pete roper

I can tell you that the RAM single plate assembly has been around since the 1980's. It was a fairly popular mod back in the day. It had a couple of problems. One was the fact that people used to buy the 'Race' version which had a sintered bronze friction material. Now this was all well and good in that it had good take-up and feel but it also wore very fast! Like in a road bike being ridden in a 'Sportsman's-like' manner you'd get 2,000 miles out of a plate if you were lucky! You cold also get an organic plate but it wasn't called 'Race' so knobs didn't buy it but it lasted ages and was a happy thing. I honestly can't remember whether those early flywheels were steel or aluminium? They were light though. I have no idea what the story was with the Scura etc. flywheels and clutch but they were built by RAM. My WAG is that Guzzi went to them and said they wanted some clutches but specified their own materials and thought they were being very clever by specifying aluminium for the flywheel and it turned out to be another of those 'Big wooly ears' bits of engineering that the in-house engineers used to throw out from time to time. Anywhichway it was a shitfight and remains so to this day! Lightening the flywheel used to be one of the 'Holy Grails' back in the Tonti days. Anyone who was building a hot-rod wanted the lightest set up they could find. I did it myself! In the end my 891 short stroke thing I built used the twin plater but with an alloy flywheel and very seriously lightened ring gear. It probably want quite as light as a RAM unit but it was extremely durable. After that project though I learnt to appreciate the wonders of a heavier flywheel in most road going situations. In fact in my old SP which had a mildly warmed over 950 Mid-valve motor in it I actually used an Eldorado flywheel, the heaviest one Guzzi ever made! It was a hoot to ride! Even my current *Fast* 8V Griso has a Cali 14 clutch in it that is heavier than the earlier 1200 clutch assemblies. It's a better bike for it. If I had a V11 with a single plater I'd just go twin plate with an alloy flywheel again. It worked well.

With the engine off have a bit of a fish about through the slot at the bottom of the bell housing with a magnet on a stick. You could have a poke about through the starter portal too. If the anti rattle springs jump ship they soon get smashed up and you usually get bits of them in the bottom of the bell housing. There also tends to be 'Pock marking' of the alloy on both the back of the crankcase and front of the gearbox caused by the bits of frag being flung around vigorously by the spinning flywheel. Victor Mattei from VA somewhere is doing a clutch and engine swap on his Stelvio right now and documenting it on ADV. lots of pics of the engine coming out and the damage in his clutch. Starts about here..... https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/moto-guzzi-stelvio-merged-threadfest.113158/page-3283 I've had a fair bit of input encouraging him and supplied the clutch so I have a dog in this particular fight! Oh, and blowing up that picture of the starter motor mounting hole as far as I can does seem to show some minor 'Pock marking' in the alloy of the case so it may well be that you've had a clutch explody failure.

There was a bad batch of clutch plates in 2012 and I've heard of a 2013 bike having the problem too so let's not rule out the clutch entirely. I'll come back to that though. Firstly, all the CARC bikes and to a lesser extent the V11's are murder on their clutch fluid. It's for this reason that we change it at every 10,000km service or yearly, whichever comes first. If your fluid hasn't been changed regularly it may just be that the bore and seals of your master cylinder are rooted. If it's just the seals it can be rebuilt but if the bore is damaged it will need sleeving and finding somewhere to do that nowadays is getting hard, at least it is here. If that isn't a possibility new M/C's are still available but they're spendy! An alternative, more expensive but with the benefit of a lighter pull, is to go to a 16mm radial master. You'll probably need to change the hose to the slave though. Another, much cheaper, possibility is that the actuating plunger on the clutch lever has come loose and backed off. How much travel is there in the lever before you feel the piston in the master cylinder start to move? If you look at the lever you will see there is a barrel with a plunger coming out of it that actually goes into the back of the master cylinder to press on and operate the piston. That plunger is threaded and screwed into the little barrel in the lever and is usually loctited in place but it's real locating mechanism is a tiny 1.5mm hex grub screw threaded into the underside of the barrel that locks it in place. Now it's not uncommon for the grub screw to loosen or fail to properly locate the plunger so, if the Loctite fails, the plunger can move in the threads in the barrel and usually it winds out, away from the piston. When this happens more and more of the travel of the lever is used taking up the *Space* between the plunger and the piston before the piston itself starts moving, pressurising the line and lifting the clutch. When it winds out far enough there is no longer sufficient lift for the clutch to engage so the bike will 'Creep' in gear when halted and gear changing becomes difficult. If that is the problem the cure is simple. Remove the lever, loosen the grub screw in the barrel, (Use a VERY good Allen key or you'll round out the hex in the screw.) then wind the plunger out of the barrel a bit. The aim is to have only the tiniest bit of clearance 0.25-0.75mm or 10 to 25 thou between the end of the plunger and the piston of the master cylinder while the lever is at rest but the piston has to be able to fully return to the end of its travel to open the priming port to the reservoir. If it can't then the system becomes 'Closed' and as the fluid expands as it heats up it has no way to return to the reservoir so it starts lifting the clutch leading to slippage under load. It takes a bit of faffing about and trial and error but once you've got the length right the clutch should both work without dragging and not slip under load when hot. Once it's working OK nip up the grub screw to prevent the plunger from moving again. Although the plunger does have a slot for a flat bladed screwdriver in the back to allow adjustment it is usually full of Loctite so what I tend to do is simply hold the plunger in soft jaws in a vice and turn it by using the clutch lever as a lever to turn the barrel on it. If it's very tight? Heat the barrel to soften the Loctite with a propane torch, (Carefully obviously!). Of course if none of these things help then yes, you will have to go in and investigate the clutch. The *Usual* failure on the bad batch of plates is that the cush/anti rattle springs in the centre of the plate destroy their seats in the hub and eventually make a break for freedom. When this happens though the result is usually catastrophic and very, very noisy! What happens and what you have to do about it was well documented on Wildguzzi a few years ago in a thread titled 'Horrors in my bellhousing' by a bloke called Sean in British Columbia. Lots of pics to help too.

