richard100t

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thanks for that! I needed a good laugh to start my day! I laughed so hard at that my face sprang a leak! That is so comically ugly, I can't bring myself to over it: I only have to imagine someone else [anyone else: just not me, Lord; please, not me! ] riding it in public & I start laughing again! Well you can see that the guy put a lot of time and thought into making the bike. Everything was really well painted and polished and all. It looks like there was a lot of custom fabrication too. I cant say that its my cup of tea, but I Iove that there are guys out there creating new things with a Guzzi. He might have been able to pull it off with a different gas tank, but then the seat is too low and so on.

Pics? Linky? maybe this time

I was just looking at some Guzzi's on Ebay for kicks and I came upon the strangest looking guzzi ever. This thing looks like some monster ate an Ambassador and a V11 Sport, half digested them and then vomited the results onto Ebay. I was kind of chuckling about the cartoon nature of the thing until I noticed that there were ACTUAL BIDS on the thing! Its currently at $18500 usd. Now of course I have to wonder if one of you guys in here are bidding on it? Well, its still winter here in Ohio and since I cant ride em I'm reduced to looking at em! lol Take a look on Ebay and tell me what you think!

I still havent heard of a single Rosso Mandello with a bad flywheel problem. I bought an entire guzzi oem single plate setup with steel flywheel a few years ago just to have it. I still have it in box in the attic. If someone wants it they can pm me. I'll sell it for $350 if someone wants it.

I have a Rosso Mandello and can say for sure that they didnt get the eagle badges at all. Not on the triple clamp or the pork chops. If the previous owner pulled an eagle badge of the triple clamp its likely that he was the one who bought it and put it there in the first place. I've always wanted those little badges but I could never justify spending $75 plus tax for three of those little things AND as we now know, they can and DO fall off.

Watching that makes it really hard to complain about the potholes in Spring! I still think I would rather cross that bridge than dare the Moscow traffic like that nutjob in the other thread did. That was just the most death defying thing I've ever seen.

I nearly chewed a hole in my computer chair watching that!

I just came across a new lithium battery for motorcycles thats getting some good reviews. Its called a Shorai, it has an ah rating of 18 and is just under $190 and weighs 2.1 pounds. $190 is a lot closer in price to a standard high quality lead acid battery. I think this is going to be standard equipment for bikes in the next 5 years or so. If you google Shorai you'll find lots of other bike forums are talking about them now.

Whats up with the heads on the new California? It looks like they go almost to the top of the gas tank. I'll reserve judgement on the looks until I see a better picture. Btw I went to the cycle world bike show this weekend and there wasnt even a bmw display let alone Guzzi. Triumph was there though. Speaking of weird new bikes, that Ducati Diavel is actually pretty nice in the flesh. I sat on the thing and its lazy boy comfortable too. The seat was a plush as anything I've ever sat on.

Old & venerable maybe but people are spending serious money on Mk11 Escorts these days. ..... I've just seen a Mk1 RS2000 Escort advertised by a dealer here – at £23,000! The reason that I noticed that was because the same 'prestige' dealer has a V11 Le Mans advertised at £5,000! A bit steep, when the going price for one in good condition a year or two ago was more like £3,500. You'd buy a low mileage Griso for £5k Could it be that the V11 is now entering the Classic stage and we're sitting on small gold mines? The v11 will never be a valuable collectors item...Until after I sell mine! lol

With the serious diet he put that bike on I think it would spank the new 8v bikes in any competition. Btw how much does the bike weigh now with a full tank of gas?

Now that I've had time to sleep on it I think it has a bit of the Dodge Viper coupe look to it

I think those headlights are directly from a Nissan 300z. They stole the back end design from something else but its late and I'm sleepy. Maybe someone else can spot it by the time I wake up in the morning. It kinda looks like a photoshop job to me.

I used the black wrinkle spray paint from an auto parts store and it looks better than the stuff on my engine cases. I never had a problem with my engine cases but I was playing with a design on my valve covers and the stuff really looks good. Good old fashioned paint stripper should take the old paint off the cases. Spend the extra buck or two and get the stronger paint remover. It will make your job a lot easier.

