GuzziMoto

I would think the Guzzi is using AN style fittings on the end of that line, but I don't know. The bit about excessive tightening damaging the threads was, I thought, referring to the NPT fittings which are tapered. Excessive tightening will damage tapered threads. If it is, as I suspect, using AN style connections which use a tapered seat and not tapered threads, you should be fine. You may need to disassemble and clean the tapered seat. There may be some gunk or debris that is preventing the tapered seat from sealing. Keep in mind, if it is using AN style fittings the threads are not a sealing surface. I have seen people use thread tape or other thread sealants on AN style fittings. That is counter-productive, don't do that. If it is a tapered thread fitting thread sealant can help. But if it has a tapered seat and not tapered threads the threads themselves are not a sealing surface and should not be treated as such. Now, if it is using a tapered thread as NPT fittings do, seal the threads and tighten till it justafeet (that is Italian for "just fits").

AN fittings are an old standard. AN comes from Army Navy as I understand it. And they are a standard tapered fitting.

Good point...man, so sorry that happened to her! Crap! I have noticed a lot of wear on the tread center with the V11 than my other bikes... even some with way more hp! Probably some too due to deceleration on the center going into the corner, and then acceleration out on the straights. I hardly use the rear brake except for lightly trailing it into a corner to set the rear end on decel. I bet with all the engine compression braking on decel, there is a lotta raggity wear on the tire from the lumpy engine 'tugs'. BLIGHT Actually, she wears it is a badge of honor. She knows how, when racing, novice racers typically low side and expert racers typically high side. So she wears her highside as a badge of honor. But it was spectacular. I was amazed at how well the V11 held up, though. I would expect a bike that heavy to suffer more damage in a high side than it did. Luckily she was wearing her Aerostitch suit and it did a good job protecting her with its padding.

Yeah, even when it is right it can be a bit abrupt. Way back when, the wife and I used to do BattlTrax (basically AutoCross for motorcycles). The wife was running the course fast, and going into a tight turn she closed the throttle a little too hard. The back end of the bike started to come around, then it caught and highsided her. It was nasty looking, she got some decent height. But she walked away. Even rode the bike home. So, yeah, it can be a bit abrupt. Even with everything right. Part of that is being a big twin, part is the shaft drive, and part is the fuel injection mapping. Sometimes you just need to feather the clutch.

You may have already done this, but standard Guzzi set up is to run the absolute minimum of throttle cable slack. It helps control the throttle better and that removes some of the herky jerky behavior.

The other possible issue with converting to a manual retracting side stand, in addition to the switch, is stand deployment / retraction. On the V11, you have a long tab that is used not only to put the stand down but also to flip the stand up while sitting on the bike. Some may not have an issue, but on my Daytona I would not be able to deploy and / or retract the stand while sitting on the bike without adding a similar tab to that stand. Not un-doable, but something that I would need to do.

I hate the auto-retracting side stands on my Daytona and Lario. The stand on the wifes V11 works great. It has a real nice tab that makes it easy to deploy. I am not 100% sure the tab would fit as well around the your header pipes as it does the V11 header pipes, but I would think it is close enough. If the V11 side stand was easier to find used I would get one. But it seems to be, like most things Guzzi, a bit hard to find. It seems like it would be easy enough to modify the auto-retracting stand. But having said that I have not gotten round to it yet. Not on either bike.

When trailering I always want it locked down as tight as possible. The trailers suspension is what "takes the bumps". There are options now that allow you to secure the bike without compressing the suspension, some lock it down by the wheels and some simply act as a solid member that goes in the suspension to keep it from compressing its normal amount. In my racing days I drove all over the country with racebikes. I got really good at securing the bikes. I even had an issue that bent a wheel on the trailer, the bikes didn't budge.

Must be like me visiting the states and not seeing Jeeps. I swear I see a million more Jeeps here than over there. Maybe Americans are smarter than us. Ciao After buying a Jeep a few years back we realized that where we live Jeeps are F'ing everywhere. It is one of the most common vehicles on the road around here. We just got back from Southwestern Colorado and Moab, Utah. Jeeps were everywhere there as well, but I don't think there are any more of them there than here. But that is definitely a better place to drive a Jeep than here. Glad the trip to the motherland went well. We had a great time in the southwest. Can't wait to go back.