I can give you advice and what will probably be a cheap fix for this, if you're lucky. If you're not so lucky I can give you a 'Cheaper than clutch replacement' fix. Gimme a few hours though because I'm on holidays at the beach and I need to go to bed and sleep first. pete PS. What year model Stelvio?

Good price. I wouldn't use the Surflex friction plates though and you'd need to swap the input shaft hub n the gearbox to fit it but still a much safer bet than a single plate unit with the fracture prone flywheel. Oh, and the other friction plate is there, it's just behind/under the intermediate plate. You can see it's splines.

Odd failure. I'd replace the bearing and see what happens. Make sure everything is cleaned out thoroughly and check the other bearings in the box.

Sorry, yes. My fault. I've emptied my mailbox

That was one of Mark at Guzzi Classics little jokes.

Really? That's weird. I get PM'd all the time. No matter email me at. motomoda dot roper @ gmail dot com

Once you have this thing on the floor or bench. Make sure it's the box by turning both the input and output shafts, in all gears.

With the driveshaft? It is aligned correctly isn't it? While a misaligned driveshaft itself won't cause the wheel to lock the forces imposed by the trunnions not being correctly aligned is certainly enough to bust stuff up.

Pop it in a box and send it to us if it is the gearbox. It shouldn't cost a huge amount and we have all the necessary tools.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing after my first post. It's all a bit moot though. The box is going to have to come out anyway so if when it's pulled out both clutch and flywheel are good then it's essentially got to be internal to the box doesn't it? Perhaps the nuts on the end of the shafts have loosened/spun off? That was the issue with the last V11 box I was buggering about with.

If it's starting then the ring gear is still concentric with the crank axis. I wouldn't expect it to turn over if the flywheel had broken up??? Perhaps it's a friction plate issue? Anyway, gearbox is still going to have to come out.

Whatever it is the gearbox is going to have to come out and I'm betting the flywheel will be the culprit.

Thanks Rolf!

Yeah, six speed. Five speeds are ten a penny. I sold all my *Old* Guzzi munt a few years ago including several five speeds in various states of distress but I've still got one n the shed! I'm sure it just got squeezed out of some other space/time continuum and simply popped into existence in my garage because I sure as shit didn't put it there!

Thanks for that.

Yeah. The one that cracks. Anybody got one for sale? Not cracked obviously....

The engine is the least of your worries. There are plenty of 'Weak Points' in a V11 but the majority of them are the result of ignorance and abuse. 40K on a 2V pushrod Guzzi engine, if it has been serviced and tuned regularly and correctly, is nothing. If, on the other hand, it has been *Worked*, *Hotted up* or been *Improved* by an idiot? All bets are off. If the advert contains words like 'K&N air filter', 'Power Commander', 'Dyno-Tune' or 'Performance'. Especially in So Cal? I'd tread carefully and carry a very big stick........

Be aware that if the actual hose fitting that is broken, (The usual way is the little hooky-toothy bits on the *Ring* break off) you can pick apart the broken parts and new parts on the hose fitting and replace the broken bits, including the all important o-ring, with the new parts without disturbing the stupid shrink-fitted hose, (If indeed your bike has the shrink-fitted hose? All the CARC bikes do.). We do this all the time when frustrated owners have bust their fittings.

I think that is going to be one of the Shiver motors? DOHC rather than the SOHC motor of the Mana. The Mana motor is much more like a 'Doubled up' Aprilia scooter motor. If you look at the head design of something like a Scarabeo the similarities are obvious. The motor, without the E-CVT, was also used on the 850 SRV scooter and also has another life in a John Deere product! A lawn tractor I think? Albeit de tuned further and with single rather than twin plug heads.

Well buy one! As I said, they are cheap as chips! Luggage racks are long out of production but if you can get a set of racks the Givi paniers are universal. There are many screens available but I'd try and get a GT. Stock suspension is better on the GT as well.

Aprilia Mana. 850cc SOHC, single throttlebody, 'L' twin, electronically controlled CVT with three automatic ride modes and one 'False Manual' seven speed mode controlled either by a foot lever or buttons n the left switch cluster. It makes low to mid seventies HP and has an absolutely flat torque curve. Mine, at the time that photo was taken about 12 years ago, had all the factory 'Fruit' on it. The bags, screen, top box etc. we're all expensive Aprilia branded accessories but I was a service agent at the time so I got them. In keeping with my usual practice I've spent money on suspension and brakes. The original forks were awful but a set of fully adjustables off a Gen2 Tuono, revalved and sprung, fixed up the front and the back wears a fully adjustable Hyperpro. Front brakes are 100mm radial Brembos with HH pads in place of the original 80mm no-names. It stops and handles very well! They were made from 2008 to 2014, from 2010 onwards you could get the GT model with a very effective frame mounted fairing. I had one in the US and completed a 14,000 mile tour that was enormous fun on it. A genuine 'Orphan' you can pick them up for next to nothing. They are a superb little motorbike. Very reliable and although there are a couple of big ticket service items, (Belt and valve adjustment.) these have very long intervals. You'll pry mine from my cold dead fingers!

First thing I did when I bought the 'Mighty Scura' was piss off the single plate clutch and reinstall a stock airbox. That bike is sex on wheels. Pod filters don't filter and are detrimental to performance. Idiots claim ridiculous HP increases that aren't achievable and never mention the flobering lack of midrange and bottom end torque, even with the best, custom built map. Far greater benefits can be achieved by spending money on suspension and brakes.