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Victory! The first row of bikes to show up were all Guzzis! Then later some other Italian brands showed up. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Kind of Black, silver, red, greenie ++. Cool bikes, and have l mentioned the engines before, YES l have [emoji16]. End of season up here. Cheers Tom. Sent fra min SM-S906B via Tapatalk

Nice to finally meet you fellows, lots of cool machines and interesting people-watching. Thx for posting about the whole affair, maybe GMC will make the next one.

Waiting for line to move.

Funny how in a field of exotica the V11 stands out....especially the greenies! Cheers

Final tally was eight Guzzis. Pictured, then two V7's, a beautiful 3200 mile Breva 750 and a MGX-21. A much better turnout than last year when it was just Dave's and my V11's.

Well, you might have a sweet tooth . . .

OMG . I used to have to listen to this enlightened idiot that used to tell the margarine/submarine lubricant story all the time. He was the only one of us that was "in the know" and we were a bunch of banjo playin' hillbillies .

SamP , please understand we do want you and your bike HAPPY. Giving opinions is easy and giving the correct advice is difficult. After this is finished , you will be able to give a clinic on charging systems and have a great understanding or misunderstanding of electrical components.

Geez I reckon I'd go nuts if I couldn't get out for a ride for months. I'm bad enough after 2 or 3 weeks.... Yep, I'd definitely need some sort of distraction for those winter months if I lived in those areas.

I have no response to that. But I have had the pleasure of attending SSR on two different Hondas (GB 500, ST1100) and a Triumph Tiger 900. Never got the sticker 'till I got MySport 1200.

Mate, wine o clock would be brilliant in your garage! I'd grab a glass, a comfy chair and just enjoy looking at them! Cheers Ps sorry to hear the riding season is over but commiserate with an IPA mate.

We're just all working together, my friend. You are doing a great job reporting back what you find. If we cannot find a bad connection somewhere, the new regulator will, indeed, be suspect as faulty.

Well its in the back of the van so I guess well know more in the coming days. Will give it a good once over and get a few miles on it and see how it goes. Thanks

Yeas ago my Mom bought this one...how many times did I look at that album cover and imagine?

That housekeeping done (y'all carry on with that Texas bid'ness! ) . . . I have to tell this South'n Spine Raid story, lest it fade away . . . Late night in the Tellico Garage, the question of "Why a Guzzi?" came up. One revered SpineRaider spoke up ( I paraphrase, but not entirely!) . . . "I was always a Ducati guy and hated Guzzis ." >hated<. "One day I was at my dealer and walked by a SPOrT 1100 from behind. I squatted down and looked at it from behind. " "It was like your girlfriend bending over in some hot shorts. " Some quick-witted SpineRaider noted he said: YOUR girlfriend, not HIS girlfriend . . . Either way: he's been a Guzzi guy ever since.

Well just because the manufacturer tells you to run a certain grade and sometimes even a particular brand of oil doesn't mean it's the best solution. To start with manufacturers can "align" themselves with oil manufacturers for fiscal reasons and then make their recommendations fit what the oil manufacturers makes at that particular time. There also a whole host of other reasons manufacturers specify a particular oil. So in my BMW powered Supra BMW specify 0W-20 oil. Why? partly because of it's ability to meet emission requirements at the expense of long term engine health. Do I run 0W-20 oil in it? No. I run a 5W-30 oil. BMW also fit the car with a city start/stop system to meet emission specs at the expense of long term engine health. Do I switch that shite off every time I drive the car? You bet your life I do. My previous Focus RS specified a 10W-40 for Australia and a 10W-50 for the USA. Why would you do that for countries with basically the same maximum daily temps in summer and much the same driving conditions. For "other" reasons is why. So manufacturers specify oil for a whole raft of reasons, some of which make sense only to them and also to cover every possible scenario their product will encounter. That's where being educated in the technical stuff and your specific operating needs comes in. If you have some detailed knowledge of engines and oils you can eliminate the political and peripheral rubbish and make an informed choice based on sound knowledge for your application. Add to that the fact that oil specs are changing and evolving all the time and quite rapidly so some bulletin from Guzzi 10 or 12 years ago isn't necessarily worth squat today because oils have evolved a lot in that time. So as an example oils have recently gone from SN+ to SP rated. The SN+ was an interim spec oil to combat DI engines propensity for LSPI failures. It was then replaced by SP which then covered the LSPI issue and in addition gave extra cam chain wear protection so SN+ is now defunct. If you want to run the best oil in your engine then you need to keep up with the oil tech and not outdated requirements from manufacturers that were established for often spurious reason for their benefit not the owners. Remember the engine manufacturer has zero concern for the health of you engine once the warranty period has expired and even less(-0, lol) beyond that. In addition we now have bespoke oils for specific applications from boutique oil suppliers and that adds another dimension to the equation. So the owner has a choice of oil that narrows down to a specific engine configuration and type. These days even brand specific dealers often don't use the oil spec specified by the vehicle manufacturer. It's quite common to look at your billing and see an oil grade other than the vehicle manufacturers requirements. Why? because if the specified oil is something they can't or don't buy "bulk" then they just use whatever they have! I've seen this many times. I'll bet you won't get a 10W-60 in your Guzzi at every Guzzi dealer there is. So Mick I put the manufacturers recommendations on oil in the "for the guidance for the wise and the blind obedience of fools" category. Phil

You didn’t mention the part where I had to run back to the bikes when the line started to move.

