Lucky Phil

Gearboxes don't really suffer the condensation issue like an engine. An engine produces a LOT of water vapour starting from cold and that's what contaminates the oil and needs to evaporate off. Short runs just kills engines as does short start stop stuff like shuffling cars around in driveways and workshops. Doesn't matter what oil you use either it just kills them. Gearboxes not so much, foaming is an issue with gearboxes esp if they are overfilled a bit. Phil

When Kenny Roberts was in a battle for the world title back in 80 or 81, can't remember which with Randy Mamola he said that when he saw Randy showing up at the track with his girlfriend at the time he knew he had the title won, lol. Good old "take no prisoners" Kenny R. Riders these days are racing from 3 years old esp in Italy and Spain. I don't think it makes that much difference anymore. Plenty of GP and WSB winners these days have a wife and kids during their racing careers (Johnny Rea, Alvaro Bautista, Maverick Vinales, Troy Bayliss to name a few) Getting married didn't slow down Casey Stoner either. The racing world has changed. A lot perform better with a partner/wife as the sport is now a pressure cooker and they need the emotional support. back in the 80, 90s and before that after the racing it was party time in the paddock and everyone get smashed together. Now it's whisked away with your family and PA. Phil

Bristol spent the whole war getting this engine half way reliable and producing power and at the end of the day the advantage it offered was completely negated from about 1941 onwards due to the development of high octane fuels. Pre war when fuel was pretty rubbish it offered a full point of additional compression according the Harry Ricardo's experiments. A classic case of flogging a dead horse or continuing with a design that you should simply have shelved years earlier. Bristol bet the future of the company on the sleeve valve engine and failed. Rolls Royce and others but esp RR took a proven design and just kept refining it until it was powerful and reliable. A lesson there in that. Dogged development of a fundamentally sound design produces success. Very much like the evolution of the motorcycle front fork. Phil

joe.caruso@ntlworld.com Phil

You might need to try calling to the geriatric brain dead inhabitants at wildguzzi. You know the ones who's brains are dulled and befuddled by all that smoke they keep breathing in around the "camp fire" Phil

https://www.motiveproducts.com/collections/brake-bleeder-kits You can buy decent ones now for about half the price of these. I've had mine for 8 years or so. Phil

It's best to avoid the old pump the pedal and/or lever bleeding process if you can on older vehicles most especially. It's not uncommon for corrosion and contaminants in the system to be at the end of the master cylinder where the piston and seal never get to in normal operation. Then you flush the fluid or bleed the brakes using the old pump the lever/pedal style and the seal is now pushed all the way down to the bottom of the master cylinder bore where it never normally reaches and bingo the seal is damaged. Similar reason for changing the slave cylinders on old drum brakes when you fit new brake shoes. If you don't when the slave piston is pushed all the way back into the cylinder fitting the new shoes it wrecks the seals 90% of the time. Pressure bleeding is better and safer these days and the bleeders are cheap to buy. You also don't get air sucking past the bleed screw threads giving a false reading of bubbles which often happens using a hand pump vacuum bleeder. Clutches don't have the same issue as the master cylinder and slave pistons always move full travel in use. Phil

The cover is a bit of a pain to start the threads but there's no way in hell I'm removing the whole sump to change the filter. I'd rather use care starting the thread correctly than do that. You can always mark the location of where the proper thread start is on the cap and sump to assist the process of re installing the cap. Phil

No but removing a pressure switch on the delivery side of the oiling circuit and therefore creating an open delivery circuit won't help the fact the pump has an air lock on the suction side of the circuit. Using a syringe to pump oil from the delivery side into the pump, primes the pump and also the suction side if you are lucky so it will no longer be devoid of oil and the pump will be primed and be able to suck oil. Your experience with your friends car was almost certainly a bit of good fortune and the pump just needed more running to prime. Phil

Een scherpe slag met een hamer van 1/2 kg met een fuseestang of lange ringsleutel op het gereedschap, wees voorzichtig. Je kunt ook de carterplaat helemaal verwijderen om het filter te vervangen. Phil

