End of the 2012 Riding Season; Many Changes!

Ok.  No suspense.  I traded the V7 Classic for another bike.  Last July I took her in for a 24,000 mile service to the local Dealer — TT Motorcycles — and told them to add change the tires and fix anything that they might find.  TTM is a small, family-run operation.  You wait for them to get to you, as everyone gets individual service and there are only so many bodies in the store.  Could it be more efficient?  Yes.  Would it lose some of its charm in the process?  Yes.  Be patient.

While I was there, I walked around the showroom.  They had a lot of bikes — many favorites.  A 1200 Sport.  Nice Monsters.  A Tuono.  Griso… There it was…

A killer little 2008 Orange Aprilia Shiver with 1800 miles on the clock.  I threw a leg over it.  hmmm.  fits… so nice….   I got off, and asked about the bike.  It was a one-owner, with actual miles, bone stock.  19 months left on the factory warranty.

I signed the work order and left the store.  The bike kept talking to me…  I no longer had that beastly commute on weekends between Chicago and Detroit as I had now moved to the area.  My commute was from Grosse Pointe to Farmington Hills, as I had begun consulting at Mercedes Benz Financial Services; a 70 mile round trip.  The Guzzi had 24,000 miles and was out of warranty.  the Aprilia had 1800…  The Aprilia had 77 horsepower….

It just gnawed on me for days.  I went back to the shop to see how things were going.  It was mid July and the shop was jammed with bikes in for work.  I hadn’t ridden in a week except for the Parilla, which was hardly a commuter bike for a 65-mile round trip.  I asked, casually, about the Aprilia.  He gave me the details.  I said that it was interesting, and “I wonder what the out-the-door” difference would be in trade for my bike.  He got diverted and we decided to talk later.

TT had my bike for 10 days.  I pressed.  He gave me a number.  I shot back, and we got close.  I saw a Suomy “Tattoo” Helmet that looked cool.  He said he would throw it in.

Deal.

My new Aprilia Shiver

So for very little money, I had a virtually new bike with warranty and a $500 helmet for a 24,000 mile bike.  And I’m back on the road.

…For three weeks.  I had just gotten back from the Mods vs Rockers Show in Cleveland where I had ridden the Parilla (and won Best European bike).  The show was held during an unbelievably warm spell there, and I found out that the little Parilla really likes to be run hard;  not go with too much stop-and-go traffic (I was riding with the mods).

I finally waved them off and met them at the location, with a quick blast around the beltways.  This show is on my list.  Great town. Really great people.

Parilla 250 GS Replica

Upon my return, I continued commuting on the Shiver. All of a sudden I get the dreaded “Service” light, familiar to early Aprilia Shiver riders.  I checked the Aprilia forums, and it seems that this is a “rite of passage” for ownership of the earlier bikes.  Since it was under warranty, I dropped the bike off in hopes that it would be a small fix.

It wasn’t a small fix, but it was a “free” fix.  The boys at TT Motorcycles actually arranged a conference call with the Factory, TWICE, and they took voltage readings across the throttle settings.  Turns out the throttle bodies were bad, and they replaced everything within two weeks.  I think the amazing part of this story is how Piaggio has gotten its act together over the last 4-5 years and streamlined the ability to deliver parts to the customers in a reasonable time, and to work with the dealers to ensure that these same customers are happy and riding their bikes, instead of complaining about them over a beer to their friends that will be purchasing a bike sometime in the future.

Not much to tell about the rest of the riding season, as it involved a whole lot of commuting, nice morning blasts up the Lodge Freeway, and a couple of short trips around the area.  There was a great Britbike show, where my Parilla came in second in European behind a spectacular Ducati 750SS that was very, very, original.  Still, I rode (insert sour grapes) the 40 miles to the event.

It was a nice long autumn.

