'82 Moto Guzzi v50 Rebuild/Redesign

zachattach

Project Doldrums
So, I've lived in San Francisco for about a year now, and in that short time I've more than had my fill of hunting for parking spots, paying parking tickets (~$1k thus far), and wasting hours on the grossly inefficient mass transit system Muni. Recognizing that none of the transport solutions I've tried in this city were going to work, it was time to find and alternative. Over the past few years I've been growing increasingly interested in the urban fascination with the contemporary Cafe Race, and these two stimula got me scanning the Bay Area Craigslist pages for a suitable piece of transportation equipment with some Cafe potential. And this lead to the recent purchase of a 1982 Moto Guzzi v50 III(?).

I picked up the bike for $750. It does not run at the moment, but if you click it into gear you can roll the bike and hear it turning over; so, nothing has seized. Aesthetically, it looks more like a swamp monster than an elegant Italian machine, but the lack of museum potential is no matter. That just gives me more freedom to get really creative with the restoration/redesign.


Inspired by Dale's thread about his v50 project, I though I might add a second one on here, and chronicle the progression of my project.

I rolled the bike into the TechShop annex here in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco, which is where the project will be housed. The next door facility has an incredible array of equipment that is available to the public if you're willing to foot the $120 per month membership fee. With a little luck, I'll be using quite a bit of their equipment to fab parts for this project.

Now, before I get too much further, I should add that I have: (a) never owned a motorcycle before, and (b) never restored a vehicle of any sort before. But no matter, I think this will go fine. I've done quite a bit of automotive work on a '98 Jeep Wrangler project that is another of my 'babies,' and I've got a pretty respectable mechanical aptitude.

To start, given the condition of this thing, the whole bike is going to have to come apart (if for no other reason to allow the necessary deep clean that would be required for me to feel comfortable getting anywhere close to it in clothes I care about), and that process began on Monday. Attached to this post is a picture of the bike at the start of things on day one.
 

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Here it is at the end of day 1.

Dirty Dirty. My hands and forearms were black up to the elbows.

All of the fasteners are coming off quite easily, though.
 

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The end of day two. It is starting to look so much better already. All of the clutter these bikes come with from the factory is really a distraction from the true elegance of these machines.

I used to race mountain bikes competitively and did a fair amount of road cycling as well. I always love the straight bars on the mountain bike and that agressive ridding position that really allows you to muscle the bike around. The existing bars on this guzzi really remind me of the handle bars on my mountain bikes. Given that my intended use for this project upon completion is really to tear a#$ around the city I might not drop the bars down to clipons as is tradition for a true cafe race. I think I might keep things in approximately the stock configuration.
 

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I spent today removing the wiring harness. I've carefully mapped things out and have tagged all couplings with masking tape such that things are easy to reassemble. The previous owner had the original starter switch bypassed, and it looks like whoever did this work took some liberties in doing some heavy cutting and splicing. I suspect this is going to cause a big headache when I go to put the handle bars back together.

I've noticed several other oddities that are no doubt the result of prior shade tree wrench. Behind the right 'header' (is this the right term on a bike?) was some ill fitting gasket that was some all into the outlet of the head. Besides this, there are also various missing or mismatched fastener pieces. Given the corroded state of most of these, I'll be replacing them anyway, though.

Also note in the picture that the right front brake caliper is still on. I've found my first bolt that is simply not going to come out in the way it's supposed to. If I put any more torque on it it is going to strip the 6mm allen fitting on the bolt. Don't really want to apply heat to this part of the bike to loosen things up, and the spray solutions aren't working to loosen things up. Not sure what I'm going to do with this one yet.
 

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Loving these builds. May look to incorporate design elements form them. I also removed the factory airbox today. That's giant OEM waste of space is never going back on and will be replaced by cone filters.
 

