Dirtybill

I added the Mistral crossover which did nothing(?) for low and midrange but gave the bike a kick in the ass on top end These mods also make my bike idle a lot better. Tight cornered roads are a treat now. Shifting is optional

I'm sorry but I have a very hard time with the Mototune misinformation. I to, come from the automotive trade where I worked my way thru the apprenticeship program. Mototune's experience is largely with race engines. Do we care about engine longetivity in race engines? Not really. So fine, your ridden the crap out of during break in bike may have 5 more hp, but for how long? He also avoids mentioning anything about other engine parts other than pistons and rings. So I guess that means I can hammer the hell out of new valve springs, valves, oil pump? What about the gear box in bikes that combine the engine oil with the transmission? I agree with Buck. I've always used the mildly agressive break in procedure with and oil change before the recommended first service and another oil change before the 2nd service. Using this same method, I've seen bikes like my RC51 and a friend's Honda 954 gain up to 9hp by the time it reaches the 10,000 mile mark. And we are all confident that our bikes' engines will be fine for thousands of miles where Mr Mototune's will probably need an overhaul before that. Why do companies like Guzzi and Triumph immediately rev up new bikes? Because it forces oil at high pressure to immediately lubricate the internals. Remember, these new engines are assembled using oil on all the parts so it has a protective coating there. Triumph also uses "break in oil" which as far as I can tell and have been told is just dino oil.

Hey Januz. Check your email and pms once in a while. Doing Mt. St. Helens this weekend with the usual suspects

Thanks Guys!

Just my farm boy former mechanic opinion, but I find seat of the pants dyno has worked well for my V11. This is after a custom map was installed and it ran too lean at high rpm. I then programmed it the old fashioned way and it leaps out of corners now, plugs are an acceptable colour, no stumble anywhere, idles fine but it does consume a bit more fuel..........big deal. Air filter, PC3, pipes and crossover when installed separately make a bit of difference but when you combine them all as they were designed to do, it makes a big difference. Had no problems keeping up with a friend on his ST4 thru the mountains. Both of us had luggage as we were gone for a couple of days. I think my bike was running way better than his at altitude.

Promised a friend of mine I'd ask this on here as I'm definitely in the dark when it comes to old Guzzis. He's purchased a 79 R90S and 79 T3 from a guy and wants to bring the Guzzi into spec for Collector status plates. It's been rejected because it has LeMans mufflers on it so he needs T3 pipes. Is there a company that makes new ones that would be classed as original equip? Or does anyone have some originals?

Thanks all! Good tip Gavin.

I thought I had this interpetation of the owner's manual correct, but......... Is the engine oil level to be inspected with the dip stick screwed in all the way or just unscrewed? The manual says "screwed up" which I originally thought meant screwed in but now I'm wondering. So far, I've just changed the oil and filter twice as often as recommended so I havent had to add any between oil changes.

Call me kooky...I kinda of think the foggy tach syndrome is a bit endearing in that "Italian character" sort of way. It's a little harmless trait that separates it from the world of Japanese bike perfection. It makes me smile and makes me recall the decaying factory in Mandello rather than the spotless Japanese factories. Vitto in oily coveralls rather than a production line welding robot. I know everyone has different tolerance levels. EXACTLY why a I'm on my 2nd Guzzi The amount of character this bike exudes is 10 times more than any Japanese bike I've owned, which at last count was around 40. It reminds me of owning a classic/vintage bike but with a warranty and some of the good things that progress has brought us. Even the 4 week wait (so far) for my broken oil cooler mount hasn't been frustrating.

Looks good Al.

It's quite possible that it is the PC. I've got first hand experience with a PC failing on a trip from Laguna. It was on a friend's ZX-12R and caused all sorts of grief from backfiring, horrible fuel mileage (even for a ZX-12 ) smoking (like carbon build up smoke), over heating and other combined problems. We finally just unhooked the PC and ran the connections as per stock and the problem went away. I've heard of other mysterious engine malfunctions caused by a faulty PC also. A tip I learned a few years ago while dirt riding/dual sporting. We were on a 3 day cross country trip to a secluded cabin we had rented. Came into a village that had one gas station. While some of us filled up with Regular Unleaded, others filled up with Super, myself included. A friend told me, never fill up with Super in a one horse town. The locals all buy Regular and the Super sits a long time in the storage tanks. About 5 miles later, everyone who had filled up with Super suddenly had engine problems like backfiring, loss of power etc. Since then, I've heeded this advice and haven't had a bad tank of fuel since.

