audiomick

That is the point, I think. My GTR 1000 has a pump-up pre-load adjustment. Easy enough to get to behind the right-hand sidecover. If one has one of those little pumps to hand that are used for such purposes, also easy to adjust. I barely ride the bike, now, but in the past I regularly changed the pre-load. The bike was used to travel to jobs several hundred kilometres away, often via the Autobahn, with fully loaded luggage. On other occasions, a friend of ours was regularly on the back seat for trips of several hours. When I was on my own for a short ride in the country, there was generally practically nothing in the luggage. I now don't do the long trips anymore, as my work situation has changed, and the friend has back problems, so she isn't up for motorcycling so much. If at all, it will likely be the Breva 750 now. She wont get on the V11 again after trying it out once. The GTR will be moving along to a new owner in the forseable future, because without the long trips I don't really have an excuse for owning it. Anyway, in the light of past experience I can easily see the point of a remote pre-load adjuster. If the adjustment is easy to get to, there are circumstances under which one uses it, and it helps. @orangem2 why not just ask the workshop you are intending to send the shock to if there is a remote adjuster available? If there isn't, I gather Wilbers have something available. Quite expensive, but I have only heard good things about them. This would be the shock, I think https://www.wilbers.de/shop/Motorrad/Moto-Guzzi/V11-Ballabio-KT/Federbein-Typ-641-Competition.html?year=2004 that is without the optional hydraulic pre-load adjuster. To see the price with that, select "hydraulisch (Wilbers-PA)" from the drop-down under "Federvorspannung". The optional adjuster is this one, I think https://www.wilbers.de/produkte/federbeinprodukte/optionen-zubehoer/hyd-federvorspannung/hydraulische-federvorspannung-typ-625.html On the other hand, Öhlins is pretty chic....

I think it is a fine thread for a very good reason. Confirmation, for instance, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_thread#Coarse_versus_fine or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_metric_screw_thread#Preferred_sizes

Well, that explains everything, I reckon.

The relationships between Volkswagen and Porsche are incestuous enough that a Porsche would no doubt be as easily possible as an Audi. What brand they actually get offered has probably as much to do with what the Volkswagen concern wants to advertise as anything else.

Should you indeed discover loose magnets, the casings are available as a spare part. These three were among the first 6 or 8 hits for a search for "valeo starter motor housing". I'm sure you could find a supplier in the US. https://www.motoren-israel.com/Shop/Engine-electrics/Starter-motor/Magnet-housing-for-Valeo-starter-4V-Boxer::148.html?language=en https://www.bayermotor.de/en/product?info=6285&country_preselect_country=AU https://www.euromotoelectrics.com/product-p/d6ra-magccw.htm Valeo revised the starters at some point, and added clips in addition to the glue to hold the magnets in place. If yours has clips on or between the magnets, it is the newer version and wont have the problem with loose magnets. If there are no clips in there, the problem with loose magnets may well rear its ugly head, even if that is indeed not your current problem. When you have the thing apart, it may well be worth considering upgrading the housing to the newer version with the clips, if it isn't already a new one. EDIT: for what it is worth, the starter in my 2002 Le Mans has the clips in it. On the other hand, the bike has more than 65,000 km on the clock, and the starter looked brand new inside when I opened it. Maybe it has been replaced at some point.

An addendum to the previous post: It occurred to me that I also pondered about the solenoid a bit. The first part of its action is to mechanically slide the drive gear forwards to engage it with the flywheel. The second part, at the end of its stroke, is to close the contact to provide electricity to activate the motor itself. I remember wondering it that was just a contact, or a switch. It is a switch. If I remember rightly, it requires a little effort to close it. Where to push is obvious when the solenoid is apart. There is a black button at the bottom end of the housing that the solenoid moves in that closes the switch. Function can be easily verified with an Ohm meter between the relevant screw contacts on the back end.

Maybe they wanted exactly those cars? Personally, I would prefer the A4 base over the A6, because it is lighter and more compact. And I've been in an R4 (no, wasn't allowed to drive it myself...). The thing is a farking rocket on wheels.

Those links from @MartyNZ are good. I think they are the same ones that helped me some time last year when I had a prophylactic look inside my starter. The only thing that is not quite obvious is getting the actual motor apart. If it has never been apart, there are two rivets in there holding things together. A close look reveals that they seem to be redundant, because there are also two screws holding things together. That impression is correct. Drill them out and forget they were ever there. The other thing to pay attention to in the guides before you start is the spring clip in this photo (from the article on advridder.com that Marty posted) that holds the brushes in. If I remember rightly, it looks like it should "just come out", but doesn't. Have a good look at it, and undo everything before you try to get it out. And practice getting the brushes out on the negative contact first. I broke out a tiny bit of plastic from the housing on the first attempt. On the negative side, that wasn't an issue, as the negative is in contact with the frame and housing and everything anyway. On the positive contact, that same little piece of missing plastic would have had me concerned about potential short circuits.

