You don't 'alf see some badly maintained bikes, out there! Hopefully, not Laverdas.

Diablo Loco said:
Exciting times the '80's. Toodling along at 200 when my Guzzi MkIII CV joint bearing collapsed. All good. Did not die.
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I did a double take at 200 for a moment , then realised it must be kph , not miles ....... I guess CV joint would what I would take to be the universal joint ........ which I`ve heard in the past can expire within 15,000 miles ( sorry , 25,000 km ) ........ Dunno if this is just hearsay , but someone once told me that dead ones make good paperweights ........

Never owned , or ridden a Guzzi , but they are nice , especially the `70`s and early `80`s ones ......... There`s a Belgian bloke on YouTube who has posted a couple of videos of rides onboard his 350 Imola ........ for some reason I now fancy one of those , even more than the 500 Monza .......

There was a 850 T3 road test I remember , and still have , by journalist Jerry Clayton ...... from around `74 I think ........ he blasted the Guzzi past a car on a dual carriageway ..... pulled into a filling station further up the road ......... the same car also pulls in .....

The car driver gets out , walks over to the Guzzi , sees one giant cylinder poking out and goes " BLOODY HELL " ..... walks around to the other side of the bike , sees the other giant cylinder poking out ........ and goes " BLOODY HELL " ...... ( again ) ................

This was the early `seventies , as I said , and big Guzzis were still a rare sight ......
 
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rocketonarail said:
I did a double take at 200 for a moment , then realised it must be kph , not miles ....... I guess CV joint would what I would take to be the universal joint ........ which I`ve heard in the past can expire within 15,000 miles ( sorry , 25,000 km ) ........ Dunno if this is just hearsay , but someone once told me that dead ones make good paperweights ........

Never owned , or ridden a Guzzi , but they are nice , especially the `70`s and early `80`s ones ......... There`s a Belgian bloke on YouTube who has posted a couple of videos of rides onboard his 350 Imola ........ for some reason I now fancy one of those , even more than the 500 Monza .......

There was a 850 T3 road test I remember , and still have , by journalist Jerry Clayton ...... from around `74 I think ........ he blasted the Guzzi past a car on a dual carriageway ..... pulled into a filling station further up the road ......... the same car also pulls in .....

The car driver gets out , walks over to the Guzzi , sees one giant cylinder poking out and goes " BLOODY HELL " ..... walks around to the other side of the bike , sees the other giant cylinder poking out ........ and goes " BLOODY HELL " ...... ( again ) ................

This was the early `seventies , as I said , and big Guzzis were still a rare sight ......
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Yeah, the uni joint. My responsibilty-bad maintenance. None of my other guzzi since have been a problem. The rear shocks were dead so a lot of movement - the full travel of the swingarm on rough West Oz sealed and unsealed roads. The uni joint itself was intact, the bearing and inner demolished. The good part was meeting Mario Pogglio who slowly heated the housing to get the outer race out. I had been told to drill a hole through the back and smack it out. He was Ahhh, yeah, nah.
 
"My thing with shaft drive , and it`s just a personal concern , is just that I don`t like the idea of not being able to easily see , or inspect , anything which is directly connected to the rear wheel ......."

what about the entire gearbox internals then? gearbox fault, rear wheel locks, pull in the clutch = NO CHANGE and a gearbox is much more likley to have a failure, shaft drive can break, like anything else, but this is extremely rare, the Laverda V6 broke its UJ, and the decision was made not to replace it, safety being paramount, and no way of knowing if UJ no2 wouold last as long or longer than UJ no1 ( I always wondered if in fact they did actually have a UJ no2? maybe not) but it was an exposed UJ, where the needle rollers are sealed and grease contained, but not much of it, a tiny thing looking like it was robbed from a velocette LE! it would have been so much better if it was a non sealed type, enclosed in anything and lubed, even if that was a rubber belows and the lube was grease.

My Pan has shaft drive and I love it.
CLEM
 
CLEMTOG said:
"My thing with shaft drive , and it`s just a personal concern , is just that I don`t like the idea of not being able to easily see , or inspect , anything which is directly connected to the rear wheel ......."

what about the entire gearbox internals then? gearbox fault, rear wheel locks, pull in the clutch = NO CHANGE and a gearbox is much more likley to have a failure, shaft drive can break, like anything else, but this is extremely rare, the Laverda V6 broke its UJ, and the decision was made not to replace it, safety being paramount, and no way of knowing if UJ no2 wouold last as long or longer than UJ no1 ( I always wondered if in fact they did actually have a UJ no2? maybe not) but it was an exposed UJ, where the needle rollers are sealed and grease contained, but not much of it, a tiny thing looking like it was robbed from a velocette LE! it would have been so much better if it was a non sealed type, enclosed in anything and lubed, even if that was a rubber belows and the lube was grease.

