How bad can it be?

Last weekend Jude and I drove up to Cobar to collect Matt's lovely white GRiSO. It was known that it needed rollerising but it was also only running on one cylinder. Matt had changed the plug caps to no avail but it wasn't chucking up a code so I guessed it would be something simple-ish.

Anyway this morning we rolled it onto the bench and set about examining it.

Leads and injectors were all working as they should. Hmmm! Time to run a compression test.

RH side? 165 PSI. That's OK, I'd like it a bit higher but it was a cold engine. LH side? Holy snappin' duckshit! 70 PSI! Something is seriously 'Not Right'!

Rocker cover off and the story begins to unravel. Inlet valves have no clearance. Exhausts have too much, but not a *lot* too much. But look at the adjusters on the rockers.

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And you can see the tops of the flat tappets are no longer sitting proud of the cambox casting. A sure-fire sign that they are worn.

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While I was discovering this Michael drained the gearbox oil.

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We're hoping its gear oil with a moly additive but that isn't specified and I can't think of any reason to use it! It's a straight cut box filled mainly with 2RS bearings!

Well, the head's gunna have to come off so we set about pulling the cambox. Huh! WTF!!!!! The cam chain is so worn we can't get a screwdriver between it and the tensioner it's extended so far! At 20,000km? Getouttahere!

So we remove the breather plate and have another huge WTF moment! The flinger plate is BROKEN!!!!!!!!

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How do you even DO that???

Anyway we left the tensioner extended, we reckoned, rightly, that we were going to have to have the barrel off anyway. So we pulled the cambox and this is where the fun really started! Check out the weir/bearing retainer bolts as it came off!

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The camshaft was also seized in the cambox! Well that explains the buggered chain!

Opening up the cambox was like something from a horror film! Yes, that's a bit of melted cambox that stuck to the heavily blued cam bearing!

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Below are a series of pics of the carnage inside the cambox itself. The exhaust tappet is about the worst, no, it is the worst we have ever seen!

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And you know what both amazes me and saddens me? The fact that the shop that serviced it KNEW that it was lunching it's tappets. They took it apart and checked it and then reassembled it incredibly badly and sloppily. Didn't tell the customer but just closed the valve lash right up so it would run and charged him, no doubt handsomely and pushed it out the door!

Why? One can only assume because it was just too much bloody bother to actually do the right thing! I'm particularly pissed off because I'd always thought that shop was one of the better ones. Not any more!

So what's the endgame? Well because it's obviously run for a while with the cams and tappets completely rooted on the left side at least it's been overfuelling to buggery and the exhaust valve gudes are shot!

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Valve stems themselves are fine but they flop about in the guides like a cock in a sock! I was so despondent after that I haven't even bothered checking the inlets yet.

What as sad, shitty, stare of affairs. Repairing it is going to be a very big and expensive job. We haven't even looked at the RH side yet! And somewhere in the engine there's that chunk of flinger plate floating about as well! That can't be good............

This kind of shit makes me very angry. A pox upon the "service" agent.

I fart in their actual direction.

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While I wince for Matt & what you'll find as you dig deeper, as a novice mechanic I appreciate the documentation & instruction.

Cheers

Dear Lord what a mess! How much more to make it a 1400 vs fixing the mess?

Aw, Jesus! Well it's lucky Matt's GRiSO found its way to Moto Moda! It'll be done right this time!

What part of the country was this "service" agent in ? Just want to steer very clear of them at all costs, now that my local (Moto Italia) has closed shop.

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I'm pretty embarrassed about this whole thing. I thought I was reasonably switched on but it's also apparent that I was too trusting. I'm also really, really pissd off. I expected a whole lot more from a 'recognised' Guzzi service agent. Despite the damage done, a lack of evidence against this workshop means that I have little chance of recourse. There's a lot to be said for the old adage 'buyer beware'. As Street said, at least my bike is in Pete and Micahaels hands now but I can't deny that the potential cost of this scares the shit out of me.

Why embarrassed? It's not your fault that someone abused your trust and fucked your engine!

We all make mistakes, it's why I carry substantial liability insurance, (That has never been used, thank whoever!) but if you screw up like this you fess up! You don't try and hide it and make it go away!

