Another Bloody Tractor (guzzi 1100 Sport)

I got a like from @bettes today on this thread which sort of surprised me so perhaps time for an update as its been 2 years and the bike continues to just "keep on giving"

Since the last posts I noticed when I took it out, I had an oil leak from around the bottom of the crankcase at the sump broad extender. Then I noticed some oil in one of the throttle bodies. After changing gaskets about 4 times with no percievable difference, it was traced to the back and front crank seals.

The oil ran down then along the ridges of the sump to make it look just like a gasket leak. With the oil in the left throttle body, I came to the conclusion I must be getting blow by. I pulled the barrels to get them measured, sure enough out of spec, the left by some margin. So off they went to Poeton
https://poetonaptec.co.uk/our-technology/
for recoating. New rings purchased and the heads went up to a machine shop to get inserts for the plugs as the threads felt a little "wooly".

While up at the head place, I discover that the valve stems are also out of spec, so new valves and guides get purchased too.

This was all far from straightforward, getting the valves, guides and rings proved fun fun fun with part numbers and suppliers being hit and miss.

Anyway in the meantime waiting for that lot I added an additional breather via the Dizzie blanking plate (blanked as it was used for the old points set up & this bike is electronic & FI). The breathing on these bikes is a bit marginal, Guzzi designed the crankcase originally for an 850cc bike or thereabouts and just kept on upping the displacement with no real redesign per se to the breathing system (except to capture coalesced oil via the frame and feed it back to the sump).

Eventually got the parts back and assembled it all, I don't have shop air so a leak down test was beyond me, but a compression tester revealed an increase in compression of 22 psi on the right and a whopping 42 on the left. Funnily enough the left was low pre work and now the right is the lower of the two, both differed by around 10psi, pre and post work.

When I had it up for an MOT the seal(s) were still leaking, but not as bad and my new breather line was also dumping a little oil. I handily located it next to the sump so as I couldn't ascertain how much was from the breather and how much from the sump, such was my skill in setting this up.

The breather line has now been rerouted away from the sump and a catchpot installed to (hopefully) reduce overboard leakage via the additional breather. Weather has been so shit that it's not run since the MOT.





@Arquebus was correct deep sumps can be installed, I got confused by the broad sump extender, dump that and one can be fitted. That is probably also in my future and a plan to incorporate the oil cooler via a sandwich plate, with mods to add the breather lines returning to the sump, present on the original design.

I'll also install new seals as the old ones are probably shot from the pressure they seen prior to the recoating, rings and headwork.

It's now a battle of wills to get it to run leak free and well. No sane person would even consider it, especailly for a sub 100 bhp bike that weighs a bloody ton

Other shit along the way

A one piece tail unit was purchased, these were fitted to the earlier carbie bikes and IMHO look much better. It required considerable modification (which I only discovered when it arrived) to get it to fit. The injection model put a whole bunch of electrical doo daahs where there was a cubbie hole in the carbie bikes. So it all had to be cut out, levelled and reglassed over to get the unit to install.



The digital dash idea got junked eventually too and a set of clocks from Speedhut got fitted instead. The old clocks were Ok on the Guzzis but Magni's fairing partially obscures them, making the clocks hard to read and the idiot lights totally useless. The new ones use a Harley mount I got from E-Bay (cheap) and the clocks are now more upright and a lot easier to see, but wiring it all in was horrendous






Some pics after the MOT, when the sun go his hat on, but only briefly

 

You know @bootsam I just very well might do that.

By the time I get the fekin thing fixed I'll be to damm frail to ride it.

I'd hate to see it just sitting in some "collectors" toyshop. Not that they'd give it a second look as it's far from the way it left the factory. Although it left the factory fucked and I'm just trying to fix it (with very mixed results)