GRiSO 8V, 2011 (Black of course!) from Northern Germany

Mine died at 2,000 miles....just saying, needed a new crank and cases because of the damage done

janguzzi wrote:

Okay ... wrong ;-)
Would it make sense to make a preventive change to rollers?
My GRiSO is from 2011 (A8 motor) and it just has 6000 Km on the speedo.
Who knows if the kits will be availble in several years ....

They are all going to fail. Rollerise early and save your motor. Yes it's definitely worth doing it as a preventative measure. At 6,000km there may or may not be immediately visible wear but believe me, they are failing. It only takes fifteen minutes to look but by 20,000 they will definitely show wear which means they're throwing DLC through the motor.

janguzzi wrote:

I think "Blah blah blah" is a bit unfair here.
Roland Däs made those tests when he did get not an answer from Piaggio on what was going on.
The solution with the rollers came much later.

Maybe he is right, more oil transport towards the tappets could have solved this too ... who knows.

No, not unfair sorry. Those guys had to know (and I'm sure they did) that by 2012, the flat tappets were a 100% failure. Yes a 100 fucking percent!!
At that time, any dealer worth a damn knew about the demise of the flat tappets when the factory was replacing those parts with more of the same. lol
Piaggio turned a blind eye on this issue as long as they could but had to come up with a solution, and it was the roller tappet version in mid 2012.
Shortly after that, they came up with the A/B and C kits to retro fit the early 8V engine line.

Listen, I apologize if I sound like a douche but it's not my intention... I'm on your side here, and so is Pete.
I'm almost sure that your tappets are already compromised...you won't feel it as it won't affect the performance but the DLC coating is wearing off and as soon as you hear the ticking sound, park the bike IMMEDIATELY or you'll ruin your engine. It took my 09 36K miles to fail but IT DID anyway. I believe that I was one of the few that were able to clock that many miles on the doomed flattie... Some failed at only 2000 miles so there is no guide line to detect when the problem will occur, it just will.
Take care.

No, they knew by the middle of 2010, the point at which they started marking the cylinder heads to show that the bikes would need the less expensive, (To them!) 'B' kit because they were already fitting the shims needed as part of the upgrade at the factory.

They obviously knew the tappets were all going to fail but rather than doing the honourable thing and issuing a recall they displayed this utterly cynical disrespect for both their customers and the businesses that were selling and maintaining their product.

It's such a bullshit attitude I find it hard to cope with. If it wasn't for the fact that the motor and the packages it was put in are such gems I probably would of spat the dummy and moved my allegiance to another brand, no mean feat after a lifetime of dedication to Guzzi, or at least the Guzzi name.

Pete

Well then, reinforce my point even further Pete.
Got my 09 in January of 2010 and Ridershill in GA told me that they've done the recall as soon as they un-crated the bike and that I was good to go with no worries on the new bits...
We all know now that the new part was just as bad but these guys were a good dealer so I kinda trusted them. lol
Maybe Steve can chime in and say when he actually knew that there was no remedy to the flatties...
Doesn't matter though, by the time rollers came out, anyone telling customers that there was no need to rollerize was simply full of shit! Lots of folks got screwed by listening to them.
By 2013 when my tappets shat the bed, Ian over there sent me a used set that I installed while I waited for the C kit to come out but unfortunately, I wreck the bike before I was able to rollerize.

I will say that I miss the kick in the arse you got with the flatties when you reached 5500rpm!!

Who is "they"?

janguzzi wrote:

Who is "they"?

The Piaggio management wonks who make the decisions.

Oh, and Grisonut, the 'Kick' at 5,500 was nothing to do with the flat tappet cam profiles, it was to do with the lousy mapping!

Pete

Okay ... then I can agree, the dealers are not to blame.

Pete Roper wrote:

Oh, and Grisonut, the 'Kick' at 5,500 was nothing to do with the flat tappet cam profiles, it was to do with the lousy mapping!

