Skeeve

It certainly would be helpful to see some closeup pix of: A: the complete, unexploded Guzzi Al-clutch B: the aftermarket RAM Al-clutch C: the failure modes of the Guzzi Al-clutch Given those, a working hypothesis of what's failing could probably be come up with readily. Off the top, I suspect that either RAM is using the same design w/ a different alloy, or they selected a few key operations in the machining process & changed some hole diameters or properly radiused some cuts. Probably the last one; aluminum really doesn't like stress risers, from my (quite limited) experience. Best o' luck, Scura & Tenni owners...

"We have complete v11 Guzzi engines available for a skipload of Euros" You're welcome!

Bad? They're frickin' BELLO, man! No stooopid mirrors molded into the fairing to stick way out & snag on SUV mirrors when lane splitting. Nice & oval too, not like the d@mn "Mickey Rat's Ears" round mirrors like on my Suzuki SV650! & the best part about'em, is that being regular unscrew-from-the-lever-base mirrors is that you can swap'em out for whatever mirror floats yer boat! Or even just pull'em off completely & go to bar-end mirrors. Absolutely brilliant of Guzzi to go this route... The pix on the MaxMoto site also reveal another bit of Guzzi design brilliance: the windshield is just an oval, compound curved pane that's mounted from the middle, not the edges! So they built-in the anti-buffetting bleed air right from the start; no having to buy Laminar Lips & such just to keep the "bubble" from rattling your helmet. I'm telling you, somebody was thinking. They did a great job of covering up the Brevona's tank-ugliness with that fairing too... I hope they sell boatloads. Ride on!

Aw, shucks! I feel like such a troublemaker now! [rubs toe in dirt] Thanks for picking up on that idea & running with it! I had no idea that there was something like this already available out there; I purely thought of it as a project for some frustrated EE-type person...

Just doing some quick math, it looks like at 10k rpm (which most Guzzis should never see!) it takes about 16 microseconds for the engine to rotate one degree. I'm not an EE so I don't know much about the latency involved, but I think that means that even a slow 8mhz chip would have 2 clock cycles to think about the signal before it would even delay the ignition timing by 1 deg. Since 32mhz embedded cpus are commonplace now, I'm not certain that it would be too hard for the delay side of this question to be easily doable w/o negative f/x. That still leaves the flux capacitor solution needed for advancing the timing, tho'! Ride on!

I suspect this is just a vile rumour. Even if Piaggio wanted to create space at the factory, they'd just find a distributor who wanted to buy the parts at a discount; that would still bring more than selling them for scrap! Don't go getting your throttle in a twist just 'cause somebody has figured out how to punch a lot of peoples' buttons all at once...

So buy a Dunlop K491 EliteII and have a properly profiled motorcycle tire that's good for 18k if you watch your inflations & refrain from the smoking burnout throttle technique. I've ridden a G'wing with severely squared-off rear tire, and talk about your "tip into a turn!" Granted, if I was planning on riding cross-country solely by slab, using the car tire on the rear of the G'wing would be a fine idea. But if that's the case, I'm much better off doing this by *car*, so I can be out of the weather, have a place to sack out at rest stops, have decent audio diversion while rolling up the miles, space to carry maps & CDs, blah blah blah. Travel by bike can be fun, but it isn't easy. Racking up miles isn't the reason I ride. If there was a cage tire that had enough tread depth that it would be worth reprofiling to something more fitting for motorcycle use, and it was cheap & convenient enough to do such a thing, I'd be willing to give it a go. On a roadliner like a G'wing; not on a bike w/ any credible sporting aspirations. 'Nuff said.

