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Moto Guzzi V65C - Sold ! (11.06.2011)

650cc Moto Guzzi V65C -86
Some bikes are feminine "she" and some are "it". Having tested Moto Guzzi it is definitely "He". It feels like it is made of solid steel and works like a tractor.
191002 First miles
It was -12C in the morning but rose to +4C in the middle of the day. We got to the car and rode to the old owners carage to move Guzzi to his new home. We had spent some moments in the previous day, because the motor didn't like to start. The problem was with a loose wire.
Now Guzzi started with the first push of button and made his "thum-thum-thum..." like it should. We made the underwritings and shook hands. Helmet on and to the road.
There was but 15 km by 'highway' and I had my warm Rukka motorcyclingwear on but still it felt chilly.
There is a great difference between my Honda and Guzzi. Honda needs about 3000rpm to run smooth. With Guzzi I had barely 2000 and it ran fine. There seems to be some dirt particles in the carburators, because it did hesitate a bit when I cave more gas.
Our princess wanted to come with, so we made some test trips. In two days we have crossed about 100km. Now I feel more accustomed to Guzzi. Even if it runs smooth at 2000 rpm, it gives easy power up to 6000rpm. The red line starts at 7000, but I don't test that before I check carburators and valves.

The only thing that was marked negative was the saddle. There is three steps. First for the rider, second for the passenger and third just for fun. This third step shortens the passengers seat somehow and the passengers told that their backs didn't like it. Lets see if we can make something to it.

One funny thing in the Guzzi is the battery. Normally you see a 4-8Ah battery in a bike. In Guzzi there is now 24Ah and space for 30Ah. Old 6V VW Beetles had 30AH batteries to start 1200cc motors. The original 200W generator should be enough. I have had 180W units in some of my cars.


061102 Work
I took out carburators to check what they had collected. There was some odd particles in both carburators as I had assumed. Another thing was that the needles were in their highest positions. Someone has tought to lower gas consumption. I reinstalled the needles to their original hights. It doesn't mean any difference to me if the motor burns 6 or 8 l/100km, because I know, I'm not going to buy many full tanks in a summer.
I hear a tiny sound from the left cylinder head. I got to adjust the ventiles later. Now it is too cold. Lets see in the summer, if my adjustments make more kick to the motor.
051004 Only two days left of this summer. Then I leave Guzzi under the hood in the garage. Summer -03 went by with no problems. In summer -04 there came one. I was just lazily cruising some smaller backstreets when the rear wheel made some odd sidestep. Then in next corner another. I came home and invested the sittuation. I took the rear wheel out and found that the ball bearing was about 0.5 mm loose of its nest. There had even been a bronze sheet between the bearing and the wheel body but it had slipped out.
I have an enormous luck to know some exeptionally skilled men to use a lathe. They made parts to fasten the wheel to their tool and took 1 mm out to make space for a ring. They made a ring around the bearing and pushed the parts together with a hydraulic press. After installing Bridgestone Battalax I set the wheel under the bike and gave it a cautious try. Cautious because the streest were damp, the tyre was new and there had been a major surgery to the rear wheel. Every now and then I checked everything and all was fine. The tyre gave out the slippery surface and started little by little take firmer hold of the asphalt.

Day by day I like this bike more.
Some day I might change the handlebar for a lower and more narrow. The windshield I have allready left out. It only makes awfull turbulences. Later I made small pieces of sheet steel to make the windshild about 5 degrees more sloped. This helped a lot. The windshield might throw the wind ower a short driver, but with my dimensions it is better that the wind comes down under my collar. The worst case is, when the wind comes to your helmet making noises.


130509 New ignition system for MotoGuzzi


Last year I had a bleeding wound whole summer and I had no possibilities to ride my bike at all. This spring I kicked my Guzzi and it didn't respond. The ignition system was broken, kaput. It was an old Piranha system with optos and using the original mechanical timing advance.
I asked for a new Piranha, but didn't found them here in Finland. I found some similar form USA and GB, but they were too expensive, so I made my own.

