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My old 1000SP project is mine again

Michael Moore

Tuned and Synch'ed
GT Contributor
Joined
Nov 21, 2016
Messages
26
Location
San Francisco, CA
Back in December 1993 I bought a rough, lightly crashed/scorched 1979 Guzzi 1000SP. I took it apart and started accumulating parts and sending work out (ported big valve heads, Megacycle cam, Carrillo rods, Sudco FCR41 kit (ex-Godfrey), later Guzzi fine spline clutch components, alloy timing gears, new u-joint/drive shaft assembly, etc), and finally about 19 years later, after languishing in storage, I sold it to a friend. He sent the trans and final drive to an East Coast Guzzi racer (Charley Cole) who specialized in working on those (taking the business and all tools/tech over from the US Raceco when they closed) and had them gone through. He bought some other stuff (I just noticed a sump spacer with an external oil filter in the photos below) and assembled the wheels with the flangeless WM4/WM5 Akront rims I'd purchased.

Steve ran into some stumbling blocks and lost interest and today the Guzzi came back to my garage, nearly 28 years after I first purchased it. It is funny how the marbles can be swapped in circles like that.

When I started I was actively racing and wanting to build a semi-cafe racer hotrod. Now, I'm more interested in a solo rider sport tourer (with pumped engine).

I've got a couple of waist-high stacks of tubs filled with parts that I need to inventory. After cleaning up a set of stock small-valve heads from one of those boxes I'll get port molds from them as well as the hotrod heads that need some exhaust manifold fastener rework, just in case I have to replicate the ported heads.

Nothing will happen quickly, but hopefully something may actually happen -- some day. But I've gotten to where having something to fiddle with and do research/planning/CAD etc are entertaining enough to satisfy me even if riding isn't taking place.

cheers,
Michael

From 1993:
MotoGuzzi003

Today:
1000SP 3007small
1000SP 3011small
1000SP 3014small
 
Hey Mike,

What a trip!
I've been down a similar road with a G5 and a V7 Sport. Educational, engaging, entertaining, and sometimes even productive.
hehehh

Pls post if ya need some parts. I'm down in San Jose, and have some old buckets of old spares layin around. No complete units but sometimes handy stuff.

Alex
 
Thanks Alex, I'll keep that in mind. I should have pretty much all the new parts and gaskets etc on hand from when I owned the bike before, and I can't think of what kind of other things might be needed. But there's a lot of rummaging/list making to do before I can tell what is or is not falling readily to hand and foot.

cheers,
Michael
 
Sometimes I see the damnedest things , but in your middle picture of
"today" , only 1 of 3 vehicles has a license plate :) . Peter
 
I wanted to start off with something fun on the SP, so I gathered up some port molds I had on hand and also made molds from a couple of Guzzi heads.

The molds I already had were given to me by the late Ken Augustine (Kinetic Analysis) a very well known cylinder head guy (he did the heads for the Butler and Smith BMW Superbikes back in the day, and for many top riders and also factories). Those I'll show are for a Yamaha TT500 with stock valves (47intake and 39 exhaust) and intake/exhaust manifold locations. Ken told me that they had very impressive flow numbers. I road raced a TT500 special in a Kenny Roberts frame for 6 years and Ken knew that I liked the motors. Ken's molds include the combustion chamber.

In the middle are heads by Craig Hanson that I had him do for the SP. Craig did a lot of head/dyno development work over the years and built the heads on my Honda and Laverda vintage road racers. These have Kibblewhite 44/37 valves.

The remaining set are from a stock head (I'd picked up an extra set) with 41/36 valves.

These are the raw scans of the port molds without any post-processing/smoothing of flaws where the molding might not have gone quite right, or had small tears develop when being removed from the heads.

The Guzzi ports are pretty crude. It doesn't surprise me that stock head bikes often don't respond well to bolt on mods like big carbs etc.