My Pan has shaft drive and I love it.
CLEM
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Yes Clem , you`re right ..... like I said , it`s probably more of a problem which exists in my head , after the T80 experience , rather than anything born out of reality.....

The thing is , I tend to prefer simplicity over complexity ......... with a "normal" bike , you have a gearbox , which could or could not give trouble , but from there on back , you have a simple chain and sprocket set up ........ everything in view , easy to keep an eye on ........

With a shafty , you have a gearbox , which could or could not give trouble , but from there on back , you have in effect another gearbox , with UJ`s , bearings and bevel drives etc. ......... in other words potentially double the trouble ........ although , as you say , in reality very unlikely to cause problems ........ and with a Pan , by the sound of it , zero chance ........

As I said , it`s probably just me thinking too much about it ........

Just out of interest , is there a servicing routine for the Pan which Honda recommend for the shaft transmission ............ such as oil change , re greasing , general inspection of the drive and so on ........... ? .......
 
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Someone I know bought a Dakar GS, one of the older Torquose ones. I get a call a while ago to come and pick him up with a trailer, a nice pleasant 800k round trip to Mururundi. He was talking up his skill level on a big group Adventure Ride and was complaining about how slow everybody else was. He thought he could do massive jumps on it like an Endro bike and he could, till it snapped its single-sided swingarm and drive shaft off. Replacing chain and sprockets are a lot cheaper than fixing that damage. Read some info about extending suspension travel in the rear travel can result in extreme stress on the universals involved. Some of Paul Roonys BMW mods are really interesting reading. Just finding parts was big trouble for him.
rooneycycle.com

Rooney Cycle

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Diablo Loco said:
Yeah, the uni joint. My responsibilty-bad maintenance. None of my other guzzi since have been a problem. The rear shocks were dead so a lot of movement - the full travel of the swingarm on rough West Oz sealed and unsealed roads. The uni joint itself was intact, the bearing and inner demolished. The good part was meeting Mario Pogglio who slowly heated the housing to get the outer race out. I had been told to drill a hole through the back and smack it out. He was Ahhh, yeah, nah.
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As I said , I have no personal experience of Guzzis ........ but one thing I found interesting mentioned in a test of a 850 LeMans , was that it was difficult for the tester to get it quickly off the line ( relatively speaking ) ........... suffering from axle tramp , I think they call it ....... where the driving shaft pinion climbs up the rear wheel pinion , extending the rear suspension , and limiting the amount of wheelspin possible ( he said ... ) ......

But who cares ... those early LeMans were great looking bikes .......
 
I had it on an 18 month old 850 Commando, I owned from new, when the pitifully overstressed layshaft bearing collapsed, in a 30 limit.
Drifted across the road, with the back wheel locked.
Made it into the gutter as an oncoming, fully-loaded artic thundered past.
A mile down the road, I would have been going at 90mph+.
Stuff happens.
 
The Sock said:
I had it on an 18 month old 850 Commando, I owned from new, when the pitifully overstressed layshaft bearing collapsed, in a 30 limit.
Drifted across the road, with the back wheel locked.
Made it into the gutter as an oncoming, fully-loaded artic thundered past.
A mile down the road, I would have been going at 90mph+.
Stuff happens.
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And sometimes we have drawn the lucky ticket. I think lots of us have had things happen that, had the circumstances or timing been different, we probably wouldn't be here.
 
I had a chain snap on TOG on the way to the Bol D'or in about 1983?, it was 0200hrs approx on the route due sud in France, having left on the Thursday evening from Dover, I was about 100 mile South of Paris, when at about 150KPH the rear wheel locked and I was in an almighty panic, fortunatley the motorway was deserted, I have no idea how I stayed on or what the skid looked like, but it crossed white lines a few times for sure, and I remember having my feet flailing off the pegs, thankfully the rear wheel freed as i lost the chain to the elemnets, I then took about a kilometre to coast to a stop, I was even scared of touching the brakes, not fully understanding what was going on under my bum, I got recovered home and a week later found that the chain had smashed the gearbox cover, damaged the crankcase and had bent the output shaft, definately not fun and a new chain (Regina copper plated, remember those) was fitted prior to departure as a precaution, it had lasted barely 300 miles. A trip over to Toddys with the bent mainshaft saw Martin extract the bearings (no knife edge splitters available to me at home in those days) and run everything back onto a new shaft, and all for the cost of the parts only.

My Pan has gear oil in the shaft drive housing and needs to be changed once every 20 years if you can be bothered (I can't) but I do check the level and (boreingly) it never changes.

Chain drive 10,000 times more likley to kill you than shaft drive.

CLEM
 
We got asked to pick up an abandoned at the roadside at night Norton once, and repair the gearbox. The mechanic pulled out the guts of the gearbox and couldn't find anything amiss. When the owner called the mech told him it seemed ok and asked him to deliver the missing chain so that he could test it...........
 
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