The offset map is obviously something that gets overlaid on the base map; whether it's for left/right (fore/aft, Aprilia) cylinder tuning or for altitude adjustment, I have no idea. "Start enrich map" is self explanatory: the motor needs extra fuel at startup or when cold; I'm certain if you look at the numbers that they'll all be higher than the base map (or else very small #s, if the Start Enrich Map is an overlay on the base map.) "Accell enrich map" is going to be like the virtual throttle pump in the PCIII; extra fuel for heavy rotations of the right grip for the first xx rpm. "Idle ignition" is likely to be similar to the start enrich map in that when idling on a cold engine, the timing can be retarded to make the engine run smoother, warm up faster, etc. A warm engine doesn't need this, so the idle speed can be adjusted lower, and timing given normal advance & thereby improve mileage (esp. in cities; how much time is spent idling at stoplights? This is also important for sneaking under emissions-control barriers for certification...) Personally, I'm curious about what all those "trims" do & how they're used... Ride on!

I think the moral of the story is that upping the CR isn't the route to more power on these old lumps, the bottleneck is in the breathing. Getting the heads ported/polished/flowed is going to give you more bang/$ than spending $400 on new pistons or $800-$1000 on a fancy exhaust. Getting 3 ponies for some pretty simple backyard engineering is like raiding the change jar at the end of the month when you're dead broke: woohoo, free money! "Yippee, I can eat!" Nice to know that the stock cans aren't just completely hopeless, and that it is possible to get something more out of them. Looks like I'm going to have to buy some stainless wire & argon for my suck-@ss cheap wire welder & see if I can button those cans I sacrificed for the photos back up after making some "appropriate" adjustments...

The LABikers will be meeting at the Mobil ("Mo-Swill" ) on the corner of Central? & Las Flores? blvds; it's a couple blocks north of Glendale H-D. We'll be doing the "anti"-Love Ride [as in "anti-clockwise" like the Brits say]: take part in the fun part of riding up the 5 until the 14, then peeling off from the parade & going to Castaic by the back door via Sierra Hwy, San Francisquito, Lake Hughes, etc. Much more entertaining, & if you don't want to pay the dosh to actually enter the event, you can just go along for the ride. Look for me; I'll be the one in black leathers... Ride on,

You sir are too generous with your praise. I'll settle for being immortalized in prose as "the Artful Bodger." Guzzi bless us, every one! No wait, that's a different reference... Anyway, thanks for the recognition. It feels gooood to know my tip has found such an appreciative audience!

I think H-D has a good wrinkle-black paint for their motors; dunno if it's available OTC or if it's strictly an in-house job. You could always go for the rattle can of flat-black BBQ paint, altho' that's probably not the look you had in mind... ;D The advantage is that availability is superb, so if it ever needs touching up you've got no worries. Don't know of any hi-temp silver paints; if you want to go that route, you'd probably need to paint the cases & just rely upon the natural finish of the cylinders. The problem with using paints intended for cage engine blocks is that they're all water-cooled, so the paints aren't expected to stand up to temps above 220F (105C.) Best o' luck!

Um, that would be me. [Ducks numerous projectiles.] Why, what did I win?

No, George Carlin said that. In a funny manner. Don't shoot me; I'm just the messenger!

Didn't Guzzi already do this w/ a replacement part# that supersedes the old cable? I think it was posted somewhere on V11LM last sprin... On the topic of reproducing gears... don't we have enuff gear- & wire-heads around here to come up w/ our own sol'n. to this long-standing Guzzi deficiency? I'm thinking a direct drive sensor on the top of the cases (where the angle drive presently plugs in), a pair of small guage leads up to the speedo, & a little stepper motor or somesuch plugged into the back to drive it. Completely eliminate the cable! Heck, maybe a little 6v bicycle generator [you know, the kind that used to clamp on the frame and be driven by the tire, w/ a little spring catch to hold it in place/out of the way?] for a nite-lite, coupled w/ a matching slot-car motor on the back of the speedo! Seems like it couldn't be too much less accurate than the existing set of problems...

No; unlike the harleys, kawasakis, hondas, et al, they're just not built & used in large enough numbers to generate the necessary number of failures/complaints before the DOT issues a recall! (AKA, "under the radar") "Warning: you have just experienced a logical breakdown, & the resulting vacuum has caused a huge indentation in your forehead. Pull off the information superhighway, put your thumb in your mouth and blow. When your cranium has reinflated to safe pressures & convexity, you may resume navigating the internet..."

