Moto Guzzi 4 Valve Engines Flat Tappet Fiasco
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- It is now common knowledge that all 4 valves engines (Griso, 1200 Sport, Stelvio, Norge) will be affected at some point. The Moto Guzzi air cooled 4 valve engine (1151 cm³) is a great powerful engine - the best Guzzi built so far. Unfortunately is has a serious design flaw but it can be fixed with a roller kit conversion. Every owner should invest in this before it is too late.
Roller tappets and camshafts were introduced by the middle of 2012. Engine numbers for the changeover point are listed as:
Griso - motor number A813524, build date 12 April 2012
Stelvio - motor number AC12596, build date 12 March 2012
Norge - motor number AA12214, build date 18 April 2012
More info (written by Pete Roper, Moto Moda) can be found on the "Griso Ghetto" forum
(www.grisoghett....
"The earliest 8V motors were made using chilled cast iron flat tappets, these were in 2007 through to early 2009. It quickly became apparent that there was a problem as the tappets started to fail. At this point, from memory around the end of 2008 or the beginning of 2009 the factory did issue an actual recall but not to fit roller tappets as these hadn't been manufactured yet. The first attempted fix was to replace the chilled cast iron tappets with forged steel ones with a 'Diamond like carbon', (DLC) coating on them. This was supposed to be 'The Fix' and as with all recalls was supposed to be publicised by both factory and dealers and, to their credit, most owners were so notified and in
my experience it has been very rare to find a cast iron tappeted bike in circulation after the recall.
Firstly it was stated that failures were a rare and unlikely event. They aren't. The attrition rate is 100%. There would be no pre-emptive replacements, the tappets had to fail before a claim would be accepted and the claim for a roller conversion kit was dependent on the owner having a full service history completed not just on distance but also on time, (So if you only did 5,000 km a year you were still expected to get a full 10,000 km service performed annually and recorded in your log book.). No service history? No kit! The inspection for damage had to be performed by an authorised dealer or service agent and provision of the kit was entirely discretionary. The owner was responsible for the labour component of both the inspection and, if the claim was successful, the installation of the kit."
Having the Griso, it is the most common question I get. Has it been rollerised? Lucky mine is a 2015 model. What is scary is new Moto Guzzi owners that buy the affected bikes have no idea of the issue (I have come across this a couple of times).
Like me. 2012 Norge 8v new to me Sept 3/22. Glad I saw Janguzzi's post. Seems my bike's motor build number is in the rollerized period, wew.
I'm just hoping that the V100 doesn't turn out to be a fiasco too. Quality issues are surfacing but as far as I can tell, nothing this serious, so far.......
Just became the 4th owner of a 2012 NORGE... and love it.
So if I understand your info above, Norges are okay (already have been built with the the roller tappet change), if after this date: "Norge - motor number AA12214, build date 18 April 2012"?
My motor number is: AA 012275
(72,720 kms on it, 2300 are mine since Sept 30.
Would a 2007 Norge 1200 Sport have this issue?
? ...a Norge is not a 1200 Sport. Please read the text below the video.
@@janguzzigot it. And, I just read full description and the particular engine numbers listed. Thanks for this info.
@@davidclary5104 All 4 valve engines will fail at some point of time. Only the last 4 valves engines did get roller tappets from the factory.
Thank you for this info! Wow..
I am just about to buy a 1200Sport from 2011.
It has now near 40.000km. I was looking here for criteria to look for, confronted the seller.., -and he has no idea what I was talking about..
Motor sounds great.. Is there any means to see or feel if the motor is now rollerized?
Thank you for this great bit of information, any help is appreciated
Hallo Stefan, Peter Roper's thread in Griso Ghetto Forum says it all:
www.grisoghetto.com/t5879-the-definitive-guide-to-rollerisation
"The exception to this is 1200 Sports, none of which were ever made with roller engines at the factory. It's my belief that this is because the last of them were built before the advent of the roller top end and although they continued to be sold and plated as 'Current model' up until at least 2015 in the Australian market they were in fact 'New Old Stock' manufactured prior to rollers."
So if the seller is the first owner and has no idea what you are talking about then it has flat tappets.
my 1979 Moto Guzzi, SP 1000 2 valve engine also had pitted lifters. The lifters were pitted. Where are they ride on the cam shaft.. I replaced the lifters at approximately 35,000 miles back in the day.
