200 miles later

It's time for a 200 mile update on life with my new (to me) Moto Guzzi V11 Sport.

To quickly recap, I was looking for a lightweight corner-carving motard and ended up buying a 500 lb Guzzi.  You figure it out.

Going back and forth between the Guzzi and my Bonneville reveals that besides being air-cooled, twin-cylinder motorcycles, they are worlds apart.  My Bonneville is smooth, comfortable and reliable.  The Guzzi is loud, uncomfortable and rough.  It's like riding the motorcycling equivalent of a muscle car.  It even sounds like one!

The engine is big and makes a lot of noise.  Not just noise from the Ferracci pipes, but noise from the valvetrain, the timing gears and pretty much everywhere else.  The growl from the pipes is very addicting, though, and it's hard to resist giving it a handful of throttle.

The two big cylinders moving up and down create a lot of vibration, too.  Not just at idle, where your butt moves side-to-side with the power pulses, but while you're riding, as well.  At 3,500 rpm, a buzzing vibration moves through the bars, instantly numbing your hands and blurring the objects in the mirrors.  However, the vibration does go away as the revs climb.  Hmm, that sounds like a good excuse for more throttle!

In the last 200 miles, I've also had a few issues.  First, the odometer quit working.  If I fiddled with the trip reset knob, the odometer would work for a few miles and then stop again.  Once, it started spinning backward, which was weird.  The manufacturer for the gauges was switched from Veglia to ITI in 2003 because of reliability issues with the Veglia units.  It doesn't sound like much was solved with the switch.  Anyway, I applied a liberal amount of WD-40 to the odometer gears and it's working fine now.

Second, the transmission has a mind of its own.  It will shift normally for 20 or 30 miles and then decide it doesn't want to go into third or fourth gear, requiring me to tap down on the shifter and then up to engage the gear.  It may also decide to take lunch and leave me in a false neutral.  This bike was advertised as having a six-speed gearbox but I think it has 11 speeds - six forward gears and five neutrals.  After much shifter adjusting and a generous application of WD-40, it seems to be working as designed now.  When this transmission debuted in 1999, Moto Guzzi claimed it was their smoothest transmission ever.  It really makes me wonder how bad the old ones were.

And finally, the riding position is murder.  Italian bikes are notorious for tormenting their riders with punishing riding positions and this Guzzi is no different.  Your legs are crammed into this tiny space while your arms are stretched out to the max, leaving your butt sticking up as if you're preparing for a prostate exam.  Undignified is a good way to describe how you look while riding.  Uncomfortable is a good way to describe how the riding position feels.

However, all of these niggles and issues disappear when you point the bike down a twisty ribbon of asphalt.

On a twisty backroad, the bike just comes alive.  The riding position becomes comfortable and natural.  Right on cue, the engine delivers its torque exactly when you need it: on exit from the corner.  Big Brembo brakes bring the Guzzi's massive bulk to a stop with easily-modulated quickness.  Suddenly, everything about this bike starts to makes sense.  I was wrong when I called it a two-wheeled muscle car.  It's really a two-wheeled AMG Mercedes - seemingly too big and heavy to be magic on a backroad but yet it is.

With its long wheelbase, the Guzzi is just so stable at speed.  You can fly down winding roads without any hint of twitching or instability.  It also hides its weight well, making easy transitions from left- to right-hand bends with just a bit of countersteer and some nudging from your hips.  At 500-plus lbs, it will never be confused for a lithe supersport or an all-out superbike.  It does just fine on the roads of the real world and, really, that's more important.  This bike will never be on a track so I'll gladly trade a few seconds there for real-world stability.

Piloting my Bonneville down a winding road is exercise.  You're constantly fighting the tall front tire and the heavy wheels.  On the same winding road, the Guzzi is in its natural habitat, doing what it was built to do.  It leans over gracefully into the corners and then a big lump of V-twin torque fires you right out of them.  It really is magic.

Now that I'm starting to get a feel for the bike and its eccentricities (the rightward lurch upon throttle application never gets old), I can start messing with the adjustable suspension.  I moved everything back to the factory settings and it seems a bit stiff.  I'll start getting more in depth with those adjustments in the next 200 miles.

Right now, though, I need some higher clip-ons.  Oh, my aching biceps...