wonder what some of our racing-type dyno-tuners might think about that one?

 

Barring specific evidence of a published retraction, a denial by the misquoted, or maybe even a lawsuit over a misquote, most readers of the article in question would no doubt tend to assume that what generally appears in these kinds of Moto-Journal articles might at least have some kind of basis in reality in terms of what was actually said - at least when the interviewee is directly quoted. But since you evidently don't make that assumption here, maybe you have some “inside” knowledge that you haven’t yet shared? Industrial espionage, or some other flavor of diabolical skullduggery?

 

But as long as y'er conducting spectacular stretches of your imagination in support of Eraldo here, Dave, why not add some more reasons not to slam Eraldo’s claims that continue right in line with your reasons above:

 

8) We don’t know if the journalist who interviewed Eraldo and quoted him directly was smoking crack at the time of the interview.

9) We don’t know if the journalist had the knife of a terrorist at his throat when he submitted his article.

10) We don’t know if Eraldo was thinking of adding supercharging or turbocharging along with separate filters when he said, "I can gain another 7 or 8 HP by fitting separate filters to the throttle bodies".

11) We don’t know if Eraldo himself was smoking crack at the time of the interview.

12) We don’t know if Eraldo himself had the knife of a terrorist at his throat at the time of the interview.

13) The quote probably occurred before (fill in the blank – insert anything at all here).

14) The quote probably occurred after (fill in the blank – insert anything at all here).

15) We don’t know if Eraldo may have been testing solid fuel rocket boosters (though I’m even harder-pressed to comprehend how anything Eraldo might have been testing would “theoretically change” Doug and Todd’s results?)

16) We don’t know if Eraldo may have been thinking about the bhp output of the V-11 motor on a considerably more massive planet than earth – say a planet that would maybe provide a 40% oxygen atmosphere at maybe double or triple ambient sea-level pressure here on earth. To boldly go where no man has gone before - to the stars and beyond! 140 bhp, here we come!

17) We don’t know if Eraldo may have been thinking of substituting an entirely different motor – or even an entirely different motorcycle.

18) We don’t know if Eraldo had had experience with the Price of Tea in China, K&N filters, or Anthropogenic Forcing Factors of Global Warming.

 

[dlaing]

“If a customer asked us for 140 horsepower? No problem.”

 

79403[/snapback]

All he has to do is drop a Dynotec Guzzi engine in the chassis.

[Guest ratchethack]

All he has to do is drop a Dynotec Guzzi engine in the chassis.

That's the ticket!

 

Looks like reason not to slam Eraldo #17 above must've been exactly what he was thinking, then!

[PEPPERONI BROS.]

Call me Fat, Dumb & Happy! My slime green sport has only bored out muffler ends [with 3/4 of the steel wool removed], 7w fork oil, Graham from NZ suspension settings, pings lightly only on rare occasion, will get 40 mpg on a good day, and has all the power that this old fart can use on the street, I like it!!! I do keep an extra tranny spring in the toolkit, though. Tom

[dlaing]

Thanks for the clarification.

Personally from the evidence in that article, I would not slam Eraldo the way you did.

The reasons why:

1)It was a journalist's quote, and we know how accurate journalists can be.

2)We don't know if the HP improvement was above the stock box or the open box.

3)The quote probably occured before Todd Eagan or Doug Lofgren had dyno evidence that pods won't produce as much power as an open airbox.

4)We don't know if Eraldo, may also have been testing different intake length, which theoretically could change Doug and Todd's results.

5)We don't know how big of pods Eraldo was thinking of using.

6)We don't know if changing the cylinder offset in the ECU might greatly improve the pods dyno numbers.

7)We don't know if Eraldo had had experience with other Guzzis getting that large of an improvement from pods.

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Your reasons 8 through whatever are absurd.

my reasons 1 through 7 are grounds for doubt on convicting the man.

1) my limited experience with friends who have been quoted in newspapers is that the journalist almost always gets something wrong. Usually it is something petty.

This clearly is not probing journalism. The author is writing with the enthusiasm of a seven year old in a candy store with twenty bucks to spend.

2) My money is on the more reasonable.

3) Counter claims of no increase in power from pods need substatiation, too.

In Doug Lofgren's article, the evidence that the pods do not increase power is not proven because he is comparing two different bikes with two sets of modications.

Also he does not mention intake length or pod size.

In Todd's claim, he does not mention details, but I have not yet refered to his claim about pods as being blatantly unsubstantiated, although logically I could do it until he substantiated the claim. It would just be rude to describe his claim that way.

4)Intake length, unlike turbo-charging, is key to making pods work.

Other things are also key, like individual cylinder mapping and pod size.

5)size matters

6)I'd like to ask Derek Capito about his experience with making Pods work.

7)The purpose of that article was not to substantiate Eraldo's claims.

Eraldo has not been given the opportunity to substantiate those claims.

 

Funny, I just read what I wrote on this topic a couple years ago

http://www.v11lemans.com/forums/index.php?...opic=1284&st=30 post #33:

"Eraldo alledgedly claimed that using separate filters on the throttle bodies add an additional 7 or 8 HP.... I doubt it. I suspect that the 7 or 8 HP gain Eraldo was refering to is a gain over an unmodified airbox, and the article's author was mistaken."

Notice I don't call Eraldo's claim blatantly unsubstantiated and I use the word allegedly (although I misspell it) because I know that journalist are not good at the details that we cherish.

[dlaing]

(al_roethlisberger @ May 30 2003, 10:38 AM)

I'll be very interested to hear FBF's testing with pods on their project bike since they market an airbox lid eliminator, and it has seemed to work out well for them and others up to now.

And then Victor from FBF(Ferracci), aka ragin'pitbull said,

First they sell us their airbox kit, then convince us that their pods are better??

 

Even if they have dyno runs with and without the pods it won't be definitive because with the pods you're not in a real world environment. The pods are just drawing from an even larger still air mass (the room) than with the airbox installed. Of course it'll make more power on the dyno that way...

Unless FBF runs their pod kit on a dyno in a wind tunnel we'll never know.

Ya know what I mean??

 

I'm not saying it's bad or wrong or any such thing to run pod filters. I'm just saying that dyno runs are an artificial environment and just because a computer says your fueling is correct on a dyno in a room doesn't neccesarily mean it'll be correct in the real world.

[Anthro]

is all about PHP (Perceived Horse Power), just by making bikes more noisy the PHP rating will increase with at least 26%

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3 weeks ago I was at MPH and since one of my mufflers was being replaced I purchased the H pipe getting rid of the center muffler on the Cali...

 

The logics should point to a decrease of efficiency since the bike was tunned with the center muffler on, and 'liberated' w/o re-tunning, .... but It sounds soo great that now I feel as if I have more power at my disposal. Moreover, it seems that this type of modifications would decrease the low and middle range performace in trade of a bit more on top... but it sounds soo great that I feel as if I have more power around 3-4k rpm ...

 

Who knows...

 

The truth, it may not make a huge difference having around 74 HP (74 is the spec for the '03 Cali tunned V twin 1064cc), but now I have a 'real' increase in PHP, the fun HP...

 

Great postings, great reality check for me... thanks

 

(I may add Remus slip ons on the Cali just to see how it looks... old Tonti-Lemans style but with the fat Cali gastank... I am sure I'll get more Fun HP or PHP)

 

Anthro