Hi from Grimsby, UK

Hi, Steve from Grimsby, NE lincs, UK here, owner of 1200 SE GRiSO, currently off the road due to an electrical issue, not unusual for Italian vehicles !
Married to Donna, who is disabled, but used to love riding pillion until she could no longer ride. We also have two retired racing greyhounds, North and Syd.

Hi Steve - welcome to the Ghetto!
some of us here will be requesting pics of bike, dogs etc.
please show us your bike!

Hopefully, picture of bike uploaded ! [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Welcome Steve & looks good so hope electrical problem is a simple one (not ECU based)

Thanks Paul, she keeps blowing the 30A fuse on the charging circuit, I need to explore it and find any short/ bad earth or whatever before I can ride again. Been given a couple of usual things to check, so will get onto it ASAP.

Hi Steve

Welcome aboard

pretty bike - but then the white ones always were the best

Manuals and wiring diagrams here
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Many thanks, look forward to getting aboard again soon.
Just a pretty ornament at the moment!

That is a very pretty bike!!  Welcome to the forum!













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So what year is it?

2011

So has it been rollerised?

I don't know, neither did the previous owner. Its done 12000 miles and still sounds normal, so far...

The fact it sounds normal doesn't mean anything. It has to be rollerised or it will simply become an expensive paperweight.

Checking to see is as easy as lifting a rocker cover. When you do that do not try and pull the plug cap off from above, lever it off the plug from below using a long screwdriver through the cooling tunnel in the head just above the exhaust manifold. There are many pictures on the Ghetto of the different types of tappet. I strongly advise you to take the time to read my 'Definitive guide to rollerisation' in the tech section.

If you post up a picture of the underside of your rocker cover I can advise you on which kit you will require. Since the previous owner 'Didn't know' whether it had been done I think you can take it as a given that it hasn't. If it has, that's a bonus, but the simple fact is all flat tappet top ends will fail, there are no exceptions. If you contact a dealership they may tell you failures are 'Rare' or even deny its existence. That will be either dishonesty or ignorance. Rollerisation is the #1 most important issue to address on any pre-2012 8V 1200 Guzzi. After that greasing the swingarm bearings and shock linkage and replacing the sump spacer gasket get their place. Once those issues are addressed the 8V CARC platforms are pretty much bulletproof as long as they don't have stupid shit like K&N air filters fitted and their drain and breather hoses are maintained properly.

Hi, thanks so much for the info, it is definitely a job on the "to do" list, I'm due to have a knee replacement very soon, once that's out the way I'm hoping to get stuck into the bike.
Is the kit expensive, and how difficult is it to fit, ie special tools etc ?
I will definitely take a look at the guide, thanks for pointing me in the right direction

Checking what valve tappets is a 5-10 minute job Steve, so i'd do it immediately (to order bits/know sooner rather than later).

Rollerising is an expensive gig & the parts are getting scarecer.... Kit prices are around £1,000 ish price & labour could be another £500-£1,000ish.; it's not hard if you are comfortable taking cylinder heads off, there are no 'must buy' special tools, and Pete has already created a definitive guide to doing it.

Thanks Paul, I'll get it checked ASAP

Hada a look at Petes' guide, it looks straightforward enough, Guzzibits here in UK have the kits, 850 to 1000 depending on which one needed.
Hopefully I'll lift the cover and find it's all been done, but I won't put my house on it !
Thanks for all help and advice from everyone, I'll keep you posted. Guzzi people are just the best

Buy from the crooks at Gutsibits and my offers to help might dry up a bit. They stiffed not just me but the entire Guzzi community a few years ago by straight ripping off an engine saving design I engineered. Just bought one, copied it, never gave credit and then denied it. Funny, as if they'd asked I would of said sure, use the design, just take a £10-15 donation from all sales and give it to Medicienes sans Frontiers. They didn't, they just stole the design. When queried they said "We don't respond to internet rumours."

Fuck them. And the horse they rode in on. And their dog. And it's puppies! The one great thing that makes me happy is that every day I can wake up and look at this...

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And those cunts wake up in Huddersfield!

Oh hell, that's terrible mate !
In that case they can ram it , I've only been there once, to pick up a couple of T shirts, they seemed nice but this just goes to show.
That's a wonderful view indeed, my best mate lives in Brisbane, retired chemistry lecturer, Griffiths. Its a small world, but not if you're walking!

Nah. S'all good, but I bet you could get a kit cheaper than those shysters anyway.

Good news for you is that being a 2011 whichever kit you need it will be one of the easy ones where you don't have to take the heads off. This makes the job very straightforward and really quite simple. If you have a squizz at my cambox removal video that is essentially all you have to do to disassemble the top end for one of these kits. Then you swap the rockers from the old cambox to the new, replace o-rings on the plug tube, ensure the locator dowels are in place, make sure the 'Hemispherical pads' between the tappet tower and the rocker and reassemble. Obviously you have to do the whole business twice, once for the left cylinder and once for the right and the process is slightly different for each side due to the position of the cam chain tensioners but you don't have to remove the heads or take valves out or any fiddly stuff. Obviously the bike should have a full tune up after rollerisation and will benefit greatly from remapping.

Which kit you'll need will depend on how the plug tunnel is sealed. 2011 was a year where there were many detail changes to the 8V motor but one of the major ones was the change from 'Non floating' valve covers which had a *Long* plug tube that goes from the head, through the rocker carrier/cambox casting and seals in the rocker cover itself with an O-ring. If your bike has this and if it's valve adjusters have a slot for a flat bladed screwdriver in them? Then you will need a 'B' kit which is the cheapest of all the kits.

If when you remove the rocker cover you find that the plug tunnel is sealed to the rocker cover by a circular neoprene gasket of the same cross section as the main rocker cover gasket with no separate tube protruding above the rocker cover/cambox casting and your valve adjusting screws have a 3mm Allen hex in the top then you will need the slightly more expensive 'A' kit.

As for availability? It's patchy. Piaggio, (Or their supplier.) obviously batch manufacture the kits and sometimes they are not available for long periods. I ordered two or three 'B' kits last January and they didn't arrive until June! And when they did one of them contained one 'Old type' cambox and one 'New type' rendering it as useless as a one legged man in an arse kicking contest! Likewise 'A' kits vanished for a while and only reappeared in October. Whenever they do become available from my supplier I usually end up buying all their stock!

Due to the whole Brexit shitfuckery getting stuff from the EU to the UK has become a bloody nightmare. I feel really sorry for you folks as many Euro suppliers won't sell into the UK any more because of the huge impost of time and paper shuffling required and when dealing with niche market stuff like this it must make things a disaster. Anyway, I use TLM as dealing with the Dutch is very easy but Agostinis in Italy and Stein Dinse in Germany are also good sources of parts.

1A002060 is the part# for the A kit. Currently out of stock but listed as €725 at TLM

1A002063 is the part# for the 'B' kit. Also currently nil stock but listed at €623.

Those prices are without Euro zone VAT or, obviously, UK taxes but they'll probably compare very closely with costs from other suppliers.

Cheers for the info, completely agree with the while brexit disaster, most stupid thing this country's done in a while, and we've done some pretty stupid things.
I've read about a place not too far from me, Twiggers Motorcycle, who used to be Guzzi dealers, but still do Guzzi work. I'm gonna give them a shout and just see what they say about it all, it might be worth my while just getting them to do the work as it's then guaranteed as well. Also I'm going to be laid up after my knee op for a good 4 months, so won't be riding anyway.
I'm going to lift a cam cover when I get chance though, and I'll post pics of what I discover, it's all quite exciting!