Sorry I missed this. I was on vacation in Moab. The forks on my wifes V11 seemed OK. But I had them apart to do some servicing, I decided to put them together without the springs to feel what the dampening curve felt like. What I found was that there was zero compression dampening until the forks were near bottom. It was because of the holes in the tube, they let oil flow freely until the pistion was past the holes. It was only at that point that the oil was forced to flow through either the piston valving or the adjuster. This meant that the adjuster only could affect the bottoming of the fork. The rest of the travel the adjuster did nothing. As I understand it there are more than one version of Marzocchi forks on the various V11 models, along with Ohlins. I don't know how the later V11 forks are, but the wifes early red frame V11 forks had no compression dampening until I blocked off one of the two holes on the compression side fork leg. Sadly it has been a few years, so I don't remember the details. But as I recall hers had two holes and I blocked off one of them. I also changed oil viscosity. I found that when I was forcing the oil to flow through the valving I actually needed thinner oil. I think you will be happy with the results. I know my wife is.

I would think the biggest limitation on fuel flow would be the size of the main jet. I can't believe that the petcock can't flow as much fuel as your main jets can if it is clean and in good shape. Next limit on fuel flow would be the needle valve that lets fuel into the carb float bowl. The size of that opening determines how much fuel can get into the carb. Again, I can't believe that your needle valves can flow more fuel than your petcock if it is clean and in good shape.. But a dirty or clogged petcock, or needle valve, could be an issue. I suspect the behavior your seeing has to do with fueling, and closing the throttle and re-opening it may be adding extra fuel. But it may be simply that your main jets are not big enough. Fueling issues can be hard to figure out. But I have my doubts that your petcock is the root of your fueling issues unless there is something physically wrong with it. Here is a simple test, pull the fuel line of the carb and let the fuel run into a bucket. You can see the max rate of flow that petcock supports. It is likely that it will flow more fuel per minute than your motor can consume. You can actually measure its flow per minute if you want. If that flows enough fuel, do the same test but do it at the carb. Meaning, pull the float bowl off the carb with it in a bucket and see how quick the fuel flows into the bucket. As before, you can calculate the fuel flow per minute and see if it is more or less than your max fuel consumption per minute at WFO.

Oh, wait... the 440 was a 2-stroke, right? I was thinking 440 4-stroke. OMG that thing must have been beast. Yeah, it was a smoker. It was the big 500cc two stroke motor with a short stroke. So it rev'd out much better. It is a beast. There are two versions here in the USA, the '94 model year was much tamer, a way easier bike to ride. They woke it up for '95, but I didn't know that when I bought mine. I was expecting a much easier bike to ride. I was blown away. In the end, I decided it was much better than the tamer '94 model. A happy mistake. I mean, I can't ride it anywhere near its potential, but that much power in a dirtbike just makes me smile.

I really loved the power it had. The immediate hit. It seemed like it was capable of bending time and space. The suspension was fine, better than the other two. But neither of the other two was bad. The power, though, just made me grin. A stupid, shit eating, grin.

This is a complicated question if you start to really think about it. On the surface, I would reflexively say 20% more power, please. But then, my favorite dirtbike EVER is a 1995 KTM 440. It has way more power in the dirt then I could ever need, making it the most fun I have ever had in the dirt. I was not much, if any, faster on it than I was on my DR350 or DRZ400. But I always smiled more when riding it. While I get the whole "It is more fun to ride a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow" thing ( I have owned mostly smaller bikes like an FZR400) I also have found that too much power is just enough. But, digging deeper, often when you improve an engine design to get more power out of it you also make it more efficient so that it might not really be an either / or question. Additionally, as others have mentioned, 20% less weight would also improve both aspects (power to weight AND fuel mileage). But if I had to choose one thing to improve by 20% it would be power, with weight being next. I would accept 20% better fuel mileage, but it isn't something I would get excited about. I ride strictly for fun, there is no fun in fuel mileage for me. We had a Buell X1 and a Buell Blast, both were immensely fun to ride. But if I had to pick one over the other I would much rather I still had the X1. In fact, if it wasn't for the mechanical issues with the Harley motor I would likely still have it. The Blast was always a lot of fun while you were riding it, but after you got off the thrill faded faster, so that next time you had to choose which to ride (the X1 or the Blast) you were much more likely to choose the X1 (assuming it was not broken down). The Blast got amazing fuel mileage, but the X1 would lift the front wheel under power. I really have no use for a motorcycle that goes 200 mph, but there are other ways of being fast. The X1 was fast in a completely usable way; around town, stoplight to stop light, or out on a country road. I used to say I prefer "quick" motorcycles to "fast" motorcycles. The X1 was seriously quick without a 200 mph top speed thing going on. My Daytona is the closest Guzzi I have to that X1. But the Griso and the V11 could easily be that X1 with 20% more power.

