Re: What did you do to or for or with your Laverda today?

As long as you have a sense of humour -
I can see this forum will be fun for years to come  ???

Yes, it's a stupid forum handle but it's easy for me to remember.
It's '83 - which yes, was the year I was born.







 
Alexb83 said:
It's '83 - which yes, was the year I was born.
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Blimey, a child on the forum. We better watch our fucking language :D

Welcome Alex. Most of us who are into Laverdas are old farts. Many of us are the wrong side of 60 and some folks on here bought their bikes new in the 70s and are still riding them. The benefit of that is there's a lot of experience and knowledge to be found here, not that I'm claiming to have much of either.
 
I'm glad SF and Dellortoman and thank you and everyone else in advance for sharing the advantage of your experience - and for your patience with my yoof.

The more i read the more I realise I've probably just dived in at the deepish end of 'classic' biking by buying this mad Italian machine.

I could've gone and gotten one of those new MV's that's been posing at me suggestively, but for some reason I didn't.

The Jota is beautiful, and it's one of many bikes that I've lusted after for years, and things have just lined up for me to own it... perhaps you know how the story goes.

Funnily enough I was chatting with my new neighbour the other day and mentioned I was off to look at the Jota. Turns out he only (reluctantly) parted with his 3C a few years ago when he lost the bottom half of one of his legs. Goes to show 1) you're never actually very far from a Laverda enthusiast, and 2) they die hard.

Anyway, you don't know what you don't know, but I'll have to learn and there's obviously a lot of knowledge bouncing around on 'ere.

Now, today I will mostly be making space in the garage to receive said Jota. I've got to bugger off to the Netherlands next week for work, so I imagine I'll be picking it up and riding it back at the end of the month.

Also I guess I should probably sort out ILOC membership?
 
Alexb83 said:
I drove 200 miles through the first (torrential) rain in a month and bought my first Laverda, is what I did!

New owner of a '79 silver Jota
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Well done, I too would have driven 200 miles though a hurricane for that beauty.
Enjoy it wont you, just if it was mine I would remove the crash bars..

Here's one its older brothers

 

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I'll have a look at taking the bars off but I'm not in a rush to make any alterations until I get to grips with it as is.

If I'm right the front wheel also needs changing (I have the original but it still requires a repair dating from before the 2013 sale)

The horns need de-riveting and rechroming

There's a ding in the fuel tank that is the most glaring cosmetic issue

I'm going to put an easy pull clutch mod on it (I'm a wuss!)

Also I'll take a look at the seat - I have the original too but quite like the look of this one, which I guess is later/repro?

The centre stand needs a mod because the tang has been removed to stop it fouling the side stand

It has a fair bit of non-standard stuff; aftermarket swing arm, 1200 conversion, side stand etc. - it's all tasteful stuff though and part of the history of the machine, isn't it?
 
checked out TOG yesterday after her various runs in Breganze (she was trailered there and back)
she did 500 kilometres with about 300 of those ridden extremely hard in the pre-Dolomites as I had the opportunity for a three and half hour ride with Piero (on his SFC4) and DoC on his Corsa (which at one point was purloined by Piero) and thisd was on one of the favoured test routes of the factory that Fernando capellotto knows better than his own front drive, not to be missed, I was told by DoC that she smokes on the over run a fair bit, but that is to expected since the motor was built entirely from parts that had been set aside before as too good to chuck but only just good enough to use, it cant be serious even if visually it is, because the oil level dropped only about three knat's cocks, all else was good except the front brake pads (4 pots on 320mm discs), bejeesus, where did they go!!! I will have to source some more of those PDQ, I suppose I had better tax her now that she is back in UK (oops) as I am going to a local classic car meet with her 2moz and that is in camera land South London, the ride with Piero and Doc was definitely the highlight of the year for me, it just cannot be stressed how fluid Piero is on a bike at 70+ years old.
CLEM
 
Clem did you go through a set of pads in 500ks, I finally replaced mine after checking 3 or 4 times in the last 3 or 4000ks. And they still had some meat left. That's 4 spots on 280mm discs.
 
Yep, for even pad wear; small piston leading the larger. Mount them the other way round and it throws that theory out the window.
 
Fitted a speedo to the RGS Mongrel race bike. It's just a cheapo digital bicycle speedo from ebay, but seems to work OK. It only goes up to 999.9 kph though. I hope that's enough. 

I tried a wireless one before but it was a failure. Must have been getting interference from somewhere because it was all over the place. This one is hard wired between magnetic pickup and display unit and so far seems OK.

It's really only there to make the bike street legal when in road trim. And if it stops me getting booked for speeding then it's a good investment.
 
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