Woot! Woot!

Well today, finally, I fired up the 'Stelvio From Hell' after finally getting it back together.

If this bike has one story to tell it is an object lesson in how to go about destroying an 8V motor.

Long and short of it was the owner, against my advice, fitted a pair of O2sensor foolers to it. This made it run grossly rich, washed the bores and knackered the rings. It then proceeded to blow all its heavily diluted oil out and filled the airbox to the point that oil was gushing down the inlet manifolds and dripping out of the throttle spindles. He didn't realise you should drain the airbox at each service so the poor thing was probably already full but that didn't help.

He finally checked the oil when the light came on up near Gloucester in September. The fact it had none seemed not to ring any serious bells so he just re-filled it and rode it back down to me filling it up as needed!

The tappets and cams were shot. The cam chains were shot. In fact just about anything I could check was shot. It needed a complete crank up rebuild. This in itself was a massive pain in the arse as Stelvios are a nightmare to work on compared to a GRiSO. Then there was getting the parts and actually doing the strip and rebuild. I'd not been in this far to one before and, surprise, surprise, Guzzi had changed a host of stuff like timing marks and shit but hadn't bothered telling anyone! Luckily I'm familiar enough with Mandello eccentricities to have been able to work it out easily enough but I pity anyone needing a rebuild from a shop without someone familiar with the factory's way of thinking! I have to admit that I too was dreading the start up, when you do 'New Stuff' you always wonder if you've done it right.

As it was I stuck the tank back on and with considerable trepidation installed the battery, crossed my fingers an hit the 'Go' button. Wow! Fired up immediately and settled down into an immediate solid 1200 idle. Five minutes later it wasn't bleeding so I think it's leak free!

Now all I have to do is reassemble all the extraneous plastic shit, bleed the brakes and clutch, map it up as it should of been in the first place without recourse to the shitty spoofers and then I can make up a HUGE bill and

FUCK

IT

OFF!!!

You want to know how much fitting the Spoofers and not knowing how to maintain his bike is going to cost him? I have no idea yet as I haven't calculated the parts or labour bill but it's going to be well North of five grand! If you aren't happy with how your stock bike runs, please, don't go down the 'This'll fix it. And it's cheap!' route. That way lie demons...........

Pete

Scary stuff. I'm glad I took the FatDuc off my Dorsoduro. Congrats, Pete!

Nice work sir!

Good work Pete, as I have seen the said dragon in the flesh.
There wasn't a part left intact on that motor.
I'm sure the dragon owner will be grateful.

That's a bloody expensive mistake. Maybe should have burned it accidentally instead.

Pete,
don't go feeling guilty about a huge labour content in the invoice, you didn't fuck it , and that time could have been spent on one of your own projects.  

I think that's cheap, rebuilt a MK111 with a new crank about 13 years ago, did the work myself and still spent $5k

Well, I took it on a shakedown run around the houses and it didn't blurt anything out, burst into flames or throw a rod out of the case so I assume it's good. It still runs like a bit of a pig due to the stepper being full of oily shit and not being able to respond quickly so idle is a bit dicky but hopefully it'll clean itself out over a couple of thousand klicks. One part has gone missing, the small plastic plate that goes under the headlights. It has to be around but the bike has been apart for so long I can't remember where I put it! No problem, I'll buy another one.

Six months this horrible POS has been clogging up the shop! Three of those it's been dangling off a crane on my primary bench. I'll be so glad to see the fucking back of it.

Pete

Progress Pete - it's all good!

Hey Pete,
The stepper motor are you suppose to pull those apart and clean over time?
The reason I ask is, my last two "cars" that's how you would fix shitty idles.
Wasn't sure if that's what I'm suppose to be doing as part of servicing.

Ralf..

No, as long as you don't keep over-filling the oil by keeping it at the 'Max' mark on the stick and allow it to find its own 'Happy Place' and threat that as the 'Full' point very little will be expelled. Usually this is between 'Add' mark and about half way to 'Full'. If you keep topping it up all that will happen is the excess will get pumped out into the condensor, which will be overwhelmed, and then pushed into the airbox where the 'Fog' of droplets will get drawn through the stepper when it's operating and make it glug by and slow to respond to input.

As long as you aren't continually over-filling contamination of the stepper will be negligible. I did notice with my throttle bodies that when I did eventually clean them at some quite high mileage they were fairly grubby and I'd had consistent high idle problems in some conditions. Cleaning them immediately restored happiness. Guzzi state you should remove and clean them every 10,000 km! Sod that! It simply isn't necessary! As long as you don't over fill the sump! Let the engine find its 'Happy Place', (It will use oil quickly until this point then virtually stop.) treat that as 'Full' and you probably won't have to look at your TB's or stepper for at least 50,000km. That's where I'm setting my 'TB Service point' at.

Pete

Thanks Pete.