Scud

Mine never drifted. I installed with big O-rings on both sides of the dash. When installed the O-rings were slightly compressed. Maybe they held everything in place?

Thanks for the info. I think my 7.3 would run on butter and bacon grease. Which oilhead did you have? I had a 1996 R1100RT. I am seriously thinking about synthetic diesel for next Moto Guzzi oil change. Makes sense, saves money... what's not to like?

What is a TV-4? I just looked and Google doesn't seem to know. As for a comfortable bike with sportbike performance, my Ducati ST3 fits the bill.

The diesel oil suggestion is interesting. It looks like most synthetic diesel oils are 5w-40 (including the Shell Rotella), which is lower viscosity than recommended in the manual. GMC - Are you running 5w-40 in your bikes? Also, the synthetic diesel oils claim very long service intervals. How many miles are you going between oil changes? And FWIW - I'm running organic diesel oil in my old Ford 7.3 Turbo-Diesel. Close to 3 gallons every oil change... And I run organic car oil in my BMW K75s. But heck, that basically IS a car engine. I've been running motorcycle-specific oil in the Guzzis, but not liking the idea that they are meant for wet-clutch engines.

Yeah Dave, it seems the consensus is to avoid the UFI filter, which has a true O-ring, not a hard flat rubber washer for the sealing surface. After that, there are various remedies and there seem to be equally successful adherents to the various remedies. Personally, I've decided to follow "doctor's orders" and use a Wix filter tightened to 1.25 turns past first contact and no hose clamp. I want to be able to change the filter without dropping the sump every time.

I paid a premium for my low-mileage Scura. I don't regret it, and I still love it, despite (or perhaps in some weird masochistic way, because of) all the above-mentioned challenges.

That sounds like a direct quote from the shop manual.

The link worked for me. My Scura had under 200 miles on it when I bought it. I guess it's been close to 3 years now. It was cool to have a belated new-bike experience. But a brand-new Scura comes with a full complement of challenges: potentially under-sprung suspension, bubbling engine paint, oversized pawl arm boss in transmission, and, of course, the big one... the aluminum flywheel. The exhaust is the original, carbon-wrapped Lafranconi.

Can't recall the specifics, but I think the basic answer is that with a plate it will retain a bit more oil than without. There's probably a good explanation by Pete somewhere on here. I think the basic idea is that the tray keeps the spray and "windage"down so less oil goes through the breather system.

It'll take a gallon. But convert it to metric first so it will fit.

Clever, and good-looking solution. I have some 80mm O-rings left over from when I put Speedhuts on my (ex) LeMans. The O-rings will reduce vibration a bit and give you a good seal to prevent water getting into the cups. Yours for the asking (just send me your address in a PM if you want a set of 4). FWIW - you could split some black rubber grommets and achieve a cleaner wire-exit at the back of the cups.

Good try at storytelling, Docc. But a story that begins with Honda and ends with it starting is hardly a surprise. One of my dirt-biker buddies used to say "Honda means 'doesn't break' in Japanese."

That could be a worthy project. Meanwhile Robert needs to pack a little bottle Love Potion Tenni #9 for the Tazzy Trip. Watch the wallabies.

I got Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia from last year's thread.

Now how much fun would it have been without this side trip? It would have been about as much fun as a Scura without bubbling engine paint, an exploding flywheel, poorly adjusted suspension, and cheap, plastic speedometer drive gears.

Just talked with the guys at the spring company. It seems their manufacturing tolerances are not quite as tight as Chuck's experience. However, we have sorted it out and they are making a new batch of springs at a 75% discount from the original order. This is based on my assertion that three flaws were their fault, and one flaw was our fault. So we are adding a little to the unit cost of the springs. They can ship to me within 2 weeks. I don't want money from anyone until we verify that we have in-spec springs in-hand. After that, I'll give all the ordering details.

That looks metric thinking to me. Just like the milliphoto, the 1/1000th area of a picture that is worth only one word. But if Helen's face could have launched 1,024 ships, it would not be metric. It would be base-eight. Base-eight is why we have USB drives in 32MB, 64MB, etc. - and why we get screen dimensions like 1024 x 768. Nuthin' to do while we wait for news on the inch-spec springs for our metric motorbikes...

I have a nice metric tape by Starrett: https://www.amazon.com/Starrett-KTX34-5M-N-Measuring-Graduation-Interval/dp/B00ELMS1G8/ref=pd_bxgy_328_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00ELMS1G8&pd_rd_r=VST13ZTV958NTK546MX2&pd_rd_w=a2NvK&pd_rd_wg=fpV44&psc=1&refRID=VST13ZTV958NTK546MX2 The cloth metric tape measures are good for measuring suspension sag: https://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Medical-Measurement-Centimetre-Reverse/dp/B0173AWLJ2/ref=sr_1_3?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1517713265&sr=1-3&keywords=metric+cloth+tape+measure&dpID=51d1TW9Lk%252BL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch 20 year search is over.

The US missed a great opportunity to go all metric in the 1970s. It's a far better system and easier to work with. Feet, fractional inches, quarts, tablespoons, miles, dozens, pounds, Fahrenheit temperatures... I'd gladly get rid of all of it (especially ounces, where we stupidly use the same word for weight and volume). Just make everything base-ten. End of rant.

Here is Chuck's drawing. I thought it would be worth having this in the "permanent record."

Ha... that was great.

I think it might be fuel supply. I wanted to clean the fuel-level sender anyway (because it's not accurate), so I took out the whole pump assembly to get at the fuel-level sender. I found a lot of junk on the fuel pick-up screen. I had the tank propped up for a while, and I suspect that every bit of loose junk in the tank settled around the screen. So I'm gonna replace the filter, pump, and submersible hoses. Hopefully that does the trick. Parts were cheap too - the ducati.ms forum had all the compatible parts identified, for much lower than the dealer prices.