Hello from Scotland

Hi All,

Thanks for allowing me to join the forum. I purchased my '58 GRiSO 8v at the end of December 16.  My previous bike was a beat up Honda Enduro 125cc purchased for £35 in 1979.  The bike was kept at friends farm, there was a coal bing on the farm where we spent our summer racing round circuits cut by the farmer and his JCB.

I've managed to clock up just less than 300 miles over my first few runs. Looking forward to better weather and to many more rides.

The GRiSO
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Very good that you found a GRiSO, you also found a great site lots to learn and write about..

and.. you have one of the faster black ones , so triple bonus

G'day Angus
Welcome from us all from way down under in Tasmania.
Enjoy that wonderful looking black GRiSO
Stay safe and warm.

Welcome Angus!

The $64,000 question? Has it been rollerised?

Pete

Pete Roper wrote:

The $64,000 question? Has it been rollerised?

Pete

Kill Joy!

Nope. Just trying to make sure he doesn't have an expensive disappointment!

Pete

G'day Gus. I too have a Black 09 model. It goes a lot better with green striping though 
Enjoy the bike, they are a blast. Lots of good info here too. But as Pete said, has it had the Roller tappet upgrade ? It's fairly important for the longevity of your beastie .
Cheers

Pete Roper wrote:

The $64,000 question? Has it been rollerised?

Pete

Hi Pete,

I've read a little on here about the "rollerised" thing but to be honest I have no idea.  How would I be able to determine this?  The bike has a fully Guzzi history.

Cheers,

Angus.

Hi us and welcome, the early black ones are the fastest, like yours and mine :-)

But they do need to have rollers :-(

However once they have been they are great :-)

And if you fancyy a long run on May we are meeting up on the South Coast and staying over

Looking to come to Knockhill to watch some racing later in the year and my route for a SS1000 ride is through Ayre if i can get it organised this year.

anguscameron1966 wrote:

Pete Roper wrote:

The $64,000 question? Has it been rollerised?

Pete

Hi Pete,

I've read a little on here about the "rollerised" thing but to be honest I have no idea.  How would I be able to determine this?  The bike has a fully Guzzi history.

Cheers,

Angus.

Very easy, just pop a rocker cover off and have a look. Take the plastic 'Wing' off, pry the badge off the top of the HT lead cover and then undo the cover retaining screw with a 3mm Allen key. Now comes the only tricky bit, removing the plug cap. Get a long, thin, flat bladed screwdriver and slip it in through the air cooling tunnel in the head from the front of the engine just above the exhaust header. Poke around until you feel it meet the soft rubber of the plug cap and then lever the cap up while pulling gently on the top of the cap. DO NOT pry away at the top of the cap, they are fragile and if torn the spark will arc to the head causing a load of problems!

Once the HT lead and cap are out of the way just undo the 4 cap nuts that retain the rocker cover and lift it off. Have a squizz at the top of the cambox. If there are little pushrods going into 'Tubes' about 15mm wide from the rockers? It's still got flat tappets. If there are much wider holes with a device that looks like a bridge with a tower on top of it below the rockers it's been converted to rollers. Look carefully through the 'Bridge' and you can see the roller at the bottom of the tappet.

There are plenty of threads here with comparison pics but in the morning, (It's 3.00AM here.) l'll post up a couple here.

If it is still on flats and has a full service history you should be golden for rollerisation. The only problem is often shops are reluctant to perform an inspection, (I have no idea why? It takes 15 minutes to pull a cambox and look. There's a video of me doing it an a thread here somewhere, the video is 13 minutes and 20 seconds long and I wasn't hurrying!). If your bike has more than 15,000 miles the damage will almost certainly be clearly evident and the earlier you catch it the less chance of further damage caused by crap being fed through the engine.

Pete

Pete Roper wrote:

anguscameron1966 wrote:

Pete Roper wrote:

The $64,000 question? Has it been rollerised?

Pete

Hi Pete,

I've read a little on here about the "rollerised" thing but to be honest I have no idea.  How would I be able to determine this?  The bike has a fully Guzzi history.

