RichMaund

Pit Bull I'm detecting a defensive tone in your posts after Todd's tweak. Forget about it man! I didn't know (Or I didn't remember. I am a drifty bastard at times.) you worked for FBF, but I DO envy you the job! I wish I had something more interesting to do for a living myself. Seats are a living, but after seven years I'm not doing much new or interesting work anymore. Just variations on proven themes. Personally I like hearing about new products for our bikes. The market is so small, I see no reason that folks with stuff to market or share shouldn't speak up. After Todd got slammed by a bunch of hissy fit artists on the MG List for announcing his model specific PCIII's I actually gave up on that List for quite some time since the loud majority there was acting like Jackals instead of just riding them. (Pun intended. ) Don't hesitate to post here, I believe most of us want to read about FBF's developements!

Congrats on getting the first one! I get their ads via e-mail and saw it on their list this morning. Looks very clean! Does the LED tail light show up well enough though? I'm always worried about cargers not seeing me and getting rear ended.

Zebulon I really like that combined speedo/tach. Who makes that? Great photos, thanks for sharing them! I for one find bikes much more attractive when they're naked like that.

Jeff The main reason is money. I am self employed and business will soon be slowing down with the coming cold weather. I still have bills to pay and a family to support. So something has to go. There is still high demand for seats right now, but I am turning down many jobs for people who don't want to make an advance appointment because my thre days a week at college limit the hours I have to spend in the shop working. So I am working less while I finish my degree. Lower income expected and business will soon slow even more by the end of Oct. Not enogh money in the bank, so the Guzzi will have to be sold. Other more secondary reasons: My bad disk in my neck has been painful and stiff all year now. Heavy full face helmets only aggravate it. And I won't ride a two wheeler w/o a full face helmet. Often, my neck hurts enough when I DO have a chance to ride that I say the heck with it and stay home. Not worth the pain. My crushed legs give me grief as well. After a couple hours of riding the swelling becomes bad. At the end of a day of riding I have to prop it up to relieve it. I knew when I bought this bike that it'd be my last sport bike. So though the physical ailments are pushing me in the direction to sell it, money to get through the winter is my main concern. With two hungry teenagers to feed, a small business to run and quarterly taxes that keep coming due (Not to mention Virginia's damned annual vehicle taxes in January.) I have bills that need paid and I need the means to pay them. Hope this covers my situaton. I plan ahead financially. This isn't the first time I have sold a toy to cover family and home expenses! Probably not the last time either.

Mine failed to sell on EBay. Please write to me if you'd be interested in it. rmaund@pinn.net It has been to a Dealer once since the break-in maintenance, and that was for a bad oil seal on the tranny input. The jerk took a month to do the work after he got all the parts in! Except for when I changed the tires and got the wheels powdercoated, that is the only time it has been down for maintenance. I have done all the regular maintenance myself and nothing has ever taken more than a half day to complete. (That was the fork servicing. Probably the most time intensive service on the bike!)

Orson It should be in your "IN" box now! Thanks for your order and thanks for the recommendations folks! I appreciate it.

They are marine grade. I buy them wholesale in boxes of 100 from a marine hardware supplier. They are not SS though. I stopped using them years ago as they are really stiff to snap on/off and the SS tears sometimes allowing the head to pull free of the base. Not too cool. These are nickle & chrome over brass. Very high quality plating and designed to last 5 years in a fresh water marine environment. For a salt water environment, you use SS to get the 5 years of use. Even the SS ones get pretty nasty if they last years in salt water. SS does corrode! Put a drop of light machine oil on them from time to time and they will last for many years. If they do come free or fail somehow, they can be drilled off and easily replaced. The SS ones are a bitch to drill off as the SS galls like crazy as you try to drill it. And hi speed grinding makes enough heat to often damage the base fabric. I DO try to pick my hardware carefully. Otherwise it comes back later to haunt me!

I have a couple of these pouches in stock right now. Heavy black leather with marine snaps. $25 plus shipping. Just let me know if you want one!