Sorry, I disagree. My RC-51 (SP-1) used a flapper valve in the front intake hole of the fairing. This valve would open at 8000 rpm and a significant kick in the pants could be felt from the ram air. Rumours had it pegged at another 8hp on tap. The VTR (aka Firehawk) which is also a Honda V-twin does not use ram air and there is no significant kick at any rpm. I owned a VTR also. The 1986 1000 Ninja used a similar ram air method but with no valve. The long intake runners ran from the top of the airbox to the front of the bike. At the time, this was the fastest production bike you could buy. Again, a kick up the arse could be felt at higher rpms. I owned one of those bikes also. I don't really care about all the technical jargon. Engineering mistakes are full of it and Mechanics (something I do know about) are required to repair those mistakes. I hope that's "clear enough".

Memories of my TL1000S. 10,000 miles and the main bearing went south.

"embarassed"?? I fully expected to be a Le Mans owner but after rides on both models I chose the V11 Sport. Who would've thought it would become my hooligan bike? btw. I guess it was my misconception about the snobbishness. Must be hangin round to many BMW owners lately

To me, there seems to be a certain clique of people who generally just answer each other's posts and dont bother with anyone else. Seems strange for a forum that has all owners of one marque.

Do you realize we probably live about 10 minutes from each other? Are you the owner of the burgundy LeMans I've seen at the bookstore/restaurant in Ft Langley? There's another lower mainlander on here too. "Januz" is from North Vancouver.

I think you maybe getting carb with ramair confused with FI with ram air.

The bad thing about pods is on the Guzzi they need to be supported or you run the risk of too much weight on the manifolds and a result of cracking. I don't like the look of safety wire running off of the pods and I have no scientifc evidence to back the "turbulent air flow" theory up, but I think it holds water.......so to speak. I did mods on my Sport one at a time and all the results are seat of the pants, but, I started with the shop unhooking all the pollution crap,this was done at day 1 so I'm not sure about its affect but I did ride a friend's Sport with the pollution stuff still on it and it seemed underpowered and had rough idling. I then added a power commander, then pipes and tuning the PC. This is where I started to notice a big difference as the bike ran better everywhere in the rev range. Then a K&N in the stock airbox and played with the PC settings. Seemed to want to rev even more. Next, I went to a crossover and had to really play around with the PC, especially in the upper rev range. Big difference in top end power. Made a frame and hold down clamp for the K&N and removed the airbox lid, ran lean again so adjusted PC and now it runs great from idle all the way past 8000rpm. It literally leaps out of slow speed corners and will cruise at 150kph (around 90mph) effortlessly. I had pods on my TDM850 a few years ago and on a trip into Idaho as we were gaining altitude, the rain started turning into sleet. It was getting very cold. My bike started misfiring and running like it had dirt in the fuel. Either water was getting into the pods, which I don't think was happening, nor do some Mechanics I've talked too, or the carbs were freezing up. Carb freezing is a problem for bikes and especially Kawasakis in the UK for riders who ride all year round. I think on the TDM, as it had a large airbox, the box itself helps prevent this. For whatever its worth though, living in the Pacifc Northwest, with the amount of rain, temperature changes thru mountain passes and the variable weather, I'm going to stay away from pods, and wouldn't they be drawing in warm air on a Guzzi anyway?

Nice jrt. How does that (BMW?) fairing work? Any buffeting?

I wonder.................. http://www.constructorsrg.com/

Well if anyone wants to go to Idaho via hwy 12, let me know

I've had 207s on Japanese sport bikes but not on the V11. They aren't that great for longevity and I think the extra weight of the rear end on the Guzzi would make them wear even faster.

Here's a tip. There is an excellent welder down the road from me. He's tig welded aluminum levers for me before on my dirt bikes and they have never broken off at the weld. He even shot a coat of black paint on some of them and you can't see the weld at all. $20 is what he charged per lever. Anything made of aluminum that I own I take to him now if it's broken.

Well, I've had to resort to backing off on rear preload more than I like and upping the damping in the front more than I like to try and get more clearance from the left side. The mountain roads we have here frequently are not at level, involve positive and negative camber and often require heavy braking into 20 mph corners. This all conspires to make that sidestand a pain in the ass. I'd much prefer to be touching folding footpegs than parts of the sidestand that aren't flexible. For a bike that says "Sport" on it, has WP,Brembo and Marzocci components, is made in Italy and is very flickable, I would have thought the engineers would have enough sense to move the stand rearwards. It's my only real gripe with the bike.

Scraping stuff is not an indication of blowing a corner entry. It's an indication of some engineer not thinking if it's hard stuff like the damn stand on the Guzzi.