Cheers,

Angus.

Very easy, just pop a rocker cover off and have a look. Take the plastic 'Wing' off, pry the badge off the top of the HT lead cover and then undo the cover retaining screw with a 3mm Allen key. Now comes  the only tricky bit, removing the plug cap. Get a long, thin, flat bladed screwdriver and slip it in through the air cooling tunnel in the head from the front of the engine just above the exhaust header. Poke around until you feel it meet the soft rubber of the plug cap and then lever the cap up while pulling gently on the top of the cap. DO NOT pry away at the top of the cap, they are fragile and if torn the spark will arc to the head causing a load of problems!

Once the HT lead and cap are out of the way just undo the 4 cap nuts that retain the rocker cover and lift it off. Have a squizz at the top of the cambox. If there are little pushrods going into 'Tubes' about 15mm wide from the rockers? It's still got flat tappets. If there are much wider holes with a device that looks like a bridge with a tower on top of it below the rockers it's been converted to rollers. Look carefully through the 'Bridge' and you can see the roller at the bottom of the tappet.

There are plenty of threads here with comparison pics but in the morning, (It's 3.00AM here.) l'll post up a couple here.

If it is still on flats and has a full service history you should be golden for rollerisation. The only problem is often shops are reluctant to perform an inspection, (I have no idea why? It takes 15 minutes to pull a cambox and look. There's a video of me doing it an a thread here somewhere, the video is 13 minutes and 20 seconds long and I wasn't hurrying!). If your bike has more than 15,000 miles the damage will almost certainly be clearly evident and the earlier you catch it the less chance of further damage caused by crap being fed through the engine.

Pete

Hi Pete,

It looks like I have a small project to check this out. The bike has only done 7600 miles so hopefully if it's not already been sorted there will not be damage.
Really do appreciate your time and advise.

Thanks again,

Angus.

At that mileage, especially in Scotland, (That isn't a joke.) I'd expect wear to be clearly visible. How confident are you in your mechanical abilities? If you're happy to do it just pull a cambox and have a look at the tappets themselves. Make no mistake, the flat tappets will shit themselves. I a cool, damp climate like Scotland it will happen sooner rather than later.

Pete

Welcome Angus and congratulations on your GRiSO. You're getting some great advise from Pete, take full advantage of the expertise he offers here. Making sure your new GRiSO is up to snuff will ensure a long future full of enjoyment.

Linky to cambox strip thread and video.

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Roller tappets

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Flat tappets

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Pete Roper wrote:

At that mileage, especially in Scotland, (That isn't a joke.) I'd expect wear to be clearly visible. How confident are you in your mechanical abilities? If you're happy to do it just pull a cambox and have a look at the tappets themselves. Make no mistake, the flat tappets will shit themselves. I a cool, damp climate like Scotland it will happen sooner rather than later.

Pete

It was a cold clear evening here tonight. I thought I'd go blow the cobwebs off with an hours run on the GRiSO.  Much to my disappointment there was a small pool of clean oil that has leaked from the left hand front shock.

So I will have the bike looked at by a local bike tech who has an excellent reputation. Whilst he has the bike to fix the shock (i'm guessing it is a seal that's gone) I will have them check the "roller situation".  

Do you know if Moto Guzzi make any contribution to correcting this problem?

Cheers,

Angus.

If you have a full service history an authorised dealer can submit a claim on your behalf and send pictures of the damage and a few other identifiers off to the factory and if everything checks out Piaggio will supply the kit, (Your bike will require a 'C' kit, Part# 1A002082.) but you, the customer, will be up for the labour which to do the job correctly takes about 8 hours for an inexperienced mechanic. They the ugh includes dropping the sump for a thorough clean out which the factory doesn't suggest because they are trying to weasel out of it cheaply.

Pete

Hi Angus,

a warm welcome also from Austria!
You purchased the one and only bike with real emotions.
Forget about the rest!

