BrianG

I had them install their cartridges in my 2000 V-11 Sport Marz forks, and place the 1.05 springs. It's magic! Just have to install the Penske shock and it should be great!

Well, let's really make your day! If you start messing with the rear suspension as well, you'll quickly discover that the front suspension and the back suspension are connected.... Who'd have guessed! If you take those same "sag" parameters and set the rear end to them (which will mean re-springing this end of a V-11 as well) you'll see "order of magnitude" improvement in the way the bike goes around corners! But getting the sags right is just step one! Step 2 is setting the damping. I'm a big fan of the Penske shock, so I'm not going to play with the original Boge unit. For both front and back, set the compression damping to ZERO and set up the rebound damping. When that is right you dial in a tad of compression damping, and you'll swear it's somebody else's bike!

Actually, you can tune your cam to a pretty significant degree with a solid-lifter arrangement like the Guzzi has. It's a trick us old hot-rodders used to use with our street-driven, wanna-be drag-strip cars. Our too-hot race-profile cams became almost streetable when we opened the clearances. Of course header pop, and lifter racket also defined "gearhead kool" back in the day...... Opening the clearances effectively shortens the duration/overlap of the cam profile. This contributes to better low end power and smoother idle by increasing combustion pressure and retention. Tightening the clearances effectively increases duration/overlap, and enhances high RPM power by adding intake fill-time, and facilitating exhaust scavenging with longer valve-open time.

I pulled the stock bar-ends of my 2000 V-11 sport and found that the inner part of the handle-bar was threaded and accepted the thread from the bar-end weight. It seemed as that was all that was in the bar... I swapped them for Aprilia bar-end weights which are much larger and heavier. That damped the vibration a lot.

I would suggest that there's a "law of diminishing returns" with regard to fork travel and sport bikes. Certainly, suspension travel is desirable, but the opposing issue is ride height. On the one hand, you don't want the high center of gravity as seen on modern dirt bikes with their long-travel suspension systems. The higher the center of gravity, the less "flickable" the machine feels. As well, you have to be cautious of the amount of squat travel available because ground clearance in cornering is of concern. An adventure tourer like the Ulysses is, to my mind, a compromise that sacrifices maneuverability for rough terrain ground clearance. Of course all facets of suspension are inter-related and advances in damping control technology will affect the need for, and allowable maximum of, suspension travel. Suspension design is an interesting study, but I'd suggest it's only advanced to a 50/50 ratio of science vs black-art in it's present state!

This question arises very often, and it's because it people don't generally think about the bi-directionality of suspension action. Springs especially, are mostly thought of in terms of their compressibility. If you think about the other end of the suspension action... (the extension part) and the bike encountering a pothole, as opposed to a "bump" you will see that other aspect. If free sag were "0", when the wheel encountered the void of a pot hole, the spring would fire the forks to the extension-stops, and top out hard. That would be as undesirable as bottoming the forks over a bump.

I'd ride it like that... Sounds pretty darned close to ideal. A little MORE sag means you'll have a cushier rided........ less sag = harsher. The Guzzi is a heavy machine so I would maybe aim for a bit less initial and loaded sag with a fixed-rate spring. You're so darned close the ideal street numbers that I'd go give her a go! Cangrats on hitting the nail!

I'm lucky in this regard. 1. I had Max McAllister as a mentor, way back in my VFR days. 2. I have a wife who grew up on a western Canadian farm. (she's no stranger to a greasy shop) I fab'ed a simple spring compressor/collet tool from a 1' long piece of PVC pipe. Just cut a notch in it about 160 degrees around the circumference at the bottom, and stick a bar through a hole across the top end. Hold the fork bottom in a soft-jaw vice. Wire the top of the rod to a bungee - to the ceiling. I compress the spring by pulling down on the bar so the spring is just below the "nut". She slips the collet under the edge of the nut I remove the pipe and use a pair of pliers to set the collet all the way in. No fingers lost.... No days in the dog house for wounding the wife!

Mine is a US bike that I imported, so I can't comment on that part. Loaded Sag with the original springs was almost 50% and the rear is 40+%, but worse than that, my compression damper was totally shot. It about tossed me over the bars on hard braking!! I sent the forks to Max and got his new cartridges installed, so now I have fixed compression damping and adjustable rebound damping on both sides. Plus the 1.05kg springs. I have a Penske shock/spring awaiting installation for the other end! Also, I don't recall having to remove the damper rod top-nuts. I recall just removing the spring-keeper collets and pulling the spacers and springs past the nuts........ or am I nuts?? (gotta quit smoking that stuff!!)

There's no fuel pressure in this line. (well there's about 10" of gravity head pressure) so you don't need hi-pressure EFI line for this piece or from the fuel filter to the fuel pump. Having said that, I can't believe that a foot or so of lesser fuel line is going to save you much over standard EFI line in terms of cost. Heat shielding is another matter, but my 2000 V-11 sport has no braided fuel line on it.

Ya, that!! With OEM being around 0.6 or 0.7, and the appropriate ones for 200+ lbs PLUS riding gear being 1.05 or 1.10 there's no way that preloading or over-damping the forks will get optimum fork action. I like my street bike to show about 15-20% free sag and about 30-35% loaded sag, front and back. This will yield a great cushy ride with fantastic control. The "light" Fork Fluid is about 5 -7.5 wt, and is correct for the Marz valving. I don't believe that HARSH = OPTIMIZED suspension. Neither do winning racers.

If you are going to disassemble the forks to change the oil anyway, I'd change the springs while you are at it. 1.05kg springs will be about right. Use something like Spectro Gold - Light Fork Fliud. Stuff labled "Fork Oil" is better for non-cartridge forks.

I bought my 200 V-11 Sport on e-bay las winter for $4500.00 from some BMW/Triumph dealer in the east. It was black, but it was in great shape, too Deals CAN be had, still, on e-bay.

You gotta quit smokin' that shit!

If we are keeping count of this "rare" anomaly, I have this same issue on my 2000 V-11 Sport. Same fix, too by the way!

Well ya know what they say.............. "ask a stupid question.....!!

I have found it both interesting reading and a valuable resource. It has saved me many a classic..... take it apart 200% as far as necessary to understand it....., and then fix it.

Paul........ is this some kind of crack about my reading skills??!! It's a lucky thing that I RTFM at all!!

Thanks for this! Very useful stuff, here. Innovate Technologies (the LM-1 supplier) presents all of this in it's instructions EXCEPT the 10:00-2:00 positioning part. I'll have to watch that!

Thanks Nogbad! I have NO idea what this means but I'm printing it and taking it to my welder!

Well here we have the answer from the horses mouth!

I was thinking of placing the bungs in the front tubes of the cross-over. The Bosch LSU 4 sensor is electrically heated and is used in the tail-pipe sniffer that is an optional part of the LM-1 unit, so proximity to the exhaust port seems to be non-critical.

If the header pipes are stainless steel, does the material of the nut/bung have to match? If so, what is the actual material of the header?

My 2000 V-11 Sport has bungs in the headers already, so finding the right sensor would be ideal. Is there one for the 10mm bung?

What is Cliff using?