Pete

that really does look fucked, i would be a very unhppy bunny to find that in my pride and joy

That's the stuff that nightmares are made of. S.H.I.T. happens but that is evil.

Thank you for the pictures and the explanation, very insightful though also quite horrible to see.

So, do you get the free update parts from that Dealer? Only fitting since they maintained it.

The shop that screwed this up is now shut. I think there is little point in trying to seek restitution.

Pete Roper wrote:

The shop that screwed this up is now shut. I think there is little point in trying to seek restitution.

Which maybe explains why they didn't give a shit? Knew they were going out of business and were only concerned with maximizing cash flow before they shuttered the place. Pure speculation but I've seen it before - very sad.

'Tis sad indeed that even "reputable" service agents perform so well that they are a liability to the machines and the people they are servicing. A gross dis-service, methinks.

And I see it all the time, owners wanting to save $10 on a towing fee will elect to go to the closest bike shop, only for some shaved ape to make a complete botch up of what should have been a simple repair.

For me, $500 interstate transport fee (only 1 way) to Bungendore is cheap insurance for the job to be done right the first time. I may need to do this soon.

In Brisbane there is not one shaved ape who can do a complete TB synch, TPS reset and a dyno tune to set correct AFR's. (please note - Bellagio EFI is different to GRiSO). So I've tried to get several apes to do a portion each, of the correct procedure. Trouble is, they each want to fuck with the last apes set-up, something which they do not understand and don't have the correct equipment to adjust.

One ape decided to reset all my suspension settings, something he was not employed to do. FUCK!

So Pete & Mark, one day Bella will come your way, and I will require video proof of the ceremonial bashing, burning and burying of the PC-V. I know I've threatened to sell Bella, but the emotional attachment is still too strong.

tps reset on a bellagio should never be done!!!!
The tps of a bellagio is logarithmic, and a reset can give serious trouble to get it running good again.
In the later versions of Guzzidiag when Bellagio is selected, there is no tps reset.

And well is it is broken, getting contact to another bellagio can help. You export there the eeprom, get the tps trim value with th xdf Beard made, and implant that in yours. Anyway saving the eepom as a backup is a good thing. Before somathing happens. The dealer can only sell you a new ecu to solve it.

Bellagio has a hybrid system, half Cali half GRiSO, as in Cali 40mm throttle bodies but GRiSO 5AM ECU.
According to my info, TPS is manually adjusted by loosening the 2 screws, and moving it slightly to get a reading of 4.8 whatzy's on your laptop/guzzidiag/whatever device. Re-tightening the screws may move the TPS fractionaly, so several adjustment attempts maybe needed.

If any of the above is incorrect, I don't care coz the next and proper fiddler will be in Bungendore.

It's actually 3.6 whatsies. You do not use GuzziDiag to adjust the TPS on a Bellagio. You use a voltmeter to set it at 150mV. The TPS value in displayed in GuzziDiag does not have the correct resolution to use as a reference.

ghezzi wrote:

One ape decided to reset all my suspension settings, something he was not employed to do. FUCK!

So Pete & Mark, one day Bella will come your way, and I will require video proof of the ceremonial bashing, burning and burying of the PC-V. I know I've threatened to sell Bella, but the emotional attachment is still too strong.

Wayne, let us know when this is happening, so we can organise a cabal around it... We want to see the deed dun proper like!

Well bugger! I bid on the Mannheim GRiSO but hesitated at $2,900 and the hammer fell. Bugger! Would of been a cheap way out......

Pete

Maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned that to me Pete.

What? Were you bidding? FUCK! I thought you'd missed my email! Did you win it.

No, nothing like that Pete. More the fact that I’ve missed out on the opportunity of a cheap fix. Until I called you yesterday I didn’t even know about the auction.

Well, Michael pulled the engine to bits today. We found the bit of flinger plate at the bottom of the tunnel. Rings are good, Michael's just pulling the bottom end off but I reckon the big ends will be fine, they feel fine.

It's going to be up for chains, maybe a tensioner blade, we'll swap the dummy shaft cap with one off a wreck just in case the bearing is damaged but the biggest issue is the valves and guides.

While it's still going to be expensive it's not going to be as expensive as the Stelvio from Hell!

Pete