Guzzimax

Hello Tom, my Greenie has a small plate & a tail tidy. The previous owner fitted it, and TBH I quite like smaller plates as the standard regulation size UK motorcycle plate seems huge, basically the same size that is fitted to a bus! and many folk over here do fit smaller (non conforming) small plates to many bikes. The police usually turn a “blind eye” to small plates unless they are crazily small. My Griso and MT01 also have small plates that aren’t strictly absolutely street legal. My silver & grape ape V11’s have standard plates that seem huge for bikes and are basically bus sized !

No jesting, simply quoted what the folk at Mandello del Lario published in their manufacturers handbook. Whether or not they were jesting back then I cannot possibly know However if they were jesting in the past with the V11 / Griso stats who’s to say that they are still continuing the jesting with their claims for the V100

3 x V11 Sports. 2 red frames, one black. All in hibernation in the garage, I hate winter 🥶

94NM of torque from our old school, air cooled, 2V heads V11s 108NM from my old school air cooled, 4v heads Griso 1200 I’m confident that my old school Guzzi’s will have no issue in keeping up with a V100, however as I fast approach my 7th decade I’m not sure I’m up to it and I’m a mere sprog (youngster) compared to most in my Guzzi club. Most of us are north of 60. Heck I was riding a CX500 over 40 years ago and my then girlfriend had a V50 I’m not yet ready to downsize from a V11 to a Honda cub, but the years are passing by too fast

Last year I replaced the intake boots on both my 1999 Silver V11 & 2003 “grape ape” V11. I noticed deep hairline cracking in the rubber boots and didn’t want the cracks progressing and causing air leaks so fitted new boots interesting point about the Ohlins steering damper. I’ll check my Rosso Corsa to see if it’s a Bitubo or Ohlins

Another fabulous red framed black V11. I cannot recall seeing any black V11s here in the UK, ever. Only Greenies & the occasional silver. Don’t understand why, a black V11 has tremendous presence, it’s a great colour for large block sport Guzzi’s. Apologies for a gratuitous pic of my Griso

Well it’s the middle of winter, can’t get out to ride, I’ve consumed too many pies & too much beer over the festive season, and by mid-March when I usually start riding again, all my gear will have shrunk over the winter At the NEC bike show in December I found this machine. It makes a V11 feel as compact as a FS1E

They look like stock mirrors to me. TBH I’ve never found Guzzi hand grip vibration to be too intrusive. After riding my MT01 Yamahammer any distance, climbing aboard a V11 feels smooth in comparison. It’s all relative. I’d personally wait until Spring when you can get some miles in, before deciding if the handgrip vibes are too intrusive and a change of bar ends / mirrors are required My 1999 Silver Sport has stock mirrors, they have a glossy (not Matt) finish

The Garner era Commando 961s were little changed from the original Kenny Dreer design (Norton Motorcycles Oregon). The engine is a 270 deg crank pushrod parallel twin with a balancer shaft and a dry sump The problem is that there was never the budget to properly engineer the power train, and the Garner era bikes are dogged with various quality & reliability problems. A friend of my son used to work for Norton a few years ago, and I have the benefit of first-hand inside knowledge of some of the fundamental technical problems that those 961s suffer from. Unless you want one as an ornament never to ride, I’d never recommend buying a Garner era Commando. However a properly re-engineered Commando with its design and QA problems solved would be a different story. There would be a market for a retro air cooled parallel twin carrying the legendary Norton name, that had been re-engineered to be reliable, and backed up by a company with the financial resource to stand behind their product

I went to the show on 12 December, had a good discussion with the team on the Norton stand. They will initially build a batch of 28 Commando 961’s to fulfil outstanding orders from the Garner era. Following that batch they advised that any future limited production would depend upon customer interest. I added my name to their list. I don’t know how they will resolve the Euro emissions compliance issue. The Garner era bikes were Euro 4 compliant, but it’s a low output motor already equipped with a 3 way cat, so maybe they could meet Euro 5 with some tweaking of the ECU. They explained about the QA & production engineering improvements that they have made since TVS acquired the company. I for one hope that TVS invests in Norton for the long term. The Garner company was chronically under capitalised & poorly managed

There’s two more hidden under covers behind the silver & the grape ape, plus the MT01. I’m living the dream😇

Living the dream, apart from grovelling around on the cold garage floor, as there’s no space for a bike lift at the moment

Only used to tap a blade into the gasket to loosen the pan, honest 😇😇 the sump itself was remarkably sludge free, but I’ll wash out the gauze mesh as well as fitting a new HiFlo filter