Paying the “Stupid Tax”

In early November I decided to get one last commute ride in before it got too cold.  The weather man said the high would be about 58°, and I looked at the weather, showing 38° in the morning.  I geared up and fired up the bike.  Rolling out of the driveway, I took a left onto Meriweather, and then a right-left on Ridge to get down to Mack.

That was the plan.  On the right-left “chicane” on Ridge, there were a few wet leaves that got under my front wheel, and just as I swapped my weight, I was skidding across the tarmac before I even knew what happened.  It was only a 5mph low-side, but it was just plain silly and embarrassing   I snapped off the brake lever, scratched the clutch cover, rubbed a tank bumper and plastic panel, and ground a little off the brake lever.  $250 in stupid tax.  Of course Piaggio had the parts in less than a week, shipped directly to me via my dealer.

Sometimes it pays to think a little before firing up.  I let my want get the better of my better sense, and paid the price.  I guess it was lucky I wasn’t on the freeway.

Another Guzzi

I have a couple of aggregation sites that I watch showing Craigslist listings over most of the US.  One of these showed a Moto Guzzi Stornello Sport in Indianapolis for $450.  I traded some emails with the owner, and just after Christmas I picked it up.  I promised Sheila that I would work on it after the kitchen is finished.  It is very complete, and after running the serial numbers, I found it to be a 1965 Sport America, surprisingly stock, but in need of cosmetics and some of the chrome bits and stuff cleaned up, along with a complete wiring harness.  Nothing scary.

It’s all there.  17 inch wheels and all.  I can’t wait to fire it up this summer.  Trying to decide on a color scheme.  I think I have one in mind, along with a very stylized early 50’s Moto Guzzi logo.  Oh boy, it’s going to be a fun 2013.

Moto Guzzi V7 Classic – 20,010 Miles and Time for some Mods

Where has time gone?  I haven’t written anything about my V7 Classic in more than a year.  I guess life and the enjoyment of life kinda get in the way, plus just actually getting down to business and writing something out can involve a little mental effort.  Funny thing, life may have gotten in the way of writing more articles about this wonderful Moto Guzzi small block, but it definitely wove itself around it!

A long weekly commute for 18 months.

I took a position as an Enterprise Architect Consultant in Detroit mid 2010, and started an 18 month long period of living in an apartment in Grosse Pointe Park, MI, for 4 nights a week.  Weekends were spent at home after making the 300 mile journey back to my home in Oak Park, IL.

I started work around May 1 2010, and, until the riding season ended in Mid October, I never drove a car in Detroit.  Most of the commutes were made on the V7 Classic, so I was making two 300 mile trips a week on the bike, and then 30 miles a day commuting, along with some very fun trips, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Outside of Jackson, MI

The Little Guzzi was awesome.  I only had to take the train back to Chicago on a few occasional weekends when the weather was too rough to ride, and even then I had a couple of episodes when I got caught in a downpour anyway.

Moto Guzzi V7 Classic – 20,010 Miles and Time for some Mods

Where has time gone?  I haven’t written anything about my V7 Classic in more than a year.  I guess life and the enjoyment of life kinda get in the way, plus just actually getting down to business and writing something out can involve a little mental effort.  Funny thing, life may have gotten in the way of writing more articles about this wonderful Moto Guzzi small block, but it definitely wove itself around it!

A long weekly commute for 18 months.

I took a position as an Enterprise Architect Consultant in Detroit mid 2010, and started an 18 month long period of living in an apartment in Grosse Pointe Park, MI, for 4 nights a week.  Weekends were spent at home after making the 300 mile journey back to my home in Oak Park, IL.

I started work around May 1 2010, and, until the riding season ended in Mid October, I never drove a car in Detroit.  Most of the commutes were made on the V7 Classic, so I was making two 300 mile trips a week on the bike, and then 30 miles a day commuting, along with some very fun trips, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Outside of Jackson, MI

The Little Guzzi was awesome.  I only had to take the train back to Chicago on a few occasional weekends when the weather was too rough to ride, and even then I had a couple of episodes when I got caught in a downpour anyway.