Not really. Re read my scenario and you might understand the scenario better. I've had this issue on a Ducati ST2 front brakes with a badly worn wheel bearing. Not saying it's the issue for the OP but it's worth spending 5 min to check the wheel bearings. Brake pads only clear the disk by maybe .005" thousands of an inch in normal operation when the brakes are released so it only requires the pads being pushed back 1/2 mm total to lose the brakes entirely. In the case of the Ducati front brakes you got good lever after riding in a straight section of road and coming to a stop. Full lever and normal travel. Take off and ride it around a corner and the next stop the lever's coming back to the bar. Give the lever a second pump and they're back to normal as is the next stop if you rode in a straight piece of road. Throw in a corner and you lost the lever again. Lateral wheel movement during cornering pushing the pads back but not in straight line riding. Phil

Well Tooraks more likely fiscally but you couldn't drive one around the roads there. Interestingly a guy I worked with 25 years ago owned an immaculate T model Ford, fully restored, like new. I asked him what it was worth to sell and the answer was probably 5 or 6 grand. I was a bit surprised and asked why so little for an immaculate piece of history like that. he said because they are pretty much impossible to use on modern roads and in traffic so there was no market for the drive an old car for fun demographic which made sense to me. It would be a nightmare in modern traffic. Melbourne's approaching 6 million people now Mick, it's a bit of a nightmare traffic wise. Phil

I looked at the Wiki link and there was an image there of the iconic Bugatti type35 which reminded me of the one that's seen on the streets of my suburb from time to time. From a quick internet surf the last one sold was in 2022 for 4 million euros. Quite a car to be pottering about in in the Melbourne suburbs. Phil

Not sure if I've posted this before. Danish band Choir of young believers from 15 years ago or so. Theme song from a very good Danish Police series "The Bridge" which is worth a viewing itself. The lead singer died not so long ago, real shame.

I'd be looking at your rear wheel bearings first thing just to be safe. Don't bother with squatting down and trying to twist it, grab a 3 foot length of timber and put some tape on it to protect the paint and stick it between the swingarm and tyre sidewall and lever the wheel and see if it moves. The situation is when the bearings are shot badly enough cornering forces mean the wheel twists a little which pushes the brake pads back into the calliper enough to lose the brake. Then some straight riding and a few pumps on the pedal brings them back onto the disk. If you've picked up some rattly vibes in the footpegs lately thats also a good sign of bad rear wheel bearings. Phil

No not really. Apart from the reduction in frictional wear from repeated use the threads in the threaded hole see the same physical stresses whether a stud or a bolt in this application. When you torque up a cylinder stud on a Guzzi or Ducati or many other engines as an example you can feel that long stud twisting under the torque load just like a long bolt. That torque is transmitted into the threaded hole just like a bolt but with without the thread frictional loss. The frictional loss is carried by the nut threads in this instance. Phil

From an engineering perspective it makes zero difference whether it's stud or a bolt and nut. If it's something thats coming on and off all the time a stud would be preferable but otherwise it doesn't matter. It's easier to buy a decent grade of bolt than a stud as well. An interesting aside, all the load on a threaded hole or nut is taken by the first 6 threads and just over 60% of that is taken by the first 2 full threads in the hole or nut. From memory it's like 36% for the first full thread and 25% for the second thread and it tapers off for the last 4. Phil

Ha I needed to go back and re watch the second one to realise they were females. Phil

