My motorcycling - indeed very existence - almost ended in the fifties when I was hurled from my newly rebuilt KTT Velo by a lad in a sewage disposal vehicle who then tried to make amends by picking me up by my broken arm and standing me on my broken leg. He was fined £3.6s.8d for driving without due care and I learnt that just because a face is pointed in your direction does not mean the eyes have seen you. This will explain my cynical attitude to other road users, and although I love bikes I am a very devoted coward.
I was living and working in the Isle of Man until I became redundant at 58 and we decided to return to dear old England, which for all its faults does not have Work Permits and permanent force ten gales. At my advanced age I knew job hunting would be long so to keep the cash flowing I became a despatch rider. My elderly CB550F was becoming expensive so I decided on a shaftie - either a second hand BMW boxer or a Guzzi. Both were old fashioned low tech jobs and, I thought, well tried (was I to learn!). I had a good offer for the Honda and bought a V65SP Guzzi. Hardly being a ton-up kid, I thought if one oiled it and the blew the tyres up regularly I would be OK.
Within two days of picking it up I fell foul of the prop stand. Put it down whilst still sat in the saddle, when one gets off the suspension rises and the stand retracts. Useless. Just to prove it wasn't me, the Guzzi agent did the same, but whereas I only caused a slight crack in the Mickey Mouse fairing he shattered another part and had to replace it. Three weeks after that I stopped in Chiswick, hauled it onto the centre stand and a brand new shiny bolt fell out of the gearbox...
The road holding and agility were magic, the coupled brakes very reassuring on slimy roads. Wet weather riding was ruined by the left hand pot cutting out and then just as suddenly coming back in. The agent changed the leads, coils, plugs, etc., and I used copious quantities of WD40. If it stayed cut out it wouldn't have been quite so bad, but with the directness of shaft drive and the awfulness of the road surfaces, it becomes very interesting in heavy traffic. It went back to the agent three or four times, for also the fuel consumption was poor and starting a very hit and miss affair. To add to the misery, although I ran the bike in progressively over 5000 miles plus, the left hand plug fouled after 1000 miles and if I cruised at seventy then it used about two pints of oil between changes.
Then one bright sunny day the clutch race packed up. I was back on the road within three days but of course £100 down from lost work. By this time I was becoming really worried about the bike's reliability. A month later, on the M25, I was steaming up a hill when it started to miss on a dry day. Eased back and the pot came back in. Took it back to the agent straight away, as fourth gear seemed to be very noisy and there was oil in the clutch housing. It transpired that the 'missing' was down to no exhaust valve clearance, the noise was the hardening on the gears disappearing and the oil leak was a shot main bearing seal. The agent admitted he had made a mistake on the clearances on PDI, so it was all done under warranty. What still puzzles me is that the bike kept losing valve clearance. I have been setting valve clearances on cars, motorbikes, and even aircraft for over forty years and never had a problem like on this Guzzi.
One runs up mileages at a great rate despatching, but even so I was surprised when a thousand miles on, in the soggy wet gloom of a November evening, as I pushed into some fast curves at about 85mph, the bike went onto one cylinder. We staggered on until I found somewhere to park and do the valve clearances. By this time I was heartily sick of the bloody thing and so made arrangements to have a thorough check at the main agents in Dorset. But before that, on a beautiful wet night in Wembley (rush hour natch) the right hand throttle cable snapped. They usually last 8000 miles a side. The rain was coming down in stair rods, my bi-focals fogged and I was feeling a mild case of paranoia coming on. I was a member of the AA Riders Club, they had experts on bikes who could fix it for me... sod it, why not? After all they claim they have all been given training courses.
This one hadn't. "Guzzi eh? Hmmm don't know much about this brand of Jap bike." My heart congealed into ice. Even more so when he removed the old cable, ripping out the starter switch as he did so. "It's OK mate all you have to do is short it out with a paper clip or a bit of old wire." And so I went off into a night of heavy rain and lashing winds. And the left hand pot came in and out, in and out... my paranoia deepened. I wanted to hurt it, but I knew all I would do was make it worse and probably end up injuring myself as well.
Two days later I staggered down to Dorset and handed it over. Please, please, please just make it work. For the first time the bike went like the proverbial bird. Magic? Not quite, they made me pay £182 for the privilege. But the bike is under warranty, surely? "Ah yes, but there are lots of things that have been done to this bike and bits put on which are not standard.” But I hadn't put them on and had not fiddled with the thing except for the valves. Their agent had been the last one to touch it. They refused responsibility for their agent's work. So I went back to the other lot and we split the bill.
For three weeks the bike went like a dream and then turned into a nightmare when a peculiar noise started coming from the transmission. One of the pinion bearings was shot. It was repaired under warranty. A few weeks later the starter motor seized, again replaced free (they're £113 new). Then the speedo stopped working the comical little bit of bent tin that fits into the front wheel had snapped off. Then the clutch started playing up in the middle of Christchurch.
Dorset would fix it under warranty only if it was an original mechanical fault - so I did it myself, turned out that the race that had been replaced before hadn't been fitted with a washer on either side. If I had taken it to Dorset I would probably have footed the bill. When I threw it all together the clutch worked alright but there was a creaking sound from the transmission. That was the final straw. I took it back to Dorset, asked how much they would give me for it, and we agreed a price and that was that.
I would just add that I did around 28000 miles within a year, including several weeks when it was not on the road. I was still on the original front Pirelli Phantom that it was delivered with, although it was showing signs of perishing, the back had just had its third tyre fitted, so you can see that I was hardly a speed king. Apart from the failed starter and ignition problems there were few switchgear problems, but I did have to buy over twenty tail light bulbs. The general finish on the bike was poor, except for the silencers which were good (at £89 each they should be).
Apart from having to regularly clean out the holes in the discs the brakes worked safely. The seat was hard compared with its big brother. Most of my courier work was long distance and I averaged about 1200 miles a week without acting out racer fantasies - just as well, as I really don't know what would have happened to the engine if I cruised at illegal speeds. After the left hand pot was fixed oil consumption was negligible. Only problem was that the transmission used 85/145, an oil which is virtually unobtainable except in 25 litre drums, but Mobil recommend 90SP for all Guzzis. Next time it'll be a BMW, MZ or GT550. Short of breaking in half at 85mph I don't think much can beat the V65's trauma.
Mike Cullen