I have mixed feeling on this. For starters, I have no need for a motorcycle SUV. But a new(er) Guzzi motor in a sporting chassis would be something I could be interested in. But it would have to be better than the Guzzi's I already have at this point to justify another Guzzi. And I don't know if this "new" motor is really much of an improvement. It doesn't make much, if any, additional power (I think three out of four of our Guzzi's make more power). Perhaps it makes more power per liter, but that is not really something I care about from a Guzzi. Maybe that would matter if it was a lot lighter, but it isn't. What Pete and others have being doing with the 1400 motor is interesting, But I am not sure that is really it either. Perhaps if they had developed a replacement for the 8 valve CARC motor, something with some balls. And put that in a Griso chassis for a sporty bike. But right now I really don't see a bike in Guzzi's line up that is being made to appeal to me. There are plenty of cool and interesting bikes out there, but sadly I own most of the Guzzi's that I want, and the ones I don't own they no longer make. A modern Le Mans. A Modern Lario. A Modern V11. A modern Daytona. A modern Griso. I would be interested in any of the above. But since they don't make such bikes, and since we already own originals of all but the Le Mans, I'll just keep waiting. Besides, it leaves me with more money to throw at the wife's Jeep. That thing is a money pit.

Pretty sure Moto Guzzi might have also been "only guessing about what they might have been doing or why . . ." Holding over (or "using up") the 1100 Sport clamps with the new, short RedFrame certainly may have affected trail enough to contribute to early reports of "instability", especially compared to the "typical" running-on-rails Guzzis. Moto Guzzi looks to have acted early to change the perceived handling characteristics on the early RedFrame. Moving, in 2002, to introduce the longer frame, different forks/ clip-ons, wider rear wheel/tire, and extensively braced subframes along with less race oriented tires. I remember reading an article in Road Racing World a long time ago about a guy who built a frame with adjustable steering head. He could adjust rake and trail, all the way to zero rake as I recall. He found that as long as trail was correct just about any rake could be perfectly stable. Rake does change the way a motorcycle steers, but it only makes the motorcycle less stable if trail is not properly matched to the rake. Additionally, the wife and I have owned two Buells over the years, and they tend to push the envelope of conventional wisdom. They ran something like 22 or 23 degrees of rake and were perfectly stable, without a steering damper. I even raced mine, an X1, like that. The guy in tech warned me of all the problems I was going to have running without said steering damper. But it was perfectly fine, steered beautifully. For comparison, I raced a TZ250 for a few years. That also had something like 22 degrees of rake, but without a steering damper it was near impossible to ride. I know, I tried. In fact, even with a steering damper it was a tricky bike to ride fast. You had to be careful about body movements, you could cause a wobble by shifting if you weren't careful. I let a friend ride it at a track event and he only did one session before calling it a day. It was too delicate for his brutish style. Lastly, a related example of the effects of rake and trail can be seen in our Jeep. It has adjustable control arms, so we can in effect adjust rake and trail. If I lengthen the lower arms or shorten the upper arms it adds rake (castor) and increases trail. This results in less responsive steering but it increases the effort required to turn. Doing the opposite increases the rake of the steering axis and decreases trail. This makes the tires turn more directly in relation to direction of travel, as a result it also makes the steering more responsive and less effort is required. But too much of that results in over aggressive steering which is flighty and requires too much effort to maintain the desired direction of travel. So, in the end it is about finding the right balance of rake and trail for the desired characteristics.

My two cents; There is nothing extreme, or even "tippy" about a 24.5 degree steering head angle. And relaxing that angle half a degree in and of itself is a very small difference. I would be more interested in what the different versions have for trail, if there is a difference between versions. Also, it is not normal, or even desirable, to adjust rake by mis-machining the triple clamps. Since the steering pivot is at a given rake having triples mis-machined to give the the steering more or less rake than what is in the frames steering axis results in a rake that changes as you turn the steering assembly. A much better way to adjust steering feel and stability would be to either change the rake of the steering head and / or change the amount of offset in the triple clamps to change the amount of trail. I don't know if the different part numbers refer to triple clamps the are mis-machined so that the result is a more relaxed steering rake or it they simply are machined with slightly less offset to increase the amount of trail. Increasing the amount of trail would typically increase the stability of the bike and make it steer a little heavier. As feel is subjective, that may be what they thought was required to appeal to their customers. I am only guessing about what they might have done or why, but I am pretty sure about how geometry works..

