Pexi's Moto Guzzi Weblog

1200 vs. 1100 revisited

Both 1100 and 1200 engines on the same chart:

Life's Pretty Straight without Motorcycling, part II

This one is with a Moto Guzzi soundtrack ...

Cold weather with Norge

It's been uncomfortably cold over here for couple of days now, but luckily today the sky was clear and the sun was as bright as it ever can be. So, not surprisingly, I went for a late afternoon ride to the mountains of Pre-Alpes de Grasse. Heated grips on max, but still comfortably wearing my summer riding gloves - no cold at all! On the northern side of the mountain the thermometer went down to +1 °C and I chickened out, made a demi-turn as the road started to look somewhat icy.

(images are clickable, but you'll find better quality pictures in my smugmug site.)

Life's Pretty Straight without Motorcycling

6 minutes:

Two videos in YouTube

These are a bit long and dark, almost 20 minutes totally, but at the end of the second part the scenery is somewhat cool. Last rays of the sun: Part I and Part II

Best wishes for 2007

Better late than never (it's clickable):

(I found this gorgeous piece of art from the net - I do not know the origin or artist. If you are the author, I hope you don't mind me publishing the pic here - if you do, just let me know.)

Oh la la - today I got rear ended

Times are getting a bit rough here. I may need to stay inside, in the bed and keep the windows closed to avoid the next road surprise. Today - about an hour ago - I was waiting for the traffic lights in Promenade des Anglais, I think 5 minutes and just 500 meters away from Aigle Motos, happy to be riding again when a blonde subutex lady decided to get familiar with me... so she hit me with her Renault Clio. Ok, maybe "hit" is not the right word, it was more like a touch, but enough to get me surprised and dancing with the bike.

You can probably guess what was her reaction when I put the bike on the side stand and turned towards her. Right, inside the cage, windows closed, shoulders up and both hands nervously pointing forward to my bike, mouth moving: "there's nothing, there's nothing" (in French bien sur). Maybe she was just too scared to say "excuse moi, monsier, ca va?" or something, I don't know. Sad experience.

Left feet muscles are a bit sore now, because of the ex-tempore stretching show. Luckily no real harm, not for me and not for the bike. The rear mud guard obviously flexed and Clio's bumber hit the rear tire and then pushed me forward. Licence plate was the only one which got some minor damage. Blood pressure has come down again, too.

Dead Norge

Last Saturday, when I was already heading back to home it happened, without any prior symptoms - it just died. I was riding on the motorway on the fastest lane, keeping steady 150 km/h, and going with the other traffic on that lane, when the engine stopped without any prior symptoms - brrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrr. Guzzi's engine has quite a strong braking effect when it's swithed off on the move, and when it happens like that the speed goes down quite a lot before you understand what happened and finally grab the clutch and desperately start to look an escape route away from the road. I was lucky that the traffic was not too tense and obviously the drivers were awake and I got safely to the bank of the road.

The starter motor turned the engine normally, no odd mechanical noise or anything, it just didn't even try to start - no ECU warnings, nothing. Like there wasn't any fuel or no spark at all. So I called to Moto Guzzi Assistance... they said that they can't organize a towing service on the motorway, I have to call 112 and then they'll pay the towing. No probs, it really worked like that. After an hour or two I found myself in the town centre of Les Arcs in Var, Norge stranded in the garage - nothing to do but wait my missus to come and pick me up. Time to see the local cafes, have a bier and take some photos. In the end - unplanned, but not that bad at all.

So, today  (Tuesday) Norge was transported from Les Arcs to Aigle Motos in Nice and I just got a call from them: it's running again! The alarm/immobilizer, which was installed just 10 days ago, was broken and is now disconnected and a new one ordered. It's a Guzzi accessory for Norge, so obviously all is covered by quarantee. Anyway, if my insurance wouldn't require an electronic alarm, I wouldn't have even bough that thingy. Immobilizer.

Oil and tappet noise

Ken asked about the oil consumption: I've only got 3300 km on the clock, so less than 2500 km after the first service. I've not added any oil, but I think that the level has dropped a bit, still being well over the middle mark though. The oil dip stick is actually quite crappy to "read", so take this as "maybe".

I'm expecting the engine to be fully break-in somewhere around 10000 km, until that I'll be checking the oil consumption pretty regularly and listening the tappet noise carefully. Almost certainly the tappet noise has increased already, and it is louder on right cylinder side than on left side.

I'll check the clearances when I reach the 5000 km pole, unless it gets too noisy before that. Which reminds me that I don't actually know the correct valve clearences, intake and exhaust... got to get them somewhere. Weekend's weather forecast looks so good that I think it's gonna be a riding weekend, so 5000 km is not far away.

17 C and sunny, perfect touring weather for a touring bike - good time to work for my allocated share of CO2 increase.

Old wheel

This is how a front wheel looks like after hitting a pile of rocks on the road:

Guzzis compared (Excel sheet linked)

Couple of days ago I made some bold claims at MG-Griso forum about the 1100 vs. 1200... I've now composed a datasheet, which shows most current production Guzzis side by side, representing theoretical speeds and theoretical rear wheel pushing forces... maybe something that is interesting also to someone else.

Norge's theoretical speed at 6th gear and at maximum power rpm is 193 km/h, while Breva 1100 goes (theoretically) 217 km/h. This difference in gearing very much explains why the 1200 Norge feels so strong.

Click on the image below to get a larger view, or click here for the Excel sheet.

Top case arrived

I got the original MG top case for the Norge this weekend. It's quite large, but seems well integrated to the bike - and can be opened and closed with the ignition key. A single key for ignition, side bags and top box. Not bad.

Norge oil checking made easy

Thanks to John W, who gave the idea of using special long pliers to check the oil, so avoiding the need to remove the fairings, I'm now able to check the oil level in one minute! I couldn't find the long enough pliers from local hardware stores, so I ended up fabricating a special socket - it works well and is so obvious solution that I think that it should have been part of the original Norge tool set.

As John W indicated, you need to make room for the oil stick when lifting it away between the cylinder and fairing - I filed just a little bit of the inner plastic part - it's hardly visible modification:

The "tool" itself is just a small 1/4" opened 13 mm socket, where the opening has a tight fit to the handle in the oil stick:

Then you just use it: