pete roper

I used, and still use in my own bikes, Penrite’s 10/60 just not the ‘Motorcycle’ formula. I dunno if its thermal carriage ability is any better or worse than a 10/40. Probably not and it isn’t that important in something as simple as a Guzzi, even the 8V’s. My Mana’s call for a 10/40 but I can’t be arsed with having an extra 20 litre drum knocking around! So they get the 10/60 as well. They haven’t blown up or melted into a pool of slag yet! None of my bikes are race machines where I’m chasing every tenth of a horsepower so frictional losses don’t worry me a jot and as long as it flows well enough when cold that pump-up time isn’t excessive I reckon virtually anything will make a wedge where it’s needed so I just buy Penrite because it’s decent and readily available. We all have our preferences. I for instance despise Castrol, especially their engine oils but that is a prejudice that dates back to the 1970’s and is probably completely irrelevant now! As I said before. Oil is required. Put some in it!

Yes, it needs oil. Put some in it.

Has it been given a full tune up? Has it been fitted with any tuning widgets?

It’s a BMW. It’s as ugly as a hat full of farty arseholes and makes a noise like a parson farting in the bath. The End. Next…………..

I’ve never understood the attraction of bar ends? The ones big enough to see anything look daggy and the small ones, even if you like the look and I’m not a fan, you can’t see anything in. I have used them in the past but only when I couldn’t find anything cheap to fit conventionally, (This was years ago. Long before eBay and the like.) On my Grisos and Manas I’ve got the stock Aprilia ‘Trapezoid’ ones. Clear as a bell, no blurring, great field of vision. What’s not to like?

WKF? ’Willy Kan’t be Found’?

See the ‘Pesky single plate clutch’ thread. It was, as I understand, a new purchase. It was leaking like a stuck pig and generally in need of some TLC. Flywheel was f*cked but owner supplied a new RAM single plater to go in along with shift spring and asked Michael to wave his magic wand over it. It’s a lovely motorbike.

Not mine. I just had the pleasure of riding it today. Michael has been doing a lot of work on this beast for its owner, (Who is a member here.) Apart from the cracked flywheel talked about elsewhere. It had lots of horrid little issues, and a few larger ones. Forks seals were shot, lots of missing fasteners and stuff, non existent state of ‘Tune’, buggered camchain tensioner, gearshift spring was changed prophylactically. Tuned and mapped. Anyway it’s passed it’s test. It is lovely! I took it for a brief flog, (It’s only 7*C here today!) it was like riding an angry dinosaur! Despite the missing fasteners and mechanical foul ups heaped upon it in the past it’s paint and plastic etc. is in outstanding shape. What a lovely motorbike?!

Is that a fibre plate or one of the bronze ‘Racing’ plates? 10k strikes me as a ridiculously short clutch life for anything but the most extreme racing situations!

Even if it was a genuine Surflex response I’d be wary. The Surflex plate splineform are wrong and their hardening, at least on the twin plate plates, which I would imagine would use the same centres as the single plate, have for years, nay decades, been woefully poorly hardened leading to the splines chopping out in short order. I can provide plenty of photographic proof if needs be but it would be a chore to find and I can’t be bothered. Anyway, simply a word of warning from long experience. I’d rather trepan myself with a butter knife than use them in one of my bikes…….

That’s what I thought. Nominal 45mm on the V11. CARC 2-valve motors use 40’s from memory and the 1200’s use 50’s. When they went to the 1400 they went single 54mm body with ride by wire control. Mark, (Beetle.) has converted his Griso which runs a big port single spark version of the motor that we built for him to a single mechanical TB, I think it’s a 60mm? Not absolutely sure. Had to go to higher flow injectors too as boy does it like the dinosaur juice!

There is also the problem of wear simply due to age and use. As the spindle bushes wear the plates will settle in the chokes carving out the edge of the TB and wearing the plate. This means that more air can move past the plate so the mixture goes lean. This is mainly an issue at idle and leads to spitting back through the inlet tracts and this exacerbates the problem and increases the wear. It’s something I’m very aware of because the big 50mm TB’s on the 8V’s are particularly susceptible to it and it’s a king sized PITA. The larger the choke the worse the problem becomes. I can’t remember what size the TB’s are on the V11’s but I seem to remember that they actually downsized them for the early 2 valve CARC bikes and they are not nearly as prone to showing unacceptable behaviour as they age compared to the 8V’s. If, as I suspect, the V11 TB’s have larger chokes then one would have to think that they would be more prone than the early CARC bikes to ‘Air Leakage’ but not as bad as the 8V items. If I’m correct in that it would perhaps explain part of the problem at least. At the end of the day if more fuel is required at a certain engine speed and throttle position by far the best way to achieve it would simply be to add more in those cells in the map rather than kludgeing it with the CO trim or buggering about with the TPS.

Yup, otherwise known as the outer thrust body. You should be able to extract it and the bearing and inner body, with a magnet on a stick.

For those wondering about the three separate clutch bosses I dug out my pice comparing the three. From left to right below we have the early six speed single plate boss. The second generation six speed boss used with the twin plater in the CARC series bikes and finally the standard, deep spline, five speed hub. As you can see as well as the difference in spline depth there are also differences in the overall boss length that would need to be accommodated when grinding one of the others to suit the six speed single plater.

Oberon sez ‘Hold my beer!’

He’s already turned down the rod and says it works just fine!

