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Rode it today

P

Penis Rotor

GT Godfather!
Joined
Oct 28, 2008
Messages
2,833
Location
Bungendore, NSW Australia
Well a few pics for starters.

Its a BIG motorbike. I'm 5'10" and a not small lad so you can guage the size. Rake is enormous! It is STABLE!



Tank is metal with covering 'Cowls'. One of the accessories are chromed cowls if you want to out-bling your Harley riding mates!



Cries control and map selection are conroled by the RH switch block. Starter button swaps maps once engine is running.



Bags are big enough to hold a folded corpse!



Dash has Tacho around the outside and digital speedo.



Rubber mounted engine, which shakes like a blancmange at idle, is smooth as slk once moving and its amusing to watch it jump around as you lug the motor at low RPM's which it thoroughly enjoys!





Headlight has outrigger running lights that are bright as buggery on 'High' (They have two settings.) looks better in the flesh than in pics.



Ride report tonight but I'll say now that while it isn't MY sort of bike it is great fun and a really enjoyable ride.

Pete
 
Ahhh...great pics, Pete! Definitely looking forward to your ride report. I'll have to admit, the first pics of it had me thinking it was a size or two smaller (dimensionally, if not weight-wise) than, say, a Road King. Looks like I was way off.

Great ergos for a cruiser, it appears, but I suppose limited space around the heads for highway pegs to be of use? Looks like it may be a non-starter for the feet-forward set.

Pretty bike.
 
I think you will find that the footrests are further forward than on previous Calis. Seems to be a negative point here in the UK.
Though I do know of one person here who has voted with his wallet.

Looking forward to reading about your riding experience Pete.
 
Pete great photos. Sure is too big a bike for me but one cannot deny that is a a beautiful work of art.
 
Brian UK said:
I think you will find that the footrests are further forward than on previous Calis. Seems to be a negative point here in the UK.
Though I do know of one person here who has voted with his wallet.

Looking forward to reading about your riding experience Pete.
Click to expand...

Brian, while I have no experience with the previous Calis, I'm certain you are correct. And feet-forward riding certainly isn't for me. I've never owned a cruiser. Maybe it was just the angle of the pics, and Pete will shed some light on the legroom for highway pegs, but it appears that the heads would prevent the rider from extending his legs to reach highway pegs mounted on the crashbar. In my area, at least, which is extremely HD-centric, not being able to ride around with feet on highway pegs would be a non-starter among both the posers and the touring riders.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the Custom version in the metal.
 
Ok. Well the first thing to tell you isn't what it is but what it isn't. What it isn't is anything like yer 'Old' Cali. All the California series were based around the Tonti frame right from day one. While over the years they got bigger and heavier and longer the platform remained the same. In its day back in the early seventies that frame was one of the best in the world. A cutting edge 'Race' frame that was built to handle. That, despite everything else that happened is what allowed Guzzi to soldier on for many years with little development and 'Un-competitive' motive units. By the time the 1100's came along the design was truly dated but it still showed its race bike heritage by handling far better than any 'Cruiser' has a right to.

This new machine is NOT like that. In many ways it is far more similar to a Loopframe as the frame design is a conventional twin loop cradle with the engine sort of dangling off the top tubes. I haven't yet seen it undressed so I don't know the ins and outs in their entirety but the frame is certainly nothing if not robust. It runs an enormous amount of rake and I'd guess considerable trail. This is obvious from the pics and more obvious once you are moving. Combined with the enormously long wheelbase this is a LONG, SLOW STEERING, PREDICTABLE motorbike. Swingarm is standard 'Cruiser' fare. Very long with twin shocks. New bevel box is a stand alone design with 50,000km oil change interval which is just as well as its a bit of a pig to get to the fill and check plugs due to the cover over it.

Before we go any further I should point out that I am NOT saying that it handles badly. I didn't on my short ride, (I only had it for about an hour in Sydney which is not an ideal place to test out handling!) have a chance to explore its limits. All I'm trying to convey is that this is definitely a modern 'Cruiser' its main competition is going to be bikes like the Triumph Rocket 3. Suspension is plush, brakes are top of the range Brembo radials, it'll stop more than adequately and of course it has both ABS and TC, albeit of a not particularly sophisticated type.

Tyres are huge and changing the back one is similar to other machines in the class. In other words a right frontbottom. You need to remove those huge bags and all the chrome bling along with both silencers, (Which, incidentally, are joined to the headers by flexi-joints due to the rubber mounted engine. Yes, a pain in the arse but par for the course on this sort of machine. Bags do not have quick release fittings so their removal is a bit of a nuisance. The bike can though be run 'Naked', with the bags, or, with the bags and all the chrome-wear that surrounds them.