Buy one that is owned by a owner/mechanic enthusiast who knows the bike well and takes good care of it. That, or find an owner who took it for regular servicing at a well know Guzzi shop that knows their stuff. Guzzi's are all about good care and maintenance during break-in. One treated right will out perform a poor example markedly! It should run strong and not be rough, cough or stall at stops. Look deep in the crannies for corrosion on fasteners. Look at the condition of all bare alloy. Look at the wear pattern on the tires and find out how the bike has been used. Look for signs of abuse like cracks in the frame or a bike that pulls to one side out on the hiway. It may have been wrecked or dropped badly. The first year bikes had poor relays and weak oil cooler brackets. Those should have been all fixed by now unless it's a REAL low mileage bike. Regardless, they're easy fixes. Cheap too. Many '02's had bad return springs in the trannies. Make sure the tranny shifts smoothly and the shifter returns after each shift. If it hangs up for a bit after an upshift, beware. That's an early sign of failure. Many '02's had poor paint on the engine. That'll stock out like a sore thumb if it applies. You can always wire bush and touch it up. That said, mine is on EBay right now and has had good care and has all the "right" accessories. Please look it up if you care to! It's a silver 2000 V11S. Good luck in your search!

I can't help wondering if a Mistral cross over would help my bike even more. I have the stock cross over now. But with no disposable income, I just have to enjoy it as it is. I've been commuting to welding school on the bike this week since class started. 200 miles in the last week just going to school! Bike runs like a dream!

My V11S currently has a PCIII, Mistral alloy mufflers and a K&N filter with airbox lid removed. Great combination. Well behaved and excellent drivability and fat mid range power with a good top rush to enjoy as well. Best of all worlds. Go for it!

Something to keep in mind here is that your bikes needs a cush drive to work properly and absorb these transient loads. So... You say your bike has one, do you? Won't do you much good if it isn't working. Remember Guzzi's famous build quality? They never lube anything at the factory! Afterall, that would involve possibly getting your hands dirty. I have found all but one of my Guzzi's that I recieved in factory serviced condition to have no grease on the cush drive mechanism. Two have been found to be seized up completely! They won't do you any good if they don't work. If they don't work, the loads will cause other parts to wear. They need to be disassembled first. You need a large set of snap ring pliers (Not easy to find.) and some simple hand tools to do it. Good idea to put silicone grease on the rubber wedges upon reassembly too. When dry, they tend to stick and bind to the plates that engage them. The hub of the cush drive has a beautifully machined spiral groove to hold grease there. Too bad Guzzi so rarely uses it. Use #2 lithium grease there. If that hub can't turn, it isn't a cush drive! I serviced mine when the bike was nearly new. On my V11S, the factory has used red loctite on the bolts and no grease on the hub assembly. I found a light coat of machine oil, possibly left over for the machining process. So they basically sealed it shut dry! The bolts got ruined removing them. (Cheap Allen headed bolts.) I put new grade 5 hex head bolts in to replace them. (Just like Guzzi used to use.) While doing this maintenance, it's a good time to grease the drive shaft, perhaps drop the swing arm and grease the arm pivot bolts. (They come dry from the factory as well.) and bleed the clutch to flush it. Just a suggestion. If your cush drive is working and the wear on the splines is OK, you won't notice the lash problem nearly as badly as when the cush drive is disabled by poor factory assembly practices. Rode the bike to my welding class at the community college today. It rips! I don't plan to change a thing for now. I just want to enjoy it. A well maintained Guzzi is a thing of joy and beauty. Too bad the assembly workers do so little to get the bike there!

Lets remember too that if the bike "coughs" back through the intake for whatever reason, it can dislodge a throttle body and that will jam up the linkage as well. If the throttle bodies aren't firmly seated in the rubber boots and the linkage well lubed, it can stick. Had my V11S cough like that once at a traffic light as I pulled away. Shoved the left TB back a tad and stuck everything up. I hit the kill switch and pulled in the clutch and coasted to he roadside. Easy fix. TB's (Throttle Bodies) were slightly out of balance, hence the cough. I lube all linkages every 3k miles alng with my opil changes and such. If I keep up the bike there's no problems. Glad you came out OK after the crash. That had to be quite a feeling when it stuck! The problem with the Cali's was also binding of the butterfly shaft in the TB. They needed lubed and when dry would hang open. They were even easier to dislodge from the rubber boot and any misalignment would result in a hung up linkage. The "Fix" Guzzi came up with isn't a good one in my opinion. You can't pull a physically jammed up linkage shut regardless. So the pull cable did little to fix it. Preventive maintenance is the key. My Cali stuck open one time on the freeway. Dry pivot for the shaft in the TB. It later stuck another time after a cough slightly dislodged a TB. As long as we have bikes tuned to a fine edge for EPA reasons, we have the occassional backfire if anything is even a tiny bit off. I see nothing wrong with the linkage or mounting myself. But they DO need checking, lubing and good tuning to keep the up to snuff. Rigidly mounting the TB's will keep them in place, but then vibration will wear them out. Can't have it all! I had a cable splitter on a Ambassador hang up due to old grease getting sticky in the cold weather. Things like this can happen to any system. I should have been using a better/fresher grease in this case!

