Never let an idiot near your bike, bugger it was me!!

So i wanted to check the tappets, not looked since i have owned the bike. Easy i thought, those guzzi's have a reputation of being easy to work on, until you give it to an idiot....me!

I looked at the front of the engine and thought, that cover looks a bit of a faff to get off, i will put it on the stand and turn the rear wheel, not a chance, even with the plugs out!. So i had to remove the front cover to get to the nut on then end of the crank, i already had the wings off, so it was the horns next, then the electronic cover at the front and the electronics behind it, finally that stupid bolt that holds the overflow bottle on and finally it all came off.

I then started to clean it up and guess what??? YES THERE IS A BLOODY RUBBER BUNG TO GET TO THE CRANK NUT!!!, i felt a right idiot.

I then needed to find the timing marks, so took the bung out of the right hand side of the motor, shone a torch, but can't make out a thing, luckily i have a long screw driver and simply used that to find TDC on both sides.

The good news was that the tappets were miles out!!!  One set of exhaust tappets were at 8, but the rest were all up to twice the gap they should be, on a bike that has only done 4,200 miles, and was rebuilt 2,000 ago with new heads, crank and cases.

So i started her up and she sounds so much better :-) just been for a ride and very pleased, now lets reload Beetles map.........

Look at it as a learning exercise.

Good thing about Guzzi's; they will let you get away with that.

We all have been there at one point or another. The thing is whether you learn the lesson or not.