Moto Guzzi V7 Classic – 20,010 Miles and Time for some Mods

Where has time gone?  I haven’t written anything about my V7 Classic in more than a year.  I guess life and the enjoyment of life kinda get in the way, plus just actually getting down to business and writing something out can involve a little mental effort.  Funny thing, life may have gotten in the way of writing more articles about this wonderful Moto Guzzi small block, but it definitely wove itself around it!

A long weekly commute for 18 months.

I took a position as an Enterprise Architect Consultant in Detroit mid 2010, and started an 18 month long period of living in an apartment in Grosse Pointe Park, MI, for 4 nights a week.  Weekends were spent at home after making the 300 mile journey back to my home in Oak Park, IL.

I started work around May 1 2010, and, until the riding season ended in Mid October, I never drove a car in Detroit.  Most of the commutes were made on the V7 Classic, so I was making two 300 mile trips a week on the bike, and then 30 miles a day commuting, along with some very fun trips, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Outside of Jackson, MI

The Little Guzzi was awesome.  I only had to take the train back to Chicago on a few occasional weekends when the weather was too rough to ride, and even then I had a couple of episodes when I got caught in a downpour anyway.

Moto Guzzi V7 Classic – 20,010 Miles and Time for some Mods

Where has time gone?  I haven’t written anything about my V7 Classic in more than a year.  I guess life and the enjoyment of life kinda get in the way, plus just actually getting down to business and writing something out can involve a little mental effort.  Funny thing, life may have gotten in the way of writing more articles about this wonderful Moto Guzzi small block, but it definitely wove itself around it!

A long weekly commute for 18 months.

I took a position as an Enterprise Architect Consultant in Detroit mid 2010, and started an 18 month long period of living in an apartment in Grosse Pointe Park, MI, for 4 nights a week.  Weekends were spent at home after making the 300 mile journey back to my home in Oak Park, IL.

I started work around May 1 2010, and, until the riding season ended in Mid October, I never drove a car in Detroit.  Most of the commutes were made on the V7 Classic, so I was making two 300 mile trips a week on the bike, and then 30 miles a day commuting, along with some very fun trips, which I’ll get to in a bit.

Outside of Jackson, MI

The Little Guzzi was awesome.  I only had to take the train back to Chicago on a few occasional weekends when the weather was too rough to ride, and even then I had a couple of episodes when I got caught in a downpour anyway.

Triumph Bonneville T-100 Review, Part 3: A Proper English Bike

I used to live in Northridge, California, right under the flight path of Van Nuys Airport, which is a very busy, if not the busiest, private airport in the United States.  I’d work on cars and bikes in my driveway on weekends, soaking up the California sun and painfully stretching the back of my legs as I bent over the fender of my Citroen DS 21 or hunched over one of my Guzzis.  All good fun, what with the planes buzzing over my head, and the executive jets taking off to executive locations for executive weekends.  Jets and Lycoming engines all day long just didn’t get me to look up.

But, once every weekend or so, a low, powerful drone would shake the windows, and every motorhead in Northern Los Angeles would look up.  They looked up because they knew.  They looked up because that drone was connected to a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.  There were a few North American P-51 Mustangs flying out of Van Nuys, and these planes were powered by The Mother of All Engines.  This is the Engine that won a war.  This is the Engine that powered less than 1000 planes that, in 1940, took “The Few” RAF pilots into battle against the Luftwaffe.  This engine saved a nation, and once you hear that and make the connection, you just have to look up when it’s overhead.

27 liters of pure victory. click for a nice big picture.

Triumph Bonneville T-100 Review, Part 3: A Proper English Bike

I used to live in Northridge, California, right under the flight path of Van Nuys Airport, which is a very busy, if not the busiest, private airport in the United States.  I’d work on cars and bikes in my driveway on weekends, soaking up the California sun and painfully stretching the back of my legs as I bent over the fender of my Citroen DS 21 or hunched over one of my Guzzis.  All good fun, what with the planes buzzing over my head, and the executive jets taking off to executive locations for executive weekends.  Jets and Lycoming engines all day long just didn’t get me to look up.

