callison

Yes. The Sport 1100i has an order of magnitude less vibration at the handlebars. We'll see soon enough is the added brace has any effect when it gets retrofitted to an early frame V11 Sport. I don't have the bracket mount point on my 2001, nor do I have the lower braces. No steering head fairing mount points either. That frame is dead though, twisted, bent and buckled, it will never see the street again. The "bastard" bike will be reborn again eventually. As what, I'm not certain. So much for that theory. Isn't this fun?

Thanks Nils. Perhaps the ninth digit in the VIN changed to a 2 when that attachment point was dropped from the design.

Mike, email me. I have a set of re-valved stock ones (Mike Stewart's former forks) and a source in England where you can pick up WP components from a wrecker. I have a spare Sach's rear shock too.

Thank God we don't have ones like this jewel in England. Here in California, the SUV drivers aren't intelligent enough to understand the concept of stop signs and stop lights. We'd never be able to teach them how to handle this bizarre maze!!! Swindon, England

Mea Culpa. That IS the drawing of the earlier spine frame. Ooops... No matter. The V11 Sport parts manual drawing (#20) shows it, but the shop manual drawing (pg 99 - maybe) does not. We know that there have been a number of frame changes since the inception of the V11 Sport. I was hoping someone with a 1999 or 2000 model would take a peak under the tank and see if there was one early on that might have been deleted at some point. As a matter of pure curiosity, I wonder if the extra mount would reduce the engine vibration that manifests itself in the handlebars. I'll know before too long I suppose, since my V11 Sport is getting a Sport 1100i frame, so I might as well use the mount point. I have to order that particular part though. First things first. Get the transmission case crack repaired.

How many V11 Sport and variants of that bike have the transmission mount point depicted as part #15 in the V11 Sports parts manual? My 2001 model sure doesn't have it, nor the frame attachment point for it. Is the parts manual drawing in error? Or has there been what amounts to a significant change in drivetrain support? And if so, have all of the cracked transmission cases been on the frame version without the middle engine support? Just curious.

The ever undiscrimating Carl will now state that even with the frame twisted, bent and the steering angle steepened even more because the spine is buckled under, the V11 Sport is stable and handles well. Either I'm a numb-butt (something my wife would probably not dispute) or it's damn near impossible to discern any change of handling from the engine being off-center in the frame. Even with the frame all fubar, the handling is not terribly diminished.

I must not be very discerning. I rode my V11 Sport 2000 miles after my accident with a bent frame. There was quite a noticeable bend to the left on the spine back where the gusseting for the headstock ends. The bike tracked straight and true, hands off even, at 90 mph.

My old R65 bimmer had a switch that could be "balanced" to the mid position allowing for both high and low beams to be on at the same time. Both filaments also blew out at the same time at oh:dark-thirty and I had to limp home eight miles on just the running lights in my turn signals. Let's just say that I don't encourage running both beams simultaneously except for the flash mode.

Dave, you're obviously a staunch Republican and will never feel comfortable leaning to the left... Actually, I have heard that an acquired characteristic of motorcycle riders is a reluctance to lean left as far as to the right because of the side stand. I don't know that I'd give that too much credence though. Personally, I do better on right hand curves simply because I know that no part of my body is hanging into oncoming traffic (let someone that drives on the "wrong" side of the road jump in here with their assessment of whether that's logical). Then again, maybe the torque reaction of a Guzzi has some effect here.

It's definitely going to be less fun for the first guy who has the rear end fall off of an MGS01 on the race track at high speed...

I don't know, certainly there shouldn't be any oil in it. Anybody out there have some feedback on this one? I've never wheelied this bike either. But - there is a threaded bolt hole on the opposite side of the boss from the crack and I suspect that the stress risers from the the sharp edges allow for the formation of a crack. So, I'm not the first one to have this happen eh? The bike has 30,000 miles on it - and no stunt riding.