I think my system is in many ways better than those I have seen. It is simple, cheap and built of standard parts. Of course there is some mechanical billet parts you can not get from anywhere ( even I don't sell them ;). The most important piece of hardware being the chopper. You can ask somebody to make one for you with a lathe. I used Nylon here, but you can use alumine also.

The device is under work now, 130509, but you will find the pictures in my archive: Ignition I built and installed it and it started workin with the first kick.


160511 New start

There has been a long time I have had no time for the bike. It has only waited in my garage. Of course I have charged the battery etc every now and then, but not run a single kilometer. I have had so much else to do. Last year I spent all my spare time taking care of my parents. My mother died in january and my father in august. After that I have spent my time taking care of their property

I took apart the carburators and checked them. There had been some odd behaviour and now I found it. The idle jet had dropped out of its place ! Another thing was that the floater of this same carb was about 4 mm too low. Now the bike is running as it should. In any case I better give it in the hands of a profi to check the sync of the carbs.
I hade a simple gauge of cardboard to get the floater height right:


A piece of cardboard to measure the height of the floaters.


180511 Testing

After a rainy day I had a possibility to test my last repairs.
First the motor run like a horse with fife feet. I set the timing advance, and now it feels like a totally different bike. The motor runs smooth and gives power.

It would be nice to have time to build a system for the timing advance and replace the original mechanical system.
I have an idea for a very simple processor based system, but no time to build it just now. The Idea is to use two opto forks: one for the low rpm while starting the motor and another for the speed over abt. 300 rpm. The 'high-speed' opto would be about 50 deg before the 'low-speed'. Now we could use a timing function like t=a/f+b, where t is time from the first opto. First aproximatoin for the parametes are:
T=40*(1-1000/(RPM+550)) + T0, where T0 is the fixed advance of about 7 deg.

I just noticed, that I have run with this bike under 10000 km after I bought it 19.10.2002.


190511 Future
It seems that I still do not have time for the bike, so I better sell it.

030611
Today, when I started the machine, there was a light klicking noice in the motor, which I had not noticed before. So I took the valve covers open and checked the valve settings. It should be 0.15mm in intake and 0.20mm in exhaust.
In left hand side cylinder the exhaust was about 0.50mm. The others were ok within an error marginal of 0.05mm.
I went through all the valves and now the voice is as it should be. It also made the motor run better so that the idle was now too high and I fixed that too.

It is now easy to fix the valve timing, when thre is the new ignition system. When the leading edge of the chopper is entering the opto fork, the left hand piston is in the right position. When the chopper is leaving the opto fork, the right hand side cylinder is in the right position.

you just take the valve covers open, remove the spark plugs and the generator cover. You can rotate the motor with a key in the hole in the fore end of the crankhaft. The crankhaft rotates clockwise and the camshaft with the ignition chopper rotates anti-clockwise as seen from the front. ( You have to check the directions, I'm not sure anymore !! )


220611
I managed to find the user manual that came with the bike. It took me three days to scan the manual because of other projects. I scanned it and made some editing to the pages to make it more readable and usable. Now it is here as a link in the right side bar. Beware, it is about 24MB large even though I cropped all the 66 pages and fitted two pages to one A4 sheet. The schematics I had to leave full size even though the small size page is full readable in pdf format, if you use zoom.

I still have a dream to build a microprocessor based ignition system for Guzzi. I have a nice simple idea how to make it. It might be I'll make a version first for some small one cylinder motor and then test it in Guzzi.
My daughter has a Chinece 50cc scooter with 4 stroke motor. That would be a good test bench.
Lets continue after my summer holiday ;)

Moto Guzzi

some pictures:
Electronics
Users manual
- (24MB pdf)

Brochures

Links Moto Italia, Turku
Gruppo Moto Guzzi Finlandia
Club, europa
Italic manual
manuals for Nevada and 350
Specialist in Deutchland

email to PTMUSTA