What about not crashing in the first place? Seems pretty much perfect to me...

The chemistry is done in Germany; that's what counts. They can mix up the rubber & cook it just about anywhere they want, as long as they can maintain good QC on their production line. I like Contis on my SV; haven't had a chance to try them on the LeMans. Yet!

Hockey is not a sport. Legitimate sports all involve a ball: Tennis, baseball, football, even soccer - all sports. Hockey is 3 activities occurring simultaneously: 1) Ice skating. 2) Chasing a hard rubber disc around & trying to score a goal with it. 3) A bunch of guys beating each other with sticks. Hockey is *not* a sport... [/George Carlin, America's greatest living philosopher]

It's the ENV prototype by Intelligent Energy. It's a fuel-cell/battery powered hybrid. The fuel cell is the size of a brief case, & designed to be a modular power pack; since the fuel cell doesn't have quite enough oomph to completely power the bike, it runs off of batteries for the electric motor needs, and the fuel-cell pumps'em back up over time. It's more of an electric bicycle/moped than a real motorcycle; I'm much more interested in the diesel/electric hybrid motorcycle in the back of my head than this pipsqueak. Why is this thing Guzzi related? The parent co. (Intelligent Energy) has a Redondo Ave, Long Beach address, as does another long-time Guzzi staple here in So.Cal., Moto Guzzi Classics [shoutout to Mark & Josh!] Anyone wanting to discuss the future of internal combustion-powered motorcycles after the EPA kills off our beloved Carcano- & Tonti-engined big & small twins, let me know. Converting automotive turbochargers ain't gonna cut it; how do you make some sort of PTO so you can drive the alternator? [seriously tho', hybrids are going to be coming sooner or later. What do you think?] Ride on!

Dang! Too much competition; the CMP is sponsoring a JC Garand match down at Camp Pendleton that day (& more events thru the next week.) Since this is the first time ever for such an event, I'm hoping a good turnout will lock it in for the future. Considering that the inmates up in the Sacto. looney bin, er, "legislature" are doing their best to run honest gun owners out of the state, any chance to engage in competitive shooting should be enjoyed now, before I'm forced to move... Fortunately, I'll still be "local" to V11LM no matter where I end up! BTW, what happened, did the annual Brit ride get tired of competing w/ all the out of town traffic in Pasadena on New Year's Eve day? They used to meet at an eatery on S. Lake & ride up from there... Ride on!

Ballacraine? This would seem to be up your alley! I'd think you'd have a *much* simpler time of it renting in London or some other big city [Dublin?] and then taking the ferry. It seems quite likely to me that you may save enough on the rental prices to pay for the ferry, but the fact that the IoM is so motorcycle favorable, it's also extremely likely that you can find a rental there, provided it's not actually TT week, when I'm sure the available bikes are all booked solid! Best of luck, & enjoy your trip! [/jealous]

I hear you on the limited-scale economic realities being an obstacle! Your statement above makes it clear (to me, at least) that it would be a huge benefit to anyone interested in making their own if you could post a picture of the "ideal" product. Not that I'm deriding the pics you've already provided in the original thread, but I mean something along the lines (no pun intended) of the snail on a sheet of 1/10" graph paper (or millimeter, whatever: just record the scale of divisions in the post w/ the pic.) That way, we can all reasonably hope to replicate your results without having to repeat your extensive trial & error process [Ouch!] Thanks for the help, even if you can't find the circular TUIT to post the pic... Ride on!

Just remember that the stock x-over isn't so much that as a pre-muffler: it has some minor baffling inside it. The Stucchi is truly a x-over; just open piping, merging & diverging the exhaust flow. So yes, I would expect the Stucchi hardware to add little somethin'somethin' to the Guzzi audio footprint... Ride on!

Welcome, Geru! Glad you decided to join us; I'm certain somebody will avail themselves of your generous offer at some point (maybe not right away, but be prepared: down the road, some Guzzisto will see your post & be contacting you!)