Not the greatest of contrasts in the photo, so I've outlined the two oil puddle color areas in red. I've always wondered just where the transmission oil leaked at on my bike. Now that I've been tearing down the bike to replace the frame, I've found a crack on the top of my transmission at the top left frame mount boss. Lest you think that this crack is a result of the accident itself, let me assure that it is not. A month before the accident, I switched to Redline tranmission lube (great stuff BTW!!!). It is a light blue color. On the transmission case I have a puddle area, the smaller portion inside the boundaries of the puddle is blue - the Redline. The outer boundary of the puddle is black and older transmission lube. Stuff that has to have been there before the accident. While the accident may have exacerbated the crack, the crack appears to have been there BEFORE the accident. This is NOT an easy spot to look at either, I had to take the bike apart before I noticed it. It is under the frame mount tab at the rear of the spine and the injector fuel line sits atop that area as well as wiring and other stuff. So... if you have a mystery transmission leak, this might be where it is. The symptoms are a smell of burning oil after a bit of a ride, oil baked to the top of the exhaust crossover and little if any oil puddled under the bike. It doesn't puddle because the crack is at the top of the case and there is no static pressure while the bike is sitting. It takes gear motion to force it through the crack. What a wonderful thing to find! Now I get to learn how to work on the transmission and take it apart since I doubt that it can be heliarced with the fluid and gears in place. Too bad this transmission isn't under recall, I might have been able to get a warranty repair (warranty expired about the time of the accident anyway). It could be worse. I could have taken the accident money, bought a new Guzzi - and STILL had a transmission leak (my friendly "local" dealer who has a couple of new Guzzi's pretending they're old Triumphs and piddling on the floor).

The ninth digit might be a jig or frame version number. All of the posted recall numbers have 1 at the ninth place while my V11 Sport TT has a 2 (not under recall either btw). This particular frame has no headstock mount points for a fairing and I've been told that there was a production line change at about that time.

No. At least it won't start without one. You need the fuel pump to pressurize the injectors. And of course, the ECU needs the battery to get everything initiated. I would be extremely reluctant to remove the battery from a running bike too. It is a possibility that the ECU will get fried, a very expensive experiment.

Hey Mike! I don't know if you caught my post earlier this week about technical get togethers in the S.F. area, but since you're a master mechanic (something I most definitely am not!), perhaps you'd like to "host" one. I have a (nearly) undamaged V11 Sport fork leg from my accident that would be a real good item to use for showing how to change fork fluids. Interested???

Mike, if all you're concerned with is the faded needle, it is not too difficult to pop the bezel off, re-paint the tach needle and put the thing back together. If you break the glass, I have spares. If the tach is not operating, that's a different story, I haven't finished tracing the schematic, plus, the IC chip on the Veglia's is not available commercially as near as I can tell. A new board would have to be cut to use the commercially available IC chip of the same nomenclature. I've taken to just re-posting my approach to this on the MGCL, but here is an exerpt from that concerning tach bezel removal... As for removing the tach to begin with? On the California, it's a bit of a nuisance. For the 97 California, remove the headlight, the crosspiece between the tach and speedometer and the other housing screw at the rear of the tach as well as the rear cover of the instrument light cluster. Inside the cluster is a screw into the tach housing. Remove that and as I recall (I am going from memory here and I have certifiable CRS - Can't Remember S?it) you can remove the tach and detach the wires. Putting it back on is an amount of fun equal to or greater than the original process. Be sure to have beer available to relieve the stress but take care to not imbibe so much that the process becomes impossible. The (somewhat) easy part is next. Lay the tach face down on a piece of cardboard or an old dishtowel (go ahead, use a clean dish towel, just don't expect me to explain it to your wife...) and using a very small flat blade screwdriver, start prying the bezel lip upwards away from the tach case that it is rolled over on. Just do a little bit, move a few degrees around the case and do it again. A little bit of lift each time. After you've gone around once or twice, you can use a bigger flat blade screwdriver to pry the bezel lip to a nearly vertical position. Once you can pull the bezel off of the tach housing, you can repaint the tach needle. Now put it back together... Put the guts back in and with the bezel face down on the towel, or yesterdays newspaper since your wife caught you using her favorite towel with the little house and white picket fence on it and you're now out in a cold garage with no beer because she took that away too, and gently start bending the bezel lip back down around the tach housing. A bit at a time and work your way around. At some point it becomes possible to take a wooden stick or something similar and a small hammer finish mashing the lip down tight to the tach case. You can also use some pliers for the final crimp. Wrap the plier jaws in masking tape first so you don't mar the tach bezel if you choose to go this route.