But, once every weekend or so, a low, powerful drone would shake the windows, and every motorhead in Northern Los Angeles would look up.  They looked up because they knew.  They looked up because that drone was connected to a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.  There were a few North American P-51 Mustangs flying out of Van Nuys, and these planes were powered by The Mother of All Engines.  This is the Engine that won a war.  This is the Engine that powered less than 1000 planes that, in 1940, took “The Few” RAF pilots into battle against the Luftwaffe.  This engine saved a nation, and once you hear that and make the connection, you just have to look up when it’s overhead.

27 liters of pure victory. click for a nice big picture.

Triumph Bonneville T-100 Review, Part 3: A Proper English Bike

I used to live in Northridge, California, right under the flight path of Van Nuys Airport, which is a very busy, if not the busiest, private airport in the United States.  I’d work on cars and bikes in my driveway on weekends, soaking up the California sun and painfully stretching the back of my legs as I bent over the fender of my Citroen DS 21 or hunched over one of my Guzzis.  All good fun, what with the planes buzzing over my head, and the executive jets taking off to executive locations for executive weekends.  Jets and Lycoming engines all day long just didn’t get me to look up.

But, once every weekend or so, a low, powerful drone would shake the windows, and every motorhead in Northern Los Angeles would look up.  They looked up because they knew.  They looked up because that drone was connected to a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.  There were a few North American P-51 Mustangs flying out of Van Nuys, and these planes were powered by The Mother of All Engines.  This is the Engine that won a war.  This is the Engine that powered less than 1000 planes that, in 1940, took “The Few” RAF pilots into battle against the Luftwaffe.  This engine saved a nation, and once you hear that and make the connection, you just have to look up when it’s overhead.

27 liters of pure victory. click for a nice big picture.

Triumph Bonneville T-100 Review, Part 3: A Proper English Bike

I used to live in Northridge, California, right under the flight path of Van Nuys Airport, which is a very busy, if not the busiest, private airport in the United States.  I’d work on cars and bikes in my driveway on weekends, soaking up the California sun and painfully stretching the back of my legs as I bent over the fender of my Citroen DS 21 or hunched over one of my Guzzis.  All good fun, what with the planes buzzing over my head, and the executive jets taking off to executive locations for executive weekends.  Jets and Lycoming engines all day long just didn’t get me to look up.

But, once every weekend or so, a low, powerful drone would shake the windows, and every motorhead in Northern Los Angeles would look up.  They looked up because they knew.  They looked up because that drone was connected to a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.  There were a few North American P-51 Mustangs flying out of Van Nuys, and these planes were powered by The Mother of All Engines.  This is the Engine that won a war.  This is the Engine that powered less than 1000 planes that, in 1940, took “The Few” RAF pilots into battle against the Luftwaffe.  This engine saved a nation, and once you hear that and make the connection, you just have to look up when it’s overhead.

27 liters of pure victory. click for a nice big picture.

First Big Ride on the 1960 Parilla 250

It was touch and go for more than a week. Mitch had organized a small-displacement  bike rally with the Chicago Vintage Motorcyclists (better known as ChiVinMoto, or just ChiVin), and I really didn’t know if I was going to have my Parilla 250 ready.  The charging system had taken a complete dump the week before on the way to the Ace Motorcycle & Scooter Works.  Chad had graciously offered to fix it, because that’s what he does for a living, and I brought him the new-in-the box commutator, brushes, brush springs and voltage regulator that I had received when I got the bike.  Now I know why they came with it.