The Guzzi clamps are OK, but not great. Better than what they used in '97 on my Cali 1100 though. Guzzi clamps are narrower than some, which I believe can reduce their grip. NAPA sells some excellent FI hose clamps and hose. I re-did the Cali with them. On my V11S I just checked them all snug and kept using them. No problems in 12k miles.

Ha! A "factory" test rider would never be allowed to tell you how they really feel. Whereas I report the good the bad the ugly, joys, sorrows, warts and all. The factory probably thinks I'm a pain in the ass if they even know of me at all! But I wish them well and hope that should they be reading any of my notes, they will take it to heart and try to fix he problems. I really DO want to see them succeed, even if I am pissed off at them much of the time. The map I'm running in my PC was supposedly made for a V11S with stock intake, cross over and a Mistral exhaust. It does run better than stock and the hole in the power band is much smaller. Proved it on the dyno. But I have suspected it being a bit rich in areas as I am occassionally fouling plugs. The K&N has leaned it all over the band and improved mid range power even more. Seems to work well with this map. Have company coming in for a bar-b-que. Gotta go! Hope y'all are having a good weekend as well!

Folks Went for a joy ride this afternoon. In direct sun a very faint fog still forms on the center of the lens of the new tach. to Moto Guzzi! They must all be this way, so I must have to live with it. It's just enough to notice. One more straw on the camel's back. On the good side, the bike runs like a striped ape. Had a ball horsing around on it this afternon. It does pull harder from 3k to 5k. That just makes it that much more fun to ride! On the bad side, I hit a localized thunder shower just two miles from home. No rain gear. Just enough to soak the crap out of me before I got home. Waiting at a traffic light just 200 yards from my home there was a Harley and rider next to me in the other turn lane. A big truck came towards us in the other lane and splashed a wall of water up in the air and down all over us. All we could do was sit there laughing our asses off until the light turned green. You know it's a good ride when something like this doesn't get you down. The bike ran like a champ. The "S" in V11S does stand for submarine as the bike spends so much time attracting storms and running under water. I gave it a good wipe down when I got back to the shop and she cleaned right up. So! What did I learn from all this? 1. When the jetstream is forming a 3 month long very abnormal trough over your area, never leave home without a rainsuit! It's rained damned near every day for three months! Yeesh! Got blasted on my way home from a ride last Sunday too. 2. No clean bike goes unpunished. 3. A good bike can take the pain out of a rainy day! Al Go to a local auto upholstery shop and bring a small glass jar with a good sealing screw on lid with you. Something the size of a babyfood jar or small pickle jar will do. Ask for some DAP Upholstery cement. It's a commercial product and is nearly in standard use in most shops. You can't find it in retail outlets (The DAP contact cement sold in retail stores is like corn syrup! Crappy glue!), just wholesalers. A 5 gallon can goes for almost $50 wholesale, so expect to at least tip them for it. It's pre-thinned for spraying, but also applies well with an acid brush. Brush it on both parts and allow about ten minutes to dry to a good tack. Stick them together and smooth them down. Done! I've even repaired shoes with it. Great contact cement. Laquer based. It'll eat rattle can paint, but sticks well to most real finishes. If you get it on something you didn't mean to, just put some WD40 on a rag and rub it with that to remove it. The WD40 will soften, but not dissolve it. Allows you to rub it off. If you can't find this cement locally, just tell me. I'll find a small jar and send it to you for $5 and postage. Just contact me off list if you need it.

The JB Weld I applied to mine has stuck well. I smeared a bit on a good area as well as the groove and tried to remove it today before refitting the tank. It bonded very well to the plastic. I was under the impression these tanks were nylon with a white PVC coating inside? Correct me if I'm wrong!