You could try to fit a gear set from a different model, like a Cali, but I can't imagine it would make a difference for the better. You could reduce rpms at a given speed by gearing up at the rear, but the trade off would be slower to accelerate and likely the same top speed or slightly less top speed. If the V11 was pulling all the way to redline in top gear you could get more top speed out of it by gearing. But it doesn't pull like that stock. So, unless your V11 is considerably better than stock I doubt you would get more speed out of it with gearing. All you could do is lower the rpms at any given speed, along with making it slower if you gear it taller. Something to remember about gearing is your final drive gear ratio is actually multiplying the power output of the engine / transmission before it gets to the rear tire. A taller gear ratio is a lower gear ratio number. That means the power at the rear tire is reduced with a taller gear ratio. If you are racing, it is very useful to gear for specific tracks. You want to be able to pull max rpm at the fastest parts of any given track. That is how you balance acceleration and top speed at a given track. Guzzi racers would have a few gear ratios to chose from by using gear sets from different versions of the same basic Guzzi. But by and large Guzzi racers never seemed to worry about gearing as much as everyone else. For example, we would often change the rear gearing on our Ducati's once or twice during a race weekend. But I don't think I ever saw guys racing Guzzi's change their gearing at the track.That may in part be because of how much work it was, but they also did not seem as worried about it. They tended to pick their gear ratio before they arrived at the track and from then on they left it as is and rode it with what they had. Additionally, I proved to myself that it is better to have gearing that is too short than gearing that is too tall. You loose more time on a race track with gearing that is too tall than you do with gearing that is too short. I once F'd up and had gearing on my FZR 400 that meant that the top of 6th gear was about what it had been at the top of 5th gear. That meant I was hitting redline in 6th before the start finish line and had to cruise down the rest of the straight at part throttle to keep it from banging into the rev limiter (which would actually make it even slower). Despite that issue down the straight, I set my fastest laps up until then on that bike with that gearing. I learned that I had previously been running gearing that was too tall. And I learned that gearing is power. Sorry, I seemed to have drifted a little....

We have visited Colorado Springs twice so far, likely will be back this fall as we are passing through to Ouray and Moab. Not only is Pikes Peak awesome, so is the Garden of the Gods. Nice place to live I think.

The 8 valve motors also get fairly poor fuel mileage and do not really make a lot of power for their size. Mostly they seem to have a high amount of fuel consumed per horsepower made. Just not a very efficient motor. Combustion chamber design and cam specs likely to blame, but that is just a guess. If they had made the 8 valve motor back around 1990 it would have been a good motor design, minus the issue of the valve train destroying itself. But in todays day and age it does not stand out. As to the reasons it eats it valve train, the coating does not seem to be the root cause as other motors use those coatings and don't eat their valve trains. Also, it is possible that the "mayo in the oil" issue may play a part, but it seems unlikely as the failures became a near 100% certainty. More likely they got the spring rates wrong, as flat tappet cams require the correct spring rate, and since they are swapping to roller tappets without having to change the spring rate, it seems that the spring rate may be too stiff for happy flat tappets. You generally need stiffer springs for roller tappets. Anyway, if you like the 8 valve Griso motor and want to put it into a spine frame it would be tricky to do but not impossible. The main hurdle is the alternator is probably in the way of the frame. So you would need to address that.

The Daytona / Centauro motors are the ones with "high wear"? Are you sure? Pretty sure the 8 valve Griso motor design was so F'd up they had to retro-fit roller lifters as the valve train was trashing itself. It seems they did not get the original design right. Perhaps the roller version will last, we don't know yet. But I would not call the 8 valve motor a better designed motor. But for me, the main thing that puts the Daytona / Centauro motor ahead of the 8 valve motor is I prefer the feel, the raw character, of the old 4 valve motor. The new 8 valve motor is too boring for me.

Loeb is an amazing talent. When he was dominating WRC it still fun to watch as I felt like I was witnessing an era, something I will be able to remember many years from now. And I was right. It was an era. Watching the bikes is cool, but honestly it is some of the special cars that they have run there that really are the top draw.