Craig's ports have welded-up exhaust port floors and epoxy filler in the floor of the intake port. You'll note he's added some offset for swirl in the intake.

Ken's TT500 ports are pretty cool, and show what can be done by someone who was a top-level porter for many decades. The Yamaha is a 500 with 87x84mm bore/stroke, and somewhat less included valve angle than the Guzzi. My SP with Gilardoni kit is 90x78. The Yamaha intake would break out into the stud tunnels and is 10mm wider than Craig's intake.

Once I've dug out my flow bench and refreshed my memory on how to use it (and make a valve-opening fixture for the heads) I'll put the stock and modified Guzzi heads on it to get some comparison numbers.

cheers,
Michael

6 port comparison top 6 port comparison side
 
I found the box with the instruments, and the odometer is showing 46122 miles. Guzzis may be fairly long lived, but I suspect that means I need to look at all "normal wear" items and expect to find some that are past their service life.
 
I found the box with the instruments, and the odometer is showing 46122 miles. Guzzis may be fairly long lived, but I suspect that means I need to look at all "normal wear" items and expect to find some that are past their service life.

That vintage probably has the 2mm clutch splines. I would consider updating to the newer 4mm system (plates and hub gear) as part of the process.
 
John, I did buy a complete new clutch 20+ some years ago, I think it was considered a fine spline compared to what was originally on the bike, and it was supposed to be an improved part. Did they find that didn't work and revert back to a coarse spline?
 
John, I did buy a complete new clutch 20+ some years ago, I think it was considered a fine spline compared to what was originally on the bike, and it was supposed to be an improved part. Did they find that didn't work and revert back to a coarse spline?

In comparison the original 2mm spline could be considered fine compared to the 4mm setup. Since I don't know what you purchased take a look at the new style hub gear .

30081810.jpg


30081810_01.jpg
 
What I've got are two friction plates by AP Borg&Beck that say "M0 1B-1" on them. The splines in the plates are a nominal 4mm deep. I think these came in my order from Agostini's as the handwriting on the label (which I'm not sure I can accurately decipher) looks very "European". It looks like "2?084450" which doesn't seem a match for any of the parts books I looked at but I suppose that could be a "14" at the start to match the G5/LM3 part number.

G5/LM3 and presumably SP friction plates 14084450
Newfren early shallow spline 2808446
SD-TEC deep spline 30084410
Suflex bonded 4mm 1989 on 30084411

I did not see a new hub in the box I found the friction plates in, but I suppose that when my friend sent the gearbox and final drive off to Charley Cole the new hub was probably installed to the gearbox shaft, and the gearbox is attached to the empty engine cases at the moment.

I need to get to work on the inventory, that large tub has bags and bags of new Guzzi seals/gaskets/small parts (I saw a bag with four new lifters in it) and I can't find a list of what I ordered decades ago.

ETA: it is quite possible that over the years I've transposed the fine and deep spline clutch parts in my head as far as which are the ones to have. 30 years is a long time to remember every detail.
 

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I've gotten a lot of new parts and Guzzi tools in, but I'm still waiting on a few critical engine parts to show up. I've done a quick "get the bulk of the grime off" cleaning of the crankcase and have been doing my usual preassembly fettling. There are spots where the 46K mile aluminum picked up some gouges that left sticky-outy bits, and other spots where there's a bit of casting/machining flash that I'll remove. It is easy to find the parts to work on with the file/scraper/small rotary burr, just rub your hand across the part and where blood is left behind you know there's something that needs to be dealt with. >:)

New parts aren't immune from this inspection/fettling, the new main bearings are nicely machined but weren't completely deburred afterwards.

To pass the time I scanned the crankcase, due to the line of sight limitations of the scanner even with 250 scans there are still a few holes where the scanner couldn't get a look at the case:

Slow progress, but progress none the less.

cheers,
Michael

Fettle 3038 Fettle 3041 Fettle 3042 Fettle bearing01 Fettle bearing02 MGcrankcasescan
 
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