Pete

Ahhhhh, I see... Thanks for clarifying. I'd never guess that on my own but I did enjoy that Kick.
The 09 was never spot on until Mark's input and you guys saved me from going with Todd's BS and expensive route.
Still thankful for that. Almost pulled the trigger on the right side loud exhaust as well but a pissed member PMed me and changed my views on that.
Forums do work...

janguzzi wrote:

Okay ... then I can agree, the dealers are not to blame.

Dunno about Germany but over here a lot of the dealers are a huge screaming clusterfuck!

I had a woman phone me up yesterday who had taken her 1200 Sport to her local dealer because the 'Clutch wasn't releasing fully' they barely looked at it but told her that they weren't familiar enough with them to replace the clutch and she'd have to go elsewhere! Five minutes on the blower and I was pretty certain that the only problem with her bloody clutch is that the plunger in the lever barrel has come loose and backed out! I told her how to check that and am waiting for confirmation it's done the job. Now she needs to get it rollerised. She has a full service history but what do you think a shop that can't even look at a clutch issue will do when asked to check and replace a set of dying flatties? They'll have bloody kittens and melt down like a Japanese nuclear powerplant!

Pete

Yeah I think I know her! Has been ignoring the "you need to get this rollerised ASAP" edict advised by many. At least it hasn't gone tits up yet, or has it?

It's done 46,000km. it'll be well on the way.

Hopefully salvageable...

I predict....


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Ouch! That fugged??^^^^^^^^
I believe you need a whole engine in that scenario, no?
And it must make an awful noise at that stage...

Strange thing is whether the engine roots itself or not seems to be pure dumb luck! The three that I've had that ran their bottom ends after rollerisation all showed DLC contamination in the big ends and mains. Only mine had done much over 40-50,000km. I've done plenty of other machines with much higher kms and they've had no problems. My Turdio got rollered at 108,000 and I'm pretty sure it's had two sets of flats fed through it and while its noisier than most it isn't making any horrible noises!

Weird one I've got at the moment is another Stelvio. It's over fueling to buggery, washing the bores and drinking oil! I can't find out wtf is wrong with it! Runs like a sack of shit though!

Pete

Pete Roper wrote:

Weird one I've got at the moment is another Stelvio. It's over fueling to buggery, washing the bores and drinking oil! I can't find out wtf is wrong with it! Runs like a sack of shit though!

Prognosis: Negative

Sounds like voodoo crap Pete...
When mine went tits, it was not a constant ticking noise. Only when that tappet rotated on itself to the bad spot where it met the cam.
I didn't wait for it to get worse though, I towed the bike to my house and tear down the next day to discover what I feared...

beetle wrote:

Pete Roper wrote:

Weird one I've got at the moment is another Stelvio. It's over fueling to buggery, washing the bores and drinking oil! I can't find out wtf is wrong with it! Runs like a sack of shit though!

Prognosis: Negative

I'm pretty sure its not actually a fuelling issue per-se but the entire loom checks out, I wondered about the fuel pump, swapped my tank onto it, no change, swapped injectors, no change, swapped ECU as a last gasp, still no change. It behaves like its 8/12/16 stroking, which would explain the bore wash but 've done leads and what I thought was the suspect coil, still no joy.

I have a horrible feeling it may be either the ignition switch or maybe even the loom. It's driving me bonkers! It's not often I get a shitter that does this to me and I'm determined to fix the bastard but jesus its doing my fucking head in!

pete

2 lambda Stelvio?

Yup, but it's identical to mine, even the same pipe and is running the same map, (I've tried several, makes no difference.) which is/are open loop. I still think it's spark related, which means I'm probably wrong!

Pete love to know the outcome on this head banger you have.

Did you use GuzziDiag to test injectors or spark?

Mebbe an injector getting stuck on?

.

Nah, injectors swapped and the originals are being serviced as we speak.