There's a mile of difference between getting a classic bike for free and purchasing one. No point owning an old classic that is mechanically sad either. For me they either run well and are reliable and therefore enjoyable or don't bother at all. Nothing worse than an old classic that's "got some issues" when 99% weren't that great to ride when they were newish let alone 3/4 or more worn out. I actually know people that have indeed been given or received bargain old classic motorcycles and it's turned out to be a poisoned chalice. What do you do when that gifted Ducati bevel drive that kinda runs but jumps out of gears a bit and is a bit noisy turns out to need a $10,000 engine rebuild. What do 99% of people do with it then? Sell it as a basket case OR screw it back together and try and sell it to some one that's not up with the cost of old bevel drive parts and then pass the shock onto them. When you are interested in buying a Vincent for example you don't just go out and buy one, well not if you're smart you don't. You join the VOC and generally wait for a known good one to come on the market via contacts so it provenance is know along with the owner. You can just buy one blind but that can easily lead to the multi tens of thousands of dollars in outlay after you find out its mechanical details. If someone offered me a Bevel drive Ducati that "looked ok" I'd be budgeting and extra $10,000 on top for the engine alone. If I got away with any less I'd consider that a win. Oh and ten grand wouldn't cover labour just parts. Has anyone checked out what a set of OEM replacement mufflers cost for a Honda 4 or Z900. Of course some are happy to pay good money for 3/4 clapped out rubbish with non standard major components and wallow in the dream I guess. Old classic bikes.....beware. There's very little place for emotion in that department. Unless money's no object of course. As an aside I'm quite shocked at how little a V11 Sport is worth in this country. I was looking at Bikesales.com here in Aus a few days ago and the money people are asking for what was a pretty pedestrian model Guzzi back in the day like the 850T series is a joke when a V11 sport can be had for 7 or 8 grand and is hard to sell at that money! An 850T turned into a sports bike for 11,500 bucks! Thats what "emotion" does to the "classic" market. Want a better solution. Look for a current bike that's going to be a future classic. Less risk, less outlay and a far superior motorcycle. Phil

The pressure switch is on the delivery side of the pump. If the pump is not picking up oil removing the pressure switch won't do anything except give you access to that side of the pump and use a syringe of oil to try and prime the pump from the delivery side. That or clamp the breather hose and pressurise the crankcase with 5 psi of shop air. Or pull the pump and pack it with grease. Either way better to avoid the issue in the first place by making the oil and filter change as short in duration as possible. Phil

Probably because SD originally sold genuine OEM TPS's sourced from Guzzi or the OEM as opposed to CA probably sourcing them from China. Now that new OEM sensors are pretty much unobtainium they also probably source from China direct but without passing on the reduced retail price. I don't think there's any issue with Chinese made stuff in general but I still think they grade their components. The best go to the big customers that buy in significant quantities and may even have their own form of quality control or testing and the lesser quality is sold via ebay and such. Just my theory from experience. CA Cycleworks are renowned for selling quality stuff and I think from memory they actually yest their TPS's before selling them. Phil

The Guzzi BB engine has a history of losing the prime to the oil pump. It's not a really common thing but it's happened enough times for me to not leave them draining overnight and to prime the filter. It's never a good idea to leave any engine without oil for extended periods of time with the pickup uncovered. Holden 253 V8's were another example of an engine that could lose it's prime during oil changes and the only way to rectify it was to remove the pump disassemble it and fill it with grease. same methodology I used when assembling my Daytona engine which is basically a BB bottom end. Phil

A V11 Sport is actually a pretty rational choice of motorcycle for long term ownership, albeit less so as the new parts supplies dry up. Lets see, cheap to buy, easy to maintain for the backyard mechanic, about as hard as the average lawnmower to do a top end rebuild on, low parts count when you need them ( pistons, rings, valves, main and big end bearings etc) robust. All these V11 owners imagining how "unique" their choice is and how it's an emotional purchase when in reality the V11 Sport is quite a sensible rational choice for the average long term owner. A 40 year old 6 cylinder motorcycle though is another thing entirely. Everyone brags about "buy what you love" until it breaks that is then it's a different story. How many people have I seen buy a brand new Italian motorcycle because they "love it" and have zero mechanical aptitude and the nearest dealer is a 3 hour drive away. They then hit the internet crying about their circumstances when their Italian dream has an issue and there is no one local to fix it and they have zero clue themselves. Plenty of Ducati owners bought their "dream bike" on passion 15 or 20 years ago and the dream and passion lasted until their first major service bill and then the same owner got all passionate about a hassle free cheap to service UJM and the Ducati made way for the rational bike choice. Passion needs to be underpinned by rationality to create a stable structure. Phil

I personally wouldn't leave the bike overnight without oil in it. I drain the oil, replace the filter ( pre charged) fill the oil and start it as soon as practicable. Phil

Yes they are cast steel. Phil