The clutch and gearbox are essentially identical to the CARC bikes, the 'Nuovo Six Speed' is a sweet shifting but clunky thing, especially when new. This one was no exception. Clutch is nice and light to the pull which is great as the pull on my early A5 Griso is so heavy it would make Charles Atlas weep!

The engine? The engine is essentially an over-bored version of the 'Nuovo Hi-Cam' used in all the 8V motors but with some significant changes. The heads have been twin plugged. This is done on machines with very wide bores to combat 'Surging' issues at lower RPMs. With a modern combustion chamber with a single central plug the flame front apparently moves out from the plug in a spiral pattern. With very wide combustion chambers you can end up with uneven burns and pockets of un burnt charge that will contaminate the next incoming charge. Over a period of a few hundred revolutions you end up with a cyclic change in the burn and therefore the torque, hence the surging. By adding another plug on the periphery of the combustion chamber this problem can, by offering a second ignition point for the charge, be avoided. I don't know if it will be the same on the Cali but on the Dorso the second plug only fires up to about 3,500-4,000 RPM. After that it reverts to single point ignition.

The other major change is the adoption of the worst kept secret in history, the roller tappets. I have absolutely no idea if they are hydraulic or not as there is mention of both hydraulic operation AND adjustment intervals in the manual and owners handbook but clicking on the link to 'Adjusting the valves' takes you to a blank page! Brilliant! ;D My own guess, and it is only a guess, is that they are NOT hydraulic in the conventional sense. Certainly the bike I rode was quite noisy from the top end. It sounded like loose valve clearances and on previous models with the 8V they have always come from the factory with the valves loose. As can be seen from the pic of the instrument binnacle this machine had done less than 600kms and nothing had been done to it yet valve wise because nobody bloody knows if we're meant to adjust them or not and we can't tell unless we take the bugger to bits which, oddly enough when there are only two in the country, we are reluctant to do! Daniel, the tech lad is currently in Italy doing the tech training in the Cali so we expect to have a definitive answer soon. ::).

I'll get on to the FI and electronics in the next post.

Pete
 
OK. Moving on to eye EFI and induction.

The new system uses the 7SM ECU as used on the RSV-4 and T4. The advantage of this is that it has a much larger number of pins and can therefore control and interpret many more inputs and outputs. It uses just one single, huge, throttle body and runs a 'Ride By Wire' system probably similar to that used on the new V7 where the cables operate a potentiometer which then operates the butterfly via a servo motor. This system, plus the ability provided by the 7SM controller allows for an electronic cruise control as well as traction control.

While I didn't try to get the traction control to kick in, (Yeah, like I'll do that on the importers new pride and joy that there are only a couple of available! :D) I can report that the cruise control works just fine. Hold the button down for a second to turn it on and then just give it an instantaneous press to set it, essentially identical to most car systems most of us are familiar with. Touch the clutch or brakes and it disables it. Press button again to re-engage. I haven't found out if it has a 'Resume' function. The one thing that did shit me a bit was that when the CC is turned on but not engaged a green light at the bottom of the dash blinks at you at exactly the same frequency as the indicator alert which can at a glance make you think you've left the indicator on and would be really annoying at night! When the CC is engaged the light is permanently illuminated. I really like cruise control, on our speed trap infested freeways it can be a license saver.

Another function allowed by the 7SM is the incorporation of the Tri-Map system which modifies the engine management to allow the pilot to choose one of three mapping options Viente (Sport), Turismo(Touring) or Pogglia(Sp?)( Rain).. I didn't have much of a chance to experiment with these as where I was riding didn't give me much of a chance. Certainly Turismo suited the bike perfectly for what I was doing and Viente seemed to give it a bit more get-up-and-go higher up the rev range but I was told by Peter at Samples that it also made it a bit snatchy around town at lower RPM. The good news is that changing maps is only a flick of the starter button and can be done on the move. Rain mode? I can't comment on this bike but on all the other Aprilias I've ridden with the Tri-Map option it turns the machine into a gutless, hateful slug. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure that there are some people who are so woefully incapable of controlling a motorbike that this feature may be of use and I would never in a million years suggest that if you do feel the need to use it you should be pilloried and made an object of ridicule by your peers. Neither should you be dragged out the back, punched in the throat, tarred and feathered and forced to hand in your man-card. Some other folks might not be so charitable though. :D.

Generally though it seemed to fuel up well and certainly isn't lacking in grunt. Being so new I was unwilling to wind it out a long way but certainly its ability to pull from just about nothing in Turismo reminded me very much of a Hydro Cali on steroids! I liked that, I liked that a lot!