My main point is everyone will be replacing their battery at some point. These new batteries are 7 or 8 pounds lighter than what we currently use, and roughly $100 more expensive. I cant think of many cheaper ways to take that much weight out of the bike. I like that we can get a discussion about this going because I'm really curious to see if the 8lb diet makes a noticeable difference. I know the c/f cans made a difference on my bike, not a huge difference but still there. I've ditched the airbox, charcoal cans, rear fender/lights as well. Every little bit adds up, before you know it you've shed 35lbs without spending three grand on rims.

I found a lithium motorcycle battery that weighs just 700grams or 1.6 lbs. It has the standard terminals like a conventional battery and looks like a conventional battery too. Its $250 and I wonder if anyone here has bought one yet, or has an opinion on them. Its from full spectrum power and the battery is called the Pulse P2 Thats almost the same weight savings as switching to c/f exhaust cans for a lot less money. Well...its wintertime and I love to read, so I would love to hear any and all thoughts on the lithium battery for motorcycle use. They DO claim that these batteries will not catch fire like the old laptop batteries did. So if theres no chance of fire do you think its a worthwile investment?

Go ahead and rub it in! Most of the rest of us in america cant even get our bikes out of the garage because of the snow The closest I'll be able to get to a motorcycle is at the CycleWorld bike show at the end of the month in Cleveland. Well.... I could go sit on mine in the garage but thats no fun.

When you go on ebay enter "40mm fork seals" instead of the word bushes or bushings. You'll get 50 different kinds of 40mm fork seals to choose from. They also have drivers that will work for sale too.

There are a lot of them on ebay. I tried to post a link but was unable to do it.

If the bike only has 20k on it I'm thinking that the p/o did all his own work to the bike and thats what the problem is. Definitely check the tps setting first, if it has a k&n filter the setting will have to be higher than normal. After you get the tps right, then you should sync the tb's. Since you've already set the valves to spec you can let that be. Most of these bikes are pretty bulletproof if the person maintaining them knows what to do.

I really like the way the bike looks without the oil cooler in the front. Has anyone else done this modification? It seems to me that the oil cooler isnt necessary most of the time or almost all of the time for me. That bike looks like someone dumped a fantasy list of aftermarket parts into it. That would definitely be a bike of the month if we were still doing that.

You're almost better off buying a lightly used one. Its taken the depreciation and more than likely has had any bugs fixed by the owner. I think you should be able to get a nearly new one for 8 thou or less. Fwiw the people I do know that own one all seem to enjoy theirs and havent really had many problems that I can recall. You cant say that about the new 8v motor

The extra bit of fairing on the Lemans will give you a better ride on the freeway than the Scura screen. Different tires, fairing, suspension setup, and exhaust all add up to a different ride. When you try to compare motorcycles its best to ride them on the same roads too. A freeway ride is going to give you a completely different experience than a twisty backroad. I have a Rosso Mandello and a friend of mine has a 2002 Lemans and I've ridden them back to back and there are major differences. They come mostly from suspension setup and the clipons are a lot higher on the lemans than mine. The engines are of course pretty close. You can put a 160 or a 170 size tire on the back and that changes things too. The main thing is that you love the bike!

Well, its the middle of winter at least up here in the northern hemisphere. Theres a pretty bad economy which lends to less motorcycle activity is another probable cause. The third and most likely reason is Moto Guzzi stopped making the v11 lemans and sport about 6 or 7 years ago now. Everyone in here has had their v11 for awhile now and reads the forum regularly and knows how to troubleshoot the bike. Its just getting to be a smaller more knowledgeable crowd by the year. We have had a few non v11 related subjects over the years which degenerated into virtual shouting matches between bike owners that would otherwise have gotten along very well. Maybe in the next few years we will have a new breed of v11 owner, and more new types of large mileage wear issues that will need to be discussed. In the meantime we still have the HOOTERS thread!

One of the cycle mags tested it against a harley and some other similar bikes and they really loved the Vintage. If you're going to get that type of motorcycle the Vintage is one of the best there is. The other cruiser type bikes weigh as much as 100 or more lbs than the guzzi. I test rode one and it seemed fine to me, although the shifter would take some getting used to.