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someone else on here has a motoguzzi v50 build too, i love the bike
i eventually want to get a guzzi for the next bike, but pretty good price!
 
first off, you basically stole the guzzi at that price. so at least you can expect to get your money back if you decide to sell it down the line, especially if you put some nice resto work on it. If you end up ditching that front fender, let me know and i'll happily pay you for it. good luck with the build!
 
Milehigh,
it always great to hear some outside confirmation that you got a good deal. I think I will be ditching the fender along with some of the other body parts. I'm going to wait until I've found or made suitable replacements before I part with anything, though. But, you have first dibs on the front fender.
 
Did quite a bit of work on the bike last night, and it's now down to just the engine, transmission, fork and wheels...and it looks great like this. So, clean. By tomorrow it will be all parts.

Check out the pic of the wiring harness laid out after removal. It has an appropriate resemblance of entrails.

Also, check out the nifty little hose clamps from the brake lines. They clean up quite nicely with a little wire brushing, and I bet I can even give them some luster at some point.

I had to get a little innovative to remove the stuck bolt on the front caliper. The 6mm allen was clearly just going to slip if I applied any more torque. The bolt had already been sitting for 3 days saturated with a rust breakdown compound and wasn't going to get any looser; so I didn't have much to loose in trying alternative solutions. From torquing on the bolt with the 6mm key it was pretty clear that the bolt's was made of a pretty soft alloy. Using this to my advantage, I added a little bit of a chamfer to a torx bit that was slightly larger in diameter than the allen key socket, and tapped the torx bit into the bolts socket. The hardened steel of the toque bit right into the bolt and provided excellent purchase. With the bit tapped deep into the bolt it was no problem applying the necessary torque to remove the thing!
 

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Some picks of the bike almost completely disassembled.

I love the way the transmission mounts actually constitue a structural component of the frame, and that the frame separates on the front end to allow the v-twin to drop out. Cool stuff.

Btw, has any one ever seen a rear fender that is mounted to the sway arm instead of the frame? If so, how did it look? Cool? Lame? I was looking at the rear sway arm and there is a nice contour at on the inner part of the arm that could easily be continued into a full fender. Might be kind of neat to have a floating fender and to build a recess into the seat to accomodate it on full suspension compression. Just a thought.
 

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The worst part about the holidays....the project lies in waiting until the new year. Can't wait to get my hands dirty again.
 

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I love the way the heat coming off the engine has blued the stainless exhaust tubing. I really want to incorporate the same look, which I guess means I'll be doing a total rebuild on the exhaust.

Also, the Italian color theme is very well appointed on this bike. Looks great! Not sure I wan't my bike to be that bright, but the royal colors of this bike's mother land is a theme I'll be adding somewhere.
 

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We'll the holidays are over, and I'm back at the Guzzi project. I built a trestle that allowed me to finally get the bike off the ground, and with that things started coming apart quickly. By 12:00 AM Sunday evening the bike had been reduced a pile of parts. The question is: what now!?!

I suppose the clear answer is to start working in reverse, and cleaning, modifying, or refurbing parts one by one until I'm back to a full motorcycle.

Step one is going to be figuring out what to do with the engine. I really want this thing the be not just as good as new, but better than new before I bolt anything back on to it. But just what should I do to it? Valves? pistons? rings? rods? crank? cam? flywheel? any work on the block itself? And who should I have do this work? Is there one shop that's ideally suited for working on this little Guzzi power plant?

Check out the pics of the various pieces. I've been using the old gas from the fuel tank to cut through the layers of grease and grit caked on this thing (in the vodka bottle in the pic). Also, note that the bottom fork crown is still attached. It looks like I need a Guzzi specific wrench to remove the headset. Any recommendations on where to find this?
 

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Good...

Pictures from here: http://lecontainer.blogspot.com/
 

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Oh, and the last pic is from these guys:
http://www.moto-mucci.com/search?updated-max=2012-01-19T08:41:00-06:00&max-results=10

Thought I'd give credit where credit is due
 
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