I was in Detroit from Monday night until Friday at midnight.  I had tried a couple of times to get ahold of Chad, but I really don’t like to bother a mechanic when he/she is working on anything, especially when that anything is mine.  Good mechanics are like good software engineers – they get into a “zone” where nothing else seems to exist around them, and their entire being seems to be focused on the job at hand.  I’ve been there thousands of times when I’ve been coding, and probably more with a wrench in my hand simply because I’ve been doing that at some level of effectiveness since I was twelve or thirteen.

Two Two-Fifties. Brit and Italian....

Rick had agreed to pick me up in his van and take me to Oswego. The Parilla was to be perched next to a rare Royal Enfield 250 that was his mount for the event.  I cagily put him off for an answer until I finally reached Chad.  The bike was done.  The only fly in the ointment was getting to Rick’s house, then getting Rick to go to Ace and then heading to Oswego.  I hate having people do me favors and then I might do something to make it even more complicated.  I really don’t like putting people out.  Yet, there’s Rick, just taking it in stride, saying, “Sure.  Just ride over in the morning on the Guzzi and then we’ll go pick up the 250.  We’ll drop the Parilla at your house, then you can ride your V7 back home.”

All set.  And that’s exactly what happened.  Mitch had given a stern warning to the group that “kickstands up” was to be at noon.  We arrived at 11:44.  Everyone milled around and looked at bikes and talked.  We finally left at 12:40.

It was a great route.  Mitch’s house is in Oswego, and we travelled some lovely back roads to Sheridan, and Ottawa.  One of the ChiVin guys brought his truck and trailer to follow just in case of a breakdown.  Being the second-oldest bike there, with little test miles, I felt like I had about a 60% chance of landing in the passenger seat of the pickup before the day was out.  Visions of large checks dancing in my head, I pressed on and treated the old girl like she had been part of my stable for years.  She didn’t disappoint except for one moment outside of Sheridan where a stuck float bowl was pouring gas out of the weep hole of the SS1 and other parts.  Of course Rick comes to my rescue with a pocket knife.  He whacks the remote float a few times, and then I shut it off.  I decide to run it up and down the block a couple of times and it’s as good as new.

Remote float bowl. Whack it lightly if it sticks...

In a way the gas leak was a boon.  I had left the oil cap loose before and there was oil all over the crankcase.  The gas washed everything off and made if shiny again.  After that somewhat hazardous stop, we proceeded on, where a nice long straight found me jumping out in front of everyone and investigating how fast the Parilla was.  I’m figuring 75ish.  Speedo’s broken.  Really don’t care “too” much.  I was having so much fun it’s all relative.

Arriving at Starved Rock State Park, we rode all over looking for a place to park.  The waning days of summer brought everyone out and filled up the spaces.  There were quite a few Harleys and Victories and other metric cruisers, but very little of anything else.  We drew a crowd.  The Yamaha YZ50 in our midst was dwarfed by a couple of Irish Wolfhounds.  Realizing that we got a late start and we had doddled a bit on the way out we decided to pretty much flip back around and head home.  We had two hours to cover 59 miles of back roads, and time and sunlight were in short supply.

The ride back was much faster save for a 25 minute stop in Sheridan to fix a loose exhaust pipe on a MadAss scooter that was part of our group.  Other than that, the long rays of evening settled nicely, allowing our shadows to grow and cast wonderful silhouettes against the tarmac.  Arriving back at Mitch’s we all loaded our bikes up and had a quick beer.  Time to go.

The day confirmed everything I had hoped to discover about the Parilla.  It was a capable machine that rode much “better” than its 250cc engine advertised.  Plenty of low-end grunt, which was wholly unexpected.  I was able to kick start it only once, pushing it most of the time.  I’ll need to give the bike more attention in this area or I’m going to end up with 5% body fat.

Parilla 250 at rest. Before restoration.

It gets looks, It goes faster than most small bikes, it handles and brakes well, and it’s comfortable enough to spend 5 hours on.  Later that evening at Rick’s house, I got back on the V7 Classic for the ride home.  I felt like I was riding an Elephant!