Trevini

The everyday thing on the TDM isn’t boring by any stretch of the imagination. Having an Ohlins shock and upgraded cartridge fork internals ensures that. It’ll run rings around the V11 in the twisties.

I feel like I’ve got the best of both worlds with my TDM 900 (270 twin) and my V11. One is smooth, economical, has linear power delivery and is generally a great bike for every day use, but doesn’t really excite. The other is the V11. A bit rough round the edges with its old school character and mechanics. It excites on every ride as you feel a part of it. The TDM has been under my care since 2005 and is just on 62k miles now, all done by me. The V11 since 2011 when I saw it and lusted after it. It’s the one I turn round to look at. I reckon it’s a pretty good pairing really. Performance is near identical between the two, but the delivery it totally different. They compliment each other nicely.

I actually did a first and last ride. Last ride of the year yesterday with some of our local RoSPA group members as one of our regular Sunday runs, covering around 150 miles in total. Twelve of us in total on a variety of hardware. Today, just a spin around locally of around 60 ish miles to play with suspension settings a little. Saw quite a few bikes out and loads of dog walkers, plus a fair few horses and riders around the lanes. Slightly chilly, but a fun couple of days.

I reckon it's been dropped looking at the MOT history. It had an advisory in May 2010 that the near side bar was bent at (406 miles). 17 miles between April 2007 and June 2011 won't have done it much good either. I reckon anyone that buys that to use it will have an array of issues to deal with in addition to the ones already listed. Oil seals failing quite quickly where everything has dried out being just one that springs to mind.

Can you not get it helicoiled?

Been using it for years. It's best for components that need to be removed fairly regularly, such as rocker covers, sump gaskets etc when used in conjunction with the correct gaskets. Easy to clean off too.

I've been running Conti Road Attacks on the V11 for a few years now. Great tyres. I've also been using the RA 2s on my TDM and they're an improvement on the originals. They do wear quite quickly if doing a lot of non twisty riding. I've been getting between 4-5k miles from the rears on either bike. Just about to change tyres on my V11 and have a set of PR4s to go on purely to get better longevity for sporty touring. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Nice collection of Alfas you have there. I had a 159 before the Giulietta and I have to say, it was a much better car all round. Keep hold of the Brera. I reckon they'll start getting collectable in a few years, especially the V6 engines models.

We have three in our household...Two Italians and a Jap. My daily driver and works vehicle is a wreck of a a Suzuki Jimny. The other daily driver is an Alfa Giulietta, which is usually driven by 'er indoors. Italian no 2 is a Maserati 3200 GT and is purely my plaything and mid life crisis car, but looks good alongside the V11 in the garage.

I can charge a capacitor up and post to you if you like, that'll be fun lol

Docc This is a pretty good site for sorting out valve amp issues For info on biasing, click on the link to tube amp FAQ in this link You'll need to make up a tool to check the bias on your amp and any others that aren't fixed bias. BEFORE doing any work at all inside a valve amp, make sure the electrolytic capacitors have been drained as they can hold lethal voltages. You can make up a tool to drain them using a wooden chopstick (do not use a graphite pencil under any circumstances), a short length of wire, crocodile clip and a 220k 1w resistor. Solder one end of the resistor to the wire with a crocodile clip on the end. tape or heatshrink the resistor/wire assembly to the chopstick so the end of the resistor not connected to the wire is at the sharp end of the chopstick. without touching any bare wiring on your tool (you shouldn't have any), connect the croc clip to earth and hold the chopstick end against the positive side of the first electrolytic capacitor on the power supply circuit (it'll be the one nearest to the mains transformer/rectifier. measure the dc voltage across the cap. Fully charged, it'll be in the 300-450v range. once it gets below 10, you're ok to work on the amp. You'll obviously have to have the power connected and the amp switched on to check the bias, but most amps with adjustable bias have a socket to do it and don't require the amp to expose any live wiring. Have a good read of the articles in the above links. All interesting reading. edited to add links.

As long as they're not red plating you should be ok. If they are, it could be a bias issue. At the last valve change, was the amp rebiased to match the new valves?

I had a slight drain on mine after fitting an electrex reg/rec. Easily sorted with a 70amp ignition switched relay fitted on the positive lead to to unit. I can leave mine for months without any fear of a flat battery now.

You're not wrong Docc. There's a lot to be said for old technology, whatever it's applied to. Everything just seems more organic. Modern tech is just too clinical and efficient (for me at least). If you want a lovely instrument, you could do a lot worse than one of Chris Larkin's custom jobbies. I know Chris from the Carpe TDM forum and have toured with him. He's a lovely chap and shares a passion for cake as well as guitars. Beautiful instruments too and all hand made. I'm saving my pennies to buy an ASAD one day.