SamP , do it like this . Disconnect the wire from the oil pressure switch and the blue wire from the V regulator and use a multimeter to check the continuity of this circuit. This will verify the wiring , bulb (as long as the oil light bulb is good) and the fact you have a complete circuit. No need to disassemble the instrument cluster. I use an analog meter instead of a DVOM.

Yes, the Harland song fits to riding into the sunset. I would really spend a month or so in that area, just to snif the atmosphere and ride the backroads. Once spend a week and a bit in Oxford near Talladega (Tennesee, Alabama?), working with HD. The Griso was popular btw at the HD-staff. Just made a few tours in that area in a rental car. Is that comparable to Kentucky?

Those screws pass through the mounting plate and thread into the plastic housing below (may have brass inserts, don't have it in hand) but you probably feel the plastic housing dropping away, which you can't see.

Pssst. (AGM is still lead-acid)

Hey! I resemble that remark!

Quoting myself here, the output from the reg at idle and when revved is only 3-6 vdc. Took this reading at the butt crimp connector from the red reg output wire to the 10AWG wire to the battery +, with the inline 30A fuse removed. NOT CHARGING. Now, on to troubleshooting the dashboard lights.....

lol those things are not mutually exclusive. Lard, FWIW, was traditionally used to lubricate wooden wheel axles. So eating lubricants isn't off the table. No pun intended but I'll take 'em where I find 'em. Maybe that hovering dictatorial moderator will put these posts in a "Tin Foil Hat" thread.

The oil light concern is to verify the status of the circuit. Disconnect the oil press. switch wire and touch it to a good ground . With the KOEO the light should come on. If it does that is good and the other side of the gen. , oil light & low fuel light circuit is good. You make dann certain you are making good connections when you are testing for B+ and B- on anything. Use a good test light with a conventional bulb. As in NO LED bulb. There is a reason. The battery V has to do with the fact if it is AGM or lead/acid or a gel-cell battery. An AGM fully charged battery has around 12.8v and a lead acid has 12.65v.

History is always fun, funny, and maddening. Lard is good. (From Snopes.com my fav propaganda site) "Crisco wasn’t invented by or for the German Navy, or for the purpose of lubricating submarines. Hydrogenation, the process by which Crisco is made from vegetable oils, was invented by German chemist Wilhelm Normann in 1901. Whether Crisco or similar products were ever used as submarine lubricants remains undetermined." "Wilhelm Normann, eventually sold his patent to Procter & Gamble for use in the food market."

Oil light should come with the ignition, prior to starting and extinguish almost instantly on start-up. At this point, your battery is really flat and should be charged. If it's a Hawker Odyssey at 12.3v, perform a proper "conditioning" . . .

Yesterday I checked and cleaned all the battery connections and they are good. My F3 is now bypassed with a new 10AWG wire - with inline 30A fuse - from battery + to the two red wires at the regulator.

It is sad to see what these bikes sell for. you try to sell and no one wants them even though you poured plenty into them. Not unlike a Mary Kay Cadillac.

I don't think I did it with the album cover. Now if the whipped cream was gone...

friends around here say we have two seasons. Riding season, and building season.

I hate to tell you , you were not the only boy that "did it" with this album. Trivia. Did you know this girl was VERY pregnant at the time of this pic ?

That's actually my first go-to if it's available where I need it. That's in the Bimmer at the moment.

Just as a point of reference I had a customer I sold a new 8V Griso to way back when. It got its first service and its 10,000km service with me and he then moved away and there was nowhere nearby to service it. Now he really is a mechanical neophyte and didn’t to anything to it. He got in contact with me a few years later and asked if he could bring it in for a service, I said yes of course. Anyway when I was working on it I noticed the engine was absolutely filthy on the inside! What I drained out of it was absolutely gross! When he picked it up I asked him when he’d last changed the oil. He looked kind of sheepish and said “Never, I just topped it up when it dropped off the stick!” At that point it had done nearly 90,000 Km!!! Thing is, apart from being filthy everything else that I could check seemed fine! I got the chance to explore further about 30,000 Km later when it dropped a valve and destroyed a head, barrel and piston but whether the guide wear that promoted that was related I have no idea, the 8V’s do use valve guide oil seals after all. The whole engine as in remarkably good shape! The long and the short of it is Guzzis tend to be monstrously over-built and modern oils are very, very good at their job and last extraordinarily well. I have always used Penrite 10/60 in everything I’ve owned built this century and nothing has blown up yet. That seems like a good enough reason not to change. To my mind the 10,000km service interval is very conservative but draining the gribblies out is always good, it’s not particulates generally it’s the crap and byproducts of combustion that need to be got rid of.

Great pics! So nice to see a Goldwing, Norge also comfortable amongst the Spine Raiders!

I own a V11, and like @docc a GB500 too. As for the V7 adding to the "collection", I can attest to this.