I did not commute in stop and go traffic with that machine. That was my weekend. Get far away on back roads machine. It did not spend a lot of time idling. I used Castrol 20 W 50 motor oil. That was the old school motor oil before the government asked car manufacturers and oil companies to do something to get more miles per gallon , And the result in around 1989 was to thin the oil out.. Oil has friction. The thicker, the oil, the higher the friction. If they can get every car in the United States to get just one more mile out of every tank full of gasoline, that would mean millions of gallons of gasoline saved every day just from that one little thing which they did. They did that by reducing the amount of zinc and phosphorus in the additives package. Zinc and phosphorus are the two things that give oil what is known as film strength, resistance to sheer. We’re two pieces come together like a cam lobe and a lifter face., that is about the most severe area of sheer in a car engine, or a truck engine. But, that is nothing compared to the shearing that takes place in a motorcycle transmission on motorcycle engines that use one oil to lubricate both the engine and the transmission. Motorcyclist magazine printed an article about the changes made to car oils in around 1989. They explained that you must use motorcycle specific oil in your motorcycle engine if it uses one oil to do both the transmission and the engine lubrication.
but these Moto Guzzi engines do not subject the engine oil to the transmission torture chamber for oil. Motorcycle engines run much cooler than you think compared to car engines.
just picture a car on a 95° day in rush-hour traffic with five passengers in the air conditioner on. That oil can exceed 450°F.
The highest motorcycle engine oil temperatures I ever heard of was 270°. You may think they are hot because you are closer to the engines but they do not run hotter than cars… So their oil does not get hotter..
The valve train lubrication area is the first area to suffer from poor lubrication or oil that is worn out..
in the 1980s, the Honda V4 engines used in the saver, and the interceptors had a severe camshaft scoring issue. The fix was it a kit that included additional oil flow through a braided steel Oil hose.. proving once again, the top end, the valve train is the first thing to suffer in engines with marginal lubrication..
The engine in my personal ram 1500 hemi pick up truck is known for a lifter boil related problems. If the truck does a lot of idling once the truck reaches around 80,000 miles or higher…
so these lubrication issues that these Guzy engines are experiencing or nothing new, and nothing unique just to moto guzzi.. in fact, I have a 1958 mga 1500 that I have owned since I was 16 years old back in 1968. I still have the car here in 2023. I had the engine rebuilt to completely stock in 1974 when I had the car restored. The engine builder told me that it needed new lifters because they were slightly pitted. I still have a new box of OEM MG, Lockheed lifters that I need to put in there when I find time to get around to it…
camshaft and lifters are always the first things to show signs of wear due to idling and lack of oil changes or lack of high-quality oils..
I personally do not put additives in any of the oils i use.. especially when I learned things like, STP, is nothing but pure, raw refined petroleum before it was classified or had any additives package add to it with anti-foaming agent, anti-corrosion Additives, polymers to put it into a specific weight range, it is the dough petroleum that you start with to bake a cake. That’s all it is. It has no additives in it. Or something like whynns friction perform.or Bardol, VBA. Those products are more than 90% kerosene… so you can’t really go by the hype of advertisers. You have to find out if there is something you can add to the oil to give it a higher film stregnth.. it might even be a good idea to run motorcycle four stroke oil from Europe. AGIP i ride oils.. my last Moto Guzzi was a Norge to valve engine. The owners manual called for10 W 60 motor oil. And I used AGIP 10 W 60 oil.. I ran that motorcycle for 14 years on that oil. I never pulled the lifters, but the valves never really went out of adjustment even though I checked them at least every 2500 miles. And when I drained my engine oil, I drained the oil over a magnet through a cheesecloth, and I did not. Detect an unusual amount of metal particles in the oil at every oil change.. magnetic or nonmagnetic..
with the Internet hyping every little flaw in every vehicle out there, mama it’s tough to find a vehicle that does not have some type of Achilles’ heel no matter how slight..
this isn’t a big problem like back in the day when I was a Honda mechanic at a dealership. And I want to send a bulletin to all the service departments all their dealers instructing in the parts department to Stocks seven camshaft and top and gasket kits for every 10 motorcycles that dealership sells… Those Honda, CB 350 twins were really drunk. I got so fast at changing the camshaft under warranty, and those machines, that I could have a camshaft out of an engine and hand it to the Partman before the camshaft was cool enough to hold with bare hands.. those engines were a mechanics dream. I could do four camshaft jobs per day. I could get paid 48 hours pay in eight hours because I was a flat rate mechanic… That’s if we had the parts. The hardest part of that job was scraping the head gasket and base gasket.. It was better if the motorcycle engines blew up out of warranty, because warranty did not pay as much as the flat rate manual paid Mechanics…
If I had one of these 4 valve, Moto Guzzi’s.. I would use agip oil, I would avoid idling, and I would change the oil often, and run it till it blows,call and then fix it.
I wonder of having the camshaft lobes, especially polished would cure this issue up.. or possibly slightly weaker valve springs?
The failure is not oil or additive related.