Classic Bie?

Wotcha.

It's the other way around with me.
Slow means the bone is still growing when it should have stopped.
When slow becomes stopped and the bone has matured, then they can go in with
the angle grinder and remove the excess bone which is causing my lack of
movement / progress.

Cheers.
All being well I should have the last part finished today . . . once I find
some grub screws, a suitable bit of aluminum and can borrow my mate's lathe
for a while.

'Fraid it's a 1991 500 Bullet . . . . well, a 570 slightly modified Bullet
;-)
http://www.moonshiners.org.uk/bullet.htm

 

It would be immeasurably better, then. I've never owned a Guzzi, but
I've had the pleasure of a few Alfas and the odd FIAT, leading to the
vast reservoir of amusement that comes from dealing with Moto Magnetti
and Magneti Marelli. Marelli were responsible for Golden Lodge plugs,
at the time the most expensive ignition component I'd ever fitted and
possibly in the world - and one in three was duff out of the box. I
used to order (and wait two weeks for) six at a time, in the hope of
getting four good ones.

Italian wiring looms - the only ones to beat the French for outright
lunacy: 27 wires in only three basic colours with no trace stripe,
instead using dots of paint to denote circuit. They only had three
colours of paint as well, so the grey wire you're looking at could
supply coil, headlights of wipers, depending on whether it had three,
four or five orange dots on it. Of course, if one of the dots had
rubbed off ....

What? Eh? Oh, when MG = Moto Guzzi. Juxtaposing MG and Marina leads
to wrong conclusions, see.

 

Well that makes for interesting reading!
It seems you have done all the mods to an Injun model that I was looking
at.
If one comes along at silly money I may well invest and mod it up with
UK bits.

Having a read of your pages I almost chocked on my Sanatogen wine when I
see the Old Billy Bigbeard creation. I looked at that a few years ago
when he was first selling it, for a mate of mine. Great fella Billy! If
it's the same beast (and it looks it) the mill was a Ford 2000 lump. It
would start...
With the aid of a couple minutes spannering and hoiking the waterlogged
air filter off we got it going. My mate (Ray the Cab) really wanted it
but wasn't too happy paying what he thought was a high price IIRC around
£3.5K. He obviously never got it. Do you still have it and what's it
like nowadays?

Oh and I'm sure there's a few people around the UKRM manor that are
pretty adept with an angle grinder that can help you out with bone
growing problem!

Drop us a line at ukrm<@>foxtails<.>co<.>uk

Cheers.

 

Wotcha.

Dropped - or at least I think it is

 

I did own one and I can easily justify buying it: it was my first big
bike, it was being sold by someone I knew and, above all else, it was
cheap.

 

I had one, too. It was the last model of the 750, the F, iirc. The G was
the 850. By the time the F came out all the problems had been sorted,
but it was too late and subsequent sales of the G suffered accordingly.

 

The 850 still occasionally suffered from the middle gearbox failure
problem, mind.

I liked the old triples. Huge heavy tanks, but had charm. Very comfy,
too.

 

There was a "fix" IIRC. Someone made an improved gear. Utter PITA to fit of
course.
Apart from the gear issue the XS750 was a rather good bike. About the same
performance as an R100 of the day.

 

I bought a 400 Four recently from a bod who had the cleanest one I've
seen in years. We were talking about the gearbox issue. He said that
second gear use to go on on later bikes, it was possible to replace
the offending cog via a removable plate. Sounds unlikely to me, but if
so, then Yamaha had some form of cassette gearbox way before the
Suzuki RG series.

I don't think there was any way to fix the middle gearbox other than
by removing the drive shaft etc. The XS1100 sometimes suffered from
middle gearbox failure as well, but there are some high-milers out
there so I suppose it depended on whether it as treated
sympathetically or not.

I liked the XS because it felt and sounded 'different', and it handled
remarkably well for something of that vintage. It weighed a bloody
ton, though, and the fuel tank was a bit too small. The last F model
got a five-gallon tank, which they carried on to the 850, and that was
much more like it.

I remember mine had a hinged rear mudguard to make getting the back
wheel out a bit easier, and a sort of wire loop tool to hang the wheel
on when you were persuading it back onto the splines. Real evidence of
BMW-like thought.

And it also had Yamaha's amazing self-cancelling indicators. Why did
Yamaha ever stop fitting those?

 

Post corrected.

 

Really? Vinnies had that as well? Stap me. Impressed.

 

The hinged rear mudguard, yes. Made it much easier to flip the rear
wheel round when attaching the sidecar.

 

The 5gal tank was a handy thing - I got 48mpg no matter how I rode it,
so could rely on a predictable range.

Oh yes, I recall those things now.

Dunno, but one of the GSs has them - they stay on for 150yds or so many
seconds, iirc.

 

Yep, got it.

 

On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:02:18 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:

[of XS750]

I had the very early model with the small fuel tank, small headlight,
integral foot peg hangers, triple points ignition, lowly 7500RPM red line
and integral subframe rust. When I bought it, 2nd gear wouldn't stay in,
but it had so much torque that you could actually ride round that. I did
rebuild the engine to fix that quite early on, though.

 

I think the disadvantages - a special relay with four pins, a special
handlebar switch with the 'activate indicators' wire output, the speed
sensor and the actual electronic gizmo itself all added up to a fairly
hefty additional parts bill that ISTR meant that the indicators sometimes
cancelled a fraction too early (such as during a right turn on a big
roundabout), or you had to cancel them manually anyway in town.

 

The XS indicators stayed on if the bike was stationary or after a
distance (or time, not sure which) if it was moving. There was a reed
switch in (I think) the speedo drive, or maybe the speedometer itself,
that told the S/C electronics when to inhibit the indicator relay. In
fact, you could run them with the box of tricks disconnected and the
indicators would work like a standard manual set. I'm not sure, but I
think I got fed up and disconnected mine, or maybe the S/C box went tits-
up. Or maybe it was the relay itself.

 

I always found they had the time/distance just right.

My old Kawasaki GT750 (the Ukrm Tart) had them as well, and they tended
to cancel a bit early, and of course the BMW K11 has them, and they tend
to cancel a bit late.

Yamaha had it just right, IMHO. I'm sure you're correct about the cost
being the inhibiting factor, mind.

 

150 yards, 10 seconds or until the speedo hit 30mph from a standstill,
whichever came first. It was triggered by a switch in the speedo and
the SC unit was prone to failure. As you mentioned, the indicators
would still function as normal when the SC unit had failed and there
wasn't any need to remove it.


--
Lozzo
Versys 650 Inter-Continental Hyperbolistic Missile , CBR600F-W racebike
in the making, TS250C, RD400F (somewhere)
BMW E46 318iSE (it's a car, not one of those 2-wheeled pieces of shite
they churn out)

 

Aha, the definitive answer.

Actually, I may be imagining it, but I thought I saw the reed switch in a
250LC console as well.

Did LCs have SC indicators?