Tach work fine. If we get some sun I'll be able to see if this one has moisture in it too. Ran some shipping errands this morning on the bike. First impressions on the K&N and open top airbox; Mid range is very strong now. I used to think that old Cali 1100 had the better mid range over this bike, but that this bike's power above 5k rpm made the loss of mid range worth it. Not any more. Now the bike pulls hard from 3k rpm to yellowline in a very linear manner. I plan to just ride it as it is now with no changes for a while to see how this initial impression lasts. Seems like the best of both worlds right now. I have a PCIII and Guzzi/Mistral pipes, stock cross over and the K&N with open topped airbox. I'm running a map made for use with the pipes and stock cross over but with the stock airbox vice the K&N and open top. The bike has made me wonder if it's a bit rich after seeing plug deposits. It has a tendency to foul plugs from too much city riding. I believe the K&N leaned it a bit and that's why it feels better now. Sound? The intake is a bit louder. It's a deeper pulsing sound. But not much louder than stock. Compliments the exhaust note nicely but isn't obnoxious. I like it! I believe the plastic tank dampens intake sound better than steel ones. I once ran an open topped airbox and K&N on my Cali 1100 for one day and 200 miles. I put the stock filter back in as the noise was just obnoxious to me. Not a problem on the V11S. I've updated the software on my laptop for the PCIII and downloaded a few maps from Power Commander as well as the Guzzi Tech site. So maybe in a week or so I'll play around with it. Just want to ride and enjoy it for now though.

PS Winchester Motosports got another new tach to me today. The last one was smooth and accurate, but the bottom mounting stud was broken off by the factory before they even wrapped it and it was also contaminated with moisture (Cappacino? ) which caused the lens to fog when exposed to direct sun. This newest one took just over a month to come in. Glad to say it has no apparent damage. It's installed. But I can't run the bike until the gas tank goes back on tomorrow. Wish me luck! If it works, I'll be the proud owner of a V11S with no known mechanical or electrical issues! Next best thing to winning the lottery!

Folks Drained and removed the tank today to replace the stock airfilter with a K&N that I got for half price on EBay. I plan to try some different maps on the PCIII and see how it feels. Can't resist playing with it. I made a simple alloy diamond deck plate frame to retain the filter and leave the airbox top open. See picture below. It came out pretty well. It took two hours to cut and file and clean up. Probably easier to order a FBF model, but I'm a cheap bastard at heart and like building things. The silvered fiberglass heat insulation under the tank was coming loose in many places and rubbed in a couple areas too. Worst of all I found the tank had been rubbing the forward horizontal frame pipe on the front right side of the bike. Rubs where the pipe was slash cut. It rubbed a small groove 1/8" deep. I prepped it and applied some JB weld. This wasn't caused by "tank suck". That anti-tipover valve was taken out when the bike was new! I ground some material off that pipe end as well as on the left side to keep them even. They cleaned up easy with a 3/4" carbide on a P-Grinder! Then I touched up the paint. I glued the insulation back down with upholstery cement and applied some leather rub patches to two areas. I believe it'll be fine now. This is more attention than the factory ever paid to it! I highly recommend inspecting everything under that tank whenever you have it off for maintenance. Kind of like turning over a rock. You never know what you'll find! But better now than later out on the road!

Al Actually I am an elitist for the first run bikes. They still turn my head faster than any of the new ones can! Yeah... The newer bikes are all just pretenders to the throne! The original is the one that rocks! One thing to check is overfilling of the tranny. It'll find it's way out the vent as a mist. Have you refilled it lately? Fill it to the top of the sightglass and it'll come out alot more! Bit of a mess to clean out of the nooks. Another area to check is the breather hose. It tends to rot at the fittings where it's expanded around the fitting. Cracks form and oil vapor escapes. It can follow odd air currents thru the bike as you ride and collect in odd places. The fittings for the SS lines to the spine for the breather sytem can weep vapor like this too. Mine would collect a bit of oil an dirt around them after a thousand miles. I finally took them apart and permatexed the seals last time the tank as off. No more weeps since then. We had our Guzzi Breakfast Meet Sunday and a 170 mile ride afterwards. Great reminder of what a competent bike this is, even two up! (My son came along, as usual.) My old CX Lemans (Built by Rennsport) pales by comparison.

Man! When I read threads like this one, I'm glad to have a original V11S vice a Lemans!

I'd like to add my two cents here as well for the Torq-It tool. It's great! Makes me wonder why it wasn't invented years ago! Well made and a good value for the money spent. I've had mine a couple years now. It gets used alot! My son has one now too. Darn good tool! "Another happy customer!"

Yep. That's the same service they gave me. I was very impressed with service and the final product! They came back individually bubble wrapped!

I have to agree with Al. Good advice there! 10K miles on mine seemed to solve all break-in related problems. The PCIII removed the few driveability problems that good tuning and miles didn't solve. My bike is soon to turn over 12K miles and it runs way better now than when new! Just about flawless now!