Moto Guzzi Project

About two months ago, in an attempt to fill my free time and delay getting a real job for yet a few more months....

...I think most of my projects over the last few years start with that phrase....

I found a bike in Marble Falls that seemed like a fun project.

It was in a lot worse shape than I thought once I finally saw it up close, but I had already driven the hour and half to get out there, and it was really cheap, and he actually had the title so...

I trailered home a 79' Moto Guzzi V50 mk II, or at least pieces of one.

I am nowhere near a real mechanic, but I thought that I'd learned enough from previous projects/butcher jobs to make it happen.

The engine would crank but it wouldn't start up. It looked like it had been sitting in the rain for a few months. The drive shaft had snapped. The brakes were seized. The rear wheel, final drive, shocks, and swingarm were all sitting on the floor in his house. There was also a box of numerous nuts, bots, spark plugs, and mysterious parts that all came in a grab bag, but nevertheless I trailered it home, moved it into the garage wheelbarrow style, and got going that night.

I didn't really have a complete idea for what I wanted to do. I just started tinkering with things and tried to keep it a little more organized than the R75 project in Nashville where Christian, Sam, and I dissected a bike for... well... the fun of it.

I took the fenders and crash pipes off, tinkered with the bars, and tried to shave down the seat to make everything a little more streamlined. The first hours were mostly just devoted to disassembling and cleaning everything the best I could.

A few hours of wire brushing got the engine into decent looking shape.

I ended up bolting on a different transmission that I found on ebay. The previous one (pictured above and below) had already snapped one driveshaft and had me a little concerned. There was also a good section of the aluminum on the the gearbox case missing due to the accident, and it ended up being cheaper just to buy a different transmission and gearbox rather than having someone attempt to weld the old one into "working" condition. I ordered and installed a new driveshaft and was able to reassemble the rear end of the bike with a new rear tire. Luckily this bike has a two piece frame that allowed us to change out the transmission without having to remove the entire engine block.

I repositioned/removed most of the old controls and indicators. I didn't like the idea of have a huge chunk of plastic sitting on top of the headlight and most of the indicators were not needed anyway. This led me to rewiring most of the bike which was by far the most time consuming part of the process. A lot of the old wiring had decomposed and was to exposed once I took all the plastic off the bike, so I ran new wires down the frame that were a little more hidden than before. While I was able to find a shop manual for this bike, the wiring diagrams included were all in Italian, making this process all the more fun. I was also able to rewire and hide the fusebox and some of the other components into the tray under the seat to clean things up a bit. I then extended the headlamp out a few inches from the forks to make room for the repositioned tach and speedo and moved the key switch-box underneath the tank. I removed all the old bar controls and wired in a new horn, light switches, and ignition switch along with new magura grips. We also had to trim down the throttle casing to make room for it on the shortened bars.

Because both brakes were seized I started troubleshooting all the possible causes. I replaced all the brake pads and removed the rust from the disks. Disassembled and blew out all the brake lines, cleaned out the calipers, rebuilt the brake cylinders, and replaced the cap and rubber on the reservoir. This process took several hours but Grant and I finally got the front brake to clamp correctly and the next day Nick helped me get the rear one working and these were probably my favorite moments of this project. We then thoroughly cleaned all the rust and gunk off the wheels to return then to something similar to their original aluminum greatness.

We changed the oil, transmission/final drive/fork fluid which were all varying shades of black and installed new fuel lines and filters.

The carbs were a mess so I took them to Chris at Limey Bikes to rebuild and get working properly. He also pointed out a few of my mistakes I'd made along the way. He also got my controls working smoother, installed new K&N air filters, replaced the bars (not pictured on this post), and finally got it to crank up and run smooth.

I couldn't get the seat to look right no matter how I tried to modify it so I ended up building a new seat pan with new foam and wrapped it with some of the leather from the previous seat.

Nick and I built a new bracket for the tail lights that previously attached to the discarded rear fender, wrapped the exhaust pipes, and chopped off the frame that extended past the shocks. We then built the bracket for the license plate and installed bar-end mirrors.

I drained the tank and took it to Brian's friend Nacho to remove the dents and paint it. He also ended up welding the left exhaust pipe which had a few holes in it due to rust (not pictured).

It's now finally up and running. The carbs still need a bit of tuning but the handling is amazing and the engine sounds great... and at about 280 lbs, its faster than I'm comfortable with... which is fun.

Well, here it is, mostly finished minus the new bars and left exhaust pipe. I have a different set of pipes that I'm anxious to try, but for now, I'm happy with it. Thanks for looking.