I bought this bike a week ago, through John who I've known for 20 years, he was asked to sell this bike 1977 Cali' and a Le Mans 850 mk2, by one of his customers who is a classic car and classic bike collector, and wanted to get rid of these two Guzzis to make space for some more classic cars. It turned out the collector had bought the Cali from John 20 years earlier. John had got it in bits after someone else had started a partial restoration/rebuild, john loosely put it all together, just assembling the engine and gearbox in the frame and putting everything else on just finger tight enough for it to roll in one assