Back on the road again!

Well the time has come to put Yellow Bike back on the road again. I pulled it off the road back in March or April when the rego ran out because we had four of our vehicles come up for renewal in one month which was a pain to deal with. Now my red Mana is ‘Hors de Combat’ so I’m not riding it and my Red GRiSO is up for sale as I really don’t need two of them any more now I have my Mana GT for touring.

Yesterday I stuck the battery back in Yellow bike after keeping it charged regularly since March. I was expecting it to be temperamental, or at least run poorly due to the shitty fuel that’s been sitting in it for the best part of nine months but first press of the button and it fired straight up and settled into a perfect idle!

I’m really looking forward to getting back on it again. It’s been such a joy over the last seventeen years. Thinking about it that’s probably close to as long as the only other bike I’ve owned that ever came close, my first SP 1000 that evolved into my hot-rod. I got that in about ‘83 and it was ‘Retired’ when I got my first GRiSO in 2006. Yellow Bike arrived in early 2008, (Although it was originally white.). It and I have shared 160,000km of fun and trauma and it’s never failed to get me where I wanted to go or home again afterwards! I reckon that’s an enviable record for just about any bike. Yes it ate its first motor due to the flat tappet fiasco but my loss was everyone’s gain as analysing the failure enabled me to identify both the universality of the problem and why it occurred. By now I’d hope that any current owners would at least be aware of the issue, even if they’re still in denial about it affecting them. Well, you can lead a horse to water………

GRiSO! Truly a bike for the ages and a hidden gem!

You really expected it to fail? what? With the care it has gotten. Hats off Pete, YOU made it trouble free!!
Well maybe Beetle & Michael helped.

No, I wasn’t expecting it to fail Steve, I was just mentioning it because for some reason a lot of people do seem to expect, especially Italian bikes, and most especially Guzzis for some reason, to be unreliable and failure prone. I have no idea why.

Most Guzzis since time immemorial have been built like tanks! That’s not to say they are perfect or infallible, but they are tarnished with a reputation that is truly undeserved in some quarters.

That's a great testimonial, Pete. You've taken good care of that one, and all of ours too!

I just clocked up 80,000km on mine (which btw you found and collected for me from Geelong), so I'm halfway to catching up with you.