94mm is the largest reliable bore size according to Mike Rich. 95mm is tolerable, but reliablility suffers some. 97mm is an accident waiting to happen. Not enough area left for the cylinder head gasket to reliably seal, the pushrod to bore metal depth is so thin, the walls tend to crack, the solid copper head gaskets for this large of a bore can yank the studs out of the cylinders, the cases have to be bored (forget Gillardoni, they slide around), pushrod clearance etc. and the list goes on. The 1212 figure applies if you have a stroker crank. I think you can still get stroker cranks from Dynotec in Germany, but RaceCo is out the market and I have the last stroker crank they ever produced with the tapered endpiece for a street bike. bore (mm)____________90_____94_____95______96_____97 stroke (mm)___________80_____80_____80______80_____80 displacement (cc)____1,017___1,110___1,134___1,158___1,182 bore (mm)____________90_____94______95_____96_____97 stroke (mm)___________82_____82_____82______82_____82 displacement (cc)____1,043___1,138___1,162___1,186___1,211 This the 82mm stroke crank I've set aside for an 82x94 engine later on.

Not quite. Power tends to make noise, but noise is not necessarily power. If it were, all of those Harley's blatting around my neighborhood with straight pipes would be putting more than 50 horsepower to the ground.

It does sound like a good excuse for a barbecue. Rich, Ural welcom to come...

Hope you didn't break the wheel in some fashion where you got hurt.

Something has occurred to me after my motorcycle accident. I have damaged parts hanging around my shed that might be useful for maintenance demonstrations. I have one fork tube that has damage light enough that it could be used to show how to change the fork oil. I don't know now to change fork oil. I also have some old clipons that could be used to hold the fork tube in a vice without damage. I will have a rear shock available at some point that could also be used for a demonstration on how to either change the shock fluid or spring. The brake rotors are garbage, but the carriers are fine. If someone is going to Spieglerize their brake disks, I have carriers that we can swap to minimize down time or inconvenience. All of this is in the S.F. region (90 miles for me). Maybe this is something to do during the cruddy weather during the holidays. We need a truly adept mechanical type (not me, I have four Guzzis and only one runs - does that say anything?) to lead the way. Mike Stewart or somebody - are you game?

Göran Thyni did a good job with the photos. I had no idea that there was a picture anywhere of the rim protectors. My suggestion on them though, is to be 2 or 3 sets (they're not that expensive) so that you can cover at least 2/3rds of the rim, even better - all of it. This dramatically reduces the likelihood of scarring the rim. I use one of the Harbor Freight tire doohickeys to break the bead. It's a horrible piece of equipment, I don't recommend it although the very long and robust tire iron is very useful. Save the weights you remove. You use them in combinations with duct tape to determine how much weight to apply to the rim when you do the static balancing. Weights you can buy from the local shop. The balancing jig is something else. A guy in Los Angeles made mine (I've long since lost the information). It cost about $65 and is good to 1/4 gram for sensitivity. Pieces of 2x2 board space the rim and disk rotor away from the floor. Don't let them slip - and it's damn near impossible not to. I use the axle slipped back through the bearings as the pivot for the large tire iron and two common type common tire irons to hold the rubber lip in place while the large iron pops the rest of the lip over the edge of the rim. I use household spray cleaner in copious amounts to lube the rubber and rim. 409 in my case. Whatever seems appropriate in locations worldwide that don't have the ubiquitous USA household cleaner. The cleaner is dual purpose here, really triple purpose. You get to lube the tire, clean the rim and prep the weight stick location. What else? Oh yeah, get good stands for the bike. I use Pit Bull stands and do both ends at the same time. You have to remove the brake calipers prior to removing the wheels, everything else is pretty obvious. Have lot's of explitives at your disposal and make certain no small children are within earshot. It's a pain to change tires, but you can save a lot of money and time by not enslaving yourself to your local shop. Use the money you save to buy something you need at the shop instead. Rear tires are easier than front if the front is dual disk (and our bikes are). Really, really, really work hard to make certain that your tire iron does not exert pressure against a disk rotor, or that the wheel presses a disk rotor against the ground or anything when working on the wheel. I bent a rotor and had to put up with badly working brakes until I finished the rotor bend job by hitting a car.

Are a 2002 Sport's tires tubeless? Yes Do you change your own tires? Yes If not where do you get it done .... cycle shop or auto tire shop? Cycle shop I always changed my dirt bike tires but these big road slicks intimidate me. How do you keep from scarfing the rims? Rim protectors. Is balancing required? Yes Do you have to remove a front disk to get the tire off? No, but removing the disks will keep them from getting bent by accident. Do not ask how I know...

Pass. I'll wait for the Celtic Young Women version...