@docc aren't we supposed to only use synthetic oils in our V11s? Either way, I don't doubt what you wrote in the least, but rubber parts just get old. If your old hose was still good (pun intended...), I reckon there was a bit of luck involved as well.

The man is good, but as far as blokes the play an SG goes, my favourite is this one.

I dare say they all give up more or less there. The motor is "rigidly" mounted to the frame, so the motor movement (vibration) relative to the frame is probaly fairly minimal. The hose, however, has two long straight sections with a bend in the middle, and no support along the way. The vibrations caused by the motor have a significant sideways component, so the hose is going to be moving like the belly on a fat cat when it gets a trot up on the way to dinner. The hose no doubt vibrates along its length quite a lot, and that no doubt puts stress on the bends at the ends and the anchor points. Incidently, there are a lot of really good excuses for having a paunch in there...

Good bloke, that man. No great loss, I'd say, if he reacted like that. Pity it cost you so much to find out.

Hmm, sweating a wee bit of oil here and there, but looks good. I kind of like it when the seller doesn't do a thorough clean on the bike before he takes the photos. It take that as meaning that there is possibly nothing to hide. Or he doesn't give a toss....

So the pump is sucking out of a bit of pipe downstream from a restriction (the kink). That means, as far as I understand it, that the pressure must be lower downstream of the restriction than it is upstream there of. Anyway, as you say, getting into the weeds there a bit. The point that one should take home is that restrictions in the fuel line are not good. I had that on the GTR 1000. I had installed a quick release between the tap on the tank and the inlet to the carbs, and not noticed that the extra length in the line was kinking when the tank went on. The symptoms were exactly like running out of fuel, but only at high revs and high load, i.e. above about 150 km/h on the Autobahn. Slow down again, and it all came good. The kink was causing it to starve of fuel under high demand.

So the theory is, it was developing fuel vapour bubbles in the line behind the kink due to the pressure drop from the kink, and these were causing cavitation problems in the pump, right? Not questioning the concept at all, just trying to make sure I understand it. Thanks for the info.

Do you tow a tank-trailer behind the bike?

Good thing the man is not inclined towards conspiracy theories.

Regarding Servus TV: I can't verify it, but I just read on the german forum that Servus TV has sold the Moto GP and Superbike rights to Sky. Edit: I just found this article (in German) on the subject. Servus TV and DF1 have apparently established a co-operation and will be broadcasting some stuff, and streaming some stuff. https://www.digitalfernsehen.de/news/medien-news/maerkte/motogp-doch-im-free-tv-rechte-deal-df1-servustv-1110945/ If anyone wants to translate it, I recommend DeepL.com https://www.deepl.com/translator

Yeah, I do believe it. The dyno graph is from this mob: https://radicalspeedshop.com/motor_getriebe They are well known here, and allegedly do good work. The 1200 to 1400 conversion apparently involves heads and barrels from the 1400 California models. I gather it is not "bolt on", but rather involves an alteration to the oil galleries somewhere. There are a couple of blokes in the german forum with the conversion, at least one in a Griso, perhaps all of them. The whole business is very expensive, and whether it is a good idea is debatable at least. Getting it legally on the bike's papers here is presumably impossible. What it does to the reliability is also a very good question. Despite all that, the first-hand reports that I have read all said that the motor works well, and is enormous amounts of fun. If I had more money than I knew what to do with, I'd be interested in trying the conversion in a Norge. I think that would work nicely.

Yeah, that's about 26°C, and just under the point where I start thinking about maybe risking going out for a walk without a jacket.

Yep, that's right.

You forgot the dots. TÜV. If the keyboard doesn't have the appropriate key, the correct form is "TUEV". That is a pretty good approximation of how it is pronounced, too. The sound of the the "ü" (as well as the "ö" and the "ä") doesn't exist in english. It has to be learned, and after nearly 30 years here, I still don't consistently hear the difference to "u", "o" and "a". Other than that, and the ramdon gender of articles, german is a pretty cool language. Very precise. But yes, the TÜV, DEKRA, GTÜ and KÜS are the businesses that carry out the bi-annual inspection, and the ones the have the kittens. The TÜV is the most common in what was formerly West Germany, and having the inspection done is commonly referred to, approximately, as "getting the TÜV".

Probably not relevant for me, but tell us what happens. Do it tomorrow. I'm curious.

Don't know for sure (I don't know anything about tyres... ), but there is the thing with the silicon shit that they use to make releasing the tyre from the mould easy, and oxidation on the unused surface could also be an issue.