Christmas has been & gone, resulting in much Turkey & sausage consumption. It’s rained most days for the past 2 weeks. As an antidote to the post Christmas torpor I ventured into the garage today to do my first Roper plate installation on the silver V11 I found the lower sump stuck fast, gentle manipulation with a rubber mallet and wooden drift produced no movement. So searching v11lemans.com I found the suggestion of painting nitromors stripper onto the gasket. Sure it removes the paint from the sump, but I’m getting the upper & lower sump powder coated as the original paint is flaking off. The paper gasket absorbs the nitromors, and after 2 ~ 3 applications and leaving it for an hour, I inserted a craft knife blade into the gasket, gently tapped it in and the sump simply fell off, great result Now to get the powder coating done, and reassemble with 3 new gaskets, then repeat the roper plate installation on my greenie . . . Roll on spring 😊

The database that I’ve found only goes back 20 years to 2001. From 2001 to 2007 there were 150 V11 Sports registered, and 81 V11 Le Mans, Tenni’s RC’s, NC’s, Cafe Sports etc registered, so from 2001 ~ 07 a total of 231 registrations. From another database I found there were 90 red frame Sports from 1999 & 2000 registered when new, so that makes a total of 321 new registrations from 1999 - 2007. So 254 bikes surviving out of a a total of 321 sales seems a reasonable survival rate. It demonstrates that they never sold in serious numbers when new, hence seeing any V11 these days is a rarity….. Contrast that with the 524 registrations of V85’s in the UK Since 2019…. Or the 17641 BMW R1200 GS’s that have been registered in the UK There’s hours of entertainment looking at these statistics, but I only have the UK data and not worldwide. I would have thought Guzzi sold far more V11’s in the US ?

I’m not sure how many were registered when they were in production. I’ll have a trawl around and see what I can find. For years all Guzzi’s have never been big sellers here. That is until the V85 which seems to be selling well, but even so the numbers are tiny compared to Triumph, BMW and Hondas sales

Here’s my Rosso Corsa that’s hibernating in a bike cocoon over winter, will emerge Spring 2022

I can search UK registrations with the following versions, but some of these categories show no data V11 Sport V11 Sport Scura V11 Sport Tenni V11 Sport Le Mans V11 Sport Le Mans Rosso Corsa V11 Cafe Sport V11 Le Mans (this only has 4 registered, so I suspect it’s probably another special model such as the Nero Corsa) How many of all these are left in the UK, you may ask? A grand total of 254 V11s of all versions left

12/9/2021 at 2:48 AM, Scud said The consensus around the rumor-mill seems to be about 200 produced globally, and about 50 of those in the US. Not much activity in the Nero Corsa registry on this site. I have never seen another one in person Here in the UK there appear to be a grand total of 5 Rosso Corsas. Can’t even find a listing for Nero Corsas. I think there maybe even fewer As for putting new acquisitions in the garage, SWMBO has no idea how many bikes I have in the garage, and can’t tell the difference between a V11 or a VMAX. She rarely ventures in there anyway, so if I buy another, I may mention it in passing after the event, but I don’t get any stress about it

I cannot imagine that anything coming out of Mandello, even named "Mandello", will be "problem free not needing any recalls." i think docc has summed the situation up perfectly. Those of us who have Guzzi’s with the 1200 8v engine know this only too well (unless it was a post 2013 factory roller tappet model). The roller tappet engines are pretty well bulletproof, but is took Guzzi 5 years to get them into standard factory production, and anyone with a flat tappet motor should get it rollerised as Pete Roper has throughly documented The new liquid cooled, wet clutch motor is a much more radical development for Guzzi, and I for one would wait several years for any teething problems to be ironed out before contemplating ownership

V100 wheelbase 58.5 inches V11 red frame wheelbase 57.9 inches, black frame 58.7 inches

115hp, 1042cc, 77 foot pounds of torque, engine 4" shorter than the latest small block etc. My 8V Griso is 110 HP, 1151 cc, 80 foot pounds of torque at 6400 rpm. Yes I know the old Guzzi big block even in 8V form supposedly couldn’t be made Euro 4 / 5 compliant, and I can clearly see the new engine architecture that now includes a wet clutch does shorten the power train, but at the moment I couldn’t find a reason to change my Griso for a V100. I can’t see how the V100 would improve the riding experience compared to my Griso, whose 8v engine design dates back to its launch in 2007 this isn’t meant as criticism of the new liquid cooled V twin, because there must be masses of future development potential, it’s just if this is its spec as launched I won’t be rushing out to purchase one. As I’ve often stated, the Griso 8V with decent mapping is a very good ride indeed…..

Just back from a short 80 mile ride around the Derbyshire hills this afternoon, stopped in Matlock for fish n chips, parked the V11 next to the old red telephone kiosk

Whats people’s opinion on this supposedly in production during 2022. 1000 cc liquid cooled, 130 BHP….