More in a bit.
 
pete roper said:
...Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure that there are some people who are so woefully incapable of controlling a motorbike that this feature may be of use and I would never in a million years suggest that if you do feel the need to use it you should be pilloried and made an object of ridicule by your peers. Neither should you be dragged out the back, punched in the throat, tarred and feathered and forced to hand in your man-card. Some other folks might not be so charitable though. :D.
Click to expand...


Nice write up Pete! Thanks.

Kudos to Moto Guzzi. It seems that this new model is like magic. Just look, it almost transformed an Aussie Rogue into a proper motorcycling gentleman. *Cough* :D Hell, he even almost smiled! :evil:

8243221862_0894b1b839_z.jpg
 
Guzzi should hire Pete for exhibition modeling !!!

It seems an interesting bike even though I never understood the so called "Cruisers".
Could it be Pete's aura? :mrgreen: Thanx for the writeup!
 
Great reveal Mr. Roper, thanks. Can we have a pic of you astride your Griso for smile comparison?
 
So what is it actually like to ride?

Well, firstly if you want highway pegs on it? Forget it. There is no way in the world you'd be able to go around even the mildest corner without  something digging in. The motor is so wide the pegs would have to be three feet apart.

Then there is the issue of leg clearance. Not so much with the heads themselves but with those manifold covers which do get hot. I didn't have too much of a problem but I have duck's disease, short legs, long back. I was told by a couple of blokes at JSG that their calves got hot, especially on the right hand side.

The rear brake pedal is too far forward and awkward to use. That might simply be a matter of familiarity but I thought it was majorly sucky. Heel-toe gearshift works fine if used as a heel-toe. Useless if you want to change 'Conventionally'.

The pilot's saddle seemed very comfortable but I think it needs to be at least an inch further back. Oddly enough even on a bike as enormously long as this one I felt a bit cramped, like I was stuck between the back of the saddle and the handlebars but I feel that with most cruisers so perhaps its just me?

I didn't ride it with the screen on. This though is well designed and attaches with just two screws. Taking it in and off is a breeze.

It has an excess of lights and is far to gaudy for my tastes but I'm not really who its aimed at. The alarm system annoys me. Why does it need a key-fob switch fer God's sakes? I haven't seen one of them for years! Why can't it just be in the key like a normal vehicle?

It has no centrestand which is just as well as you' have to be Samson to be able to pull the bloody thing onto it but that means servicing will be a pain, tyre changes doubly so.

Everything about the chassis conspires to make the handling slow to the point of being ponderous. That isn't so much a criticism as just the nature of the beast. Any machine with a wheelbase like this one and similar rake and trail figures will be the same. Whether it is any better or worse than similar machines I have NFI. It is obvious though that its target market is going to be long haul tourers who are attracted to this sort of machine for a combination of looks, carrying capacity and the ability to Hoover up miles of interstate or potter around slowly on twisty roads in comfort while carrying half the contents of their houses. It is not, and never will be, a bike with even the mildest 'Sporting' pretensions. That is just fine if it is what you want but if it isn't? You'll be disappointed. Thing is if you want a 'Sports Tourer' Guzzi make one of those, its called a Norge 8V. This thing is a cruiser.

It is obvious a lot of thought has gone into this model and it is clearly aimed at taking a bigger slice of the market, something I think it deserves to do even though it isn't my cup of tea. The motor and how it delivers its power is great fun and will certainly appeal to the sort of folks who like to short shift and chunter around at low revs as this is where it felt really good. Further up the rev range it felt? Well, just like an 8V Guzzi. Certainly the extra couple of hundred cc's haven't added any top end or if they have it is swamped by the enormous weight of the beast, which does actually seem to disappear once you're moving.

It is fun. Would I buy one? No, never in a month of Sundays! But if you like cruisers or are looking for a replacement for your old Cali you could do a whole lot worse than the new one! I hope they sell squillions of 'em.

If they do then they can move on to building the Nuovo LeMans that Galuzzi (Sp.) has waiting in the wings. Now that's the one I'm waiting for........






Pete
 
The sissy-bar(?) makes visual sense with these bags on.
The whole machine looks impressive and very much art-deco or should I say ... exotic, once more for a Guzzi?
In my eyes, aesthetically, it stands besides the Valkyrie and a step further from the Rocket3 and a huge gap away from the longitudal V2s which seem too "old" however much they shine in the sun.

I am very curious if the upgraded ECU and roller tappets will propagate to the rest of the 8Vs. Or the servo-throttle mechanism, albeit in twin throttle bodies.
Did the throttle by wire feel any "strange" at all?
 
...the engine characteristics (torque lowdown), would seem to be ideal for a 1380 Stelvio....probably NO chance of that happening....But, conversely, would a1380engine slip into my 09 Stelvio?....just dreaming of course....
 
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