He’s fortunate because he lost his legs in a road accident and our third party insurance scheme has covered his entire recovery and return to work. The amount of assistance he has received has been outstanding and although nothing is perfect it means that rather than being a lost soul, probably unable to work, he has his own business, working from home, with all the equipment needed to, if not overcome, at least mitigate, his acquired disability. Everyone moans about the cost of our registration and CTP, (Compulsory Third Party.) insurance for vehicles. Well I will never moan again. What better thing than there be than keep people alive and contributing? He’s also an outstanding mechanic. Far better than I ever was.

OK, stand down. Phil’s sorted me out!

OK, so we need some advice on the new RAM clutch. Well not so much the clutch, more it’s pushrod. The clutch has been supplied with a new pushrod that is much longer and narrower than the V11 rod. I’m thinking that it’s a rod for the five speed box but the indent in the central part of the plate in the clutch that it engages in is machined for a rod that diameter. So what’s the trick? You can’t cut the five speed rod down as its diameter will be wrong for the pushrod seals, (I assume? I’m going from memory.). So what’s the trick? Turn down the end of the V11 pushrod and re-harden it?

Ooooh! Much nicer tool than mine for the ‘Ring Nut’! Will you make one for me mister? Please! Pretty please! As for holding the pinion shaft? From memory I had a buggered Uni-joint/driveshaft from my Convert which had the same splineform that I stuck in the vice, bunged the pinion in and cranked it up with a FB spanner. Thats my memory. Certainly the CARC bikes use the same splineform and size so finding a buggered shaft and getting one of the yokes would work. Actually I’ve got a horrible, damaged, shaft from a Cali 1400 on the verandah, (Who doesn’t?) I could chop that in two and that would make two holding tools. One’s yours if you want Phil. Anybody else? First come first served. One of the yokes will need dressing up with a file due to the crash the bike it came from burring the end of the front yoke as the whole motive unit moved forward in the frame, (Rubber mounted engine in the 1400 and this bike had its front end taken off in an accident and came to a ‘Sudden Halt!)

I thought it could be plucked out with the old self-tapping screw through the face of the seal trick and a new one slipped over the nut? As I said though I haven’t done one for a very, very long time!

I don’t think that the suggestion was that you were trying to be deceptive, simply that the information you were imparting was wrong and not relevant. For people seeking answers to specific questions it is important to not muddy the waters with irrelevant information and the fact is that a drain plug falling out has precisely nothing to do with a leaking pinion seal. Oh, and a quick edit regarding your edit. The sealing principle on your Quota’s bevelbox and that of a V11 are entirely different! The pinion on the Quota box is unsealed. All the O-rings on the carrier do is prevent oil leaking out between the pinion carrier flange and the swingarm and box casting. The front bearings are unsealed and in fact the box breathes into the swingarm! The V11 box is sealed and breathes via the breathe installed in the case. WRT the pinion seal on the V11 box I’ll have to go on memory as I haven’t done one for fifteen or more years but, like so many other Guzzi final drives, the construction is a bit, errr, unconventional! I do believe that the ring nut as it is called needs to be removed to extract the seal, (I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.) but the reason the seal might leak should be examined as well. The V11 pinion support assembly is all a bit odd. Unlike most pinion mounts the shaft of the pinion is not supported by opposed tapered roller bearings. The advantage of that *Conventional* set up is that both the support and end thrust on the pinion shaft are taken by the opposing bearings. With the V11 pinion though the forces are dealt with separately. The rotational load is taken by a substantial roller bearing but the end thrust is taken by a large caged ball race. These are both ‘Contained’ in one large outer race BUT the outer race of the ball part of the bearing is split and the whole lot is clamped together by the ‘Ring nut’ which contains the seal and the seal runs on a spacer between the centre race of the queer two part bearing and the pinion lock nut. Now also for the first time in a Guzzi bevelbox the pinion has a support bearing inboard of the head of the pinion. It’s a small needle roller similar to the pilot bearing for a gearbox input shaft in some car flywheels. One unfortunate thing though is that it tends to not get oiled very well due to its location and this can lead to brinneling of the outer race and premature failure. If this happens and play/clearance becomes excessive it will lead to increased loading on the two components of the two part shaft support bearing. Now being a Guzzi and therefore being built like a brick shithouse this doesn’t often seem to cause problems but if for instance the box is run low on oil or worse yet gets water in it brinneling and wear can occur in the support bearings and if this happens the pinion shaft can begin to run off its axis. This will have dire consequences for the mesh of the gears and their life but one of the first signs that something is wrong will likely be the pinion input seal blowing and the resultant oil loss. Now I’m not saying that anything like this has happened, just that you should be aware it can. Certainly if my bike had popped it’s front seal I would probably take it upon myself to pull the crownwheel cover plate and examine the teeth of both gears and then while it was off have a really good tug and thrust at the pinion just to see if it had any axial or lateral play. If it does I’d investigate further rather than simply sticking in a new seal and calling it sweet because the new seal likely wouldn’t last very long.

Dunno, maybe not yet and I’m not going to waste time die testing it. It’s buggered. That’s all I need to know.

Doing a bit of reading in the single plate clutch thread I’m assuming this is ‘TenniTragic’s bike? It’s very pretty, but Michael and I would be interested to know who worked on it before……… There are some tell tales that are setting my Spidey Senses tingling……

Oh, and it’s got a host of other issues. Forks need rebuilding, split and leaking hoses. Rear mainseal is popped, leaking Welch plug, it’s getting one of Chuck’s shift springs, a service etc. and of course Michael is loosing his shit because it’s peppered with incorrect and missing fosters and things so his OCD has gone into overdrive!