You can fit a 4 valve per cylinder motor from a Daytona or Centauro (the Centauro would be the one to use, the Daytona is far too valuable), but you can't easily fit just the heads as you could with the V65. The drive for the valve train is too different compared to the V65 where the Lario used the same push rod set up. There are a fair number of cross parts, but often the parts are only close and not the same. Like while you may be able to fit a speedo drive from a different model the gear ratio might be off and thus the speedo would read wrong. Besides, there are more V11's out there than most other Guzzi's, I can't believe you would have less trouble finding parts for, say, a Centuaro or Daytona. I have considered putting a Centauro motor in my Griso, Not sure if / when I will be able to pull it off. But I am pulling the motor and trans as I have to replace the clutch. While it is that far apart it seems like a good time to do the swap. I was sold on the Griso when the first prototypes were shown. The original had the Centauro motor anyway. As I have a Daytona, I must say I find that motor to be more enjoyable than the CARC 2 valve motor. Maybe if I had an 8 valve Griso, but those had more problems with their design than the old 4 valve motor from the Daytona and Centauro. So in hindsight I am glad I don't have one of them. Anyway, back on track. Yes, there is a fair bit of parts swappability. But often what seems like the same part on two different Guzzi's is really almost the same part. Sometimes that can be good, like when I put a Cali transmission in my Daytona. Other times it is bad, like when the parts work but either not as well or not quite right.

Yeah, it is paved all the way to the top. The parking area is not paved as I recall, but the shop there at the top has really good plain hot doughnuts. I thought it was more of a spectacle before they paved it to the top, but that doesn't take away from the skill required to do what Chris or any of the other racers competing display. I briefly met Chris, he seems like a good guy. He does make a few mistakes, near as I can tell, during that run, but not nearly as many as I suspect I would make. That is a hard course to memorize. And they don't display turn markers the way the IOM TT does. The only signage for turns is the same sort of signage you and I would have as we drive up to the top as tourists. They may have even removed some of the tourist signage. I am not sure. I really did not like the camera panning the way it did, I would have enjoyed it more with the camera fixed. It could have been looking forward, it could have been looking back at Chris. But panning like that, especially panning as he was going into turns really took away how tight some of those switchbacks are. The combination of panning and the fish eye lense I did not care for. The sound of that twin was sweet. The speed, how quickly he hit 100, was cool. He has a little slide at the 7:40 mark that was scary. It was a little slide, but it happened where there was no run off, just down. You can tell how the little twin is loosing power as he gets near the top. But to be fair, the first time we went there we parked at the top, got out, and tried to run across the parking lot to the shop with the doughnuts. We could not run. We also ran out of power at that altitude, more than the KTM did.

I too have experienced tank swelling when using ethanol / gas. We have had it around here for a long time, more then 20 years, so it has become normal to me. The issues I have seen from it include tank swell, which is mainly a problem if you take the tank off and leave it off for a period of time. I have found that if I empty the tank and leave the cap open, however, it isn't a problem. But leaving the tank off with fuel in it for any length of time is a bad idea if the tank is plastic. I have run into it with both the wife's V11 and my Griso. The Griso tank fits down in between the frame rails. I left it off once with gas in it for a few weeks and when I went to put it back on it would not fit all the way back down between the frame rails. The wifes V11 has also had tank swell issues, so I coated that one on the inside with an epoxy. Before the epoxy it also developed blisters, but only under the harness that attaches the tank bag. Interesting. Oddly, we had two Buells with plastic tanks and I never noticed an issue with them. I have also had plastic tanked dirt bikes without issue. I also had a snow blower where they used some sort of plain rubber tubing for the fuel line when they built it. The ethanol gas ate that fuel line and turned it into something that looked and acted like taffy. It was funny. But to me, that is what happens when you don't use the right material for the job. If you try to use cheap rubber tubing for fuel line the fuel will eat it up. I still recall the thread we had about ethanol in gas and the idea that you can remove it by adding water to the fuel. At some point the ethanol will separate from the gas, then remove the water and the ethanol and you should have ethanol free gas. If I had more time I would love to test that. Start with ethanol free gas, add a specific amount of ethanol, then add a specific amount of water. After separating, see if the water and ethanol add up to the water / ethanol you removed from the gas. I am curious if you will actually end up with the right amount of water and ethanol in the end.Not saying you won't, just curious how it would fare in a real test. But I am so used to ethanol in my gas that I can't get worked up enough to put that much effort into it.