Ralf

Pete Roper wrote:

If you have a full service history an authorised dealer can submit a claim on your behalf and send pictures of the damage and a few other identifiers off to the factory and if everything checks out Piaggio will supply the kit, (Your bike will require a 'C' kit, Part# 1A002082.) but you, the customer, will be up for the labour which to do the job correctly takes about 8 hours for an inexperienced mechanic. They the ugh includes dropping the sump for a thorough clean out which the factory doesn't suggest because they are trying to weasel out of it cheaply.

Pete

Hi Pete,

The bike is going in to have the front fork seals replaced next week (doing the pair rather than just the left leaking one).

I have spoken to the local Guzzi dealership and they have acknowledged there is a problem with "some" bikes. Basically they have said If there is evidence of the problem Guzzi will supply a kit foc. Labour costs will be at my expense. Given the overwhelming advice on carrying out this work I think I will proceed regardless of if the fault is showing at this time or not.

The mechanic carrying out the front fork work asked if I knew if the bike could be supported from it's sump whilst the forks were off. I wondered if you knew if this was an acceptable method to support the bike?

Again thank you so much for sharing your wisdom!

Angus.

Il GRiSO wrote:

Hi Angus,

a warm welcome also from Austria!
You purchased the one and only bike with real emotions.
Forget about the rest!

Ralf

Dunno about that, I've been very angry with a number of bikes over the years...

Angus, you can support the bike under the sump but spread the load. I use a bit of plywood roughly the same area as the sump on a cheap scissor jack from the Oz equivalent of 'Halfords'. Make sure it's tied down at the rear and then just jack it up. Care and common sense. The sump isn't a thick casting so don't put all the lifting force in a small area.

With the rollerisation? The factory won't approve any rollerisation pre-emptively. There has to be visible damage. The biggest problem people here have had, and I believe that this is a global problem, is that many shops refuse to investigate because there is no easily detectable evidence of damage. Until the tappets have lost all the DLC coating the clearances don't change appreciably and the top end doesn't get noisy. A lot of places stick with the old 'If it ain't broke? Don't fix it!' Maxim. The problem is with this issue the longer it is left the greater the chance of the abraded DLC causing further problems in the motor.

I've performed upward of eighty rollerisations now. In three cases, one of which was my own bike, there were bottom end failures due to particulate contamination after the engine was rollerised. The others who suffered similarly were Ralf Z and Mark III who also post here. My failure was at a comparatively high mileage, (85-90,000 Km.) and my engine had been grinding itself to bits as I was at that time still convinced that the failures that were occuring were more likely due to poor maintenance. Unfortunately I was wrong. Since I started seeing failures on bikes I had serviced from new I instituted a policy of inspecting every flat tappet bike that comes through my workshop and I haven't seen a single one with over 20,000 Km or so that wasn't showing damage. There is, and will be, a 100% failure rate of flat tappet top ends. Oh, Ralf and Mark's bikes were considerably lower mileage to mine so getting it done early is by far the best bet but you may have to insist that a cambox be pulled and ask for pics of the tappets to be taken. Some shops describe damage as 'Acceptable wear'. There I'd no such thing as 'Acceptable wear'. Send pics of tappets with missing or abraded DLC to the factory and a kit will be approved, as long as there is a service history. No history? They'll tell you to whistle!

Pete

Angus, and to add to Pete's story, mine was rollerised after only 2250 miles and it needed new crankcases and crankshaft due to bits floating around in the oil, it was run until it actually stopped!, this was before i bought it, i might add.

Its run like clockwork ever since, get it looked at, get it fixed, enjoy many years of great motorcycling

Welcome, Angus. Not much I can add to the above discussion - they know what they're talking about. Get your GRiSO rollerised and enjoy the hell out of it!

The way most folks go about to use the factory warranty is they simply take the tappets off anyway.
There will be some wear regardless so they can take pictures and send them to Piaggio for approval...
If you can wrench yourself great, if not, you're only in it for the labor.
In any case, good luck...

Hi Angus, unfortunately you've been hit with the only bit of bad news about GRiSO ownership on your 1st welcome post. You're going to love your GRiSO though. I came back to one after a break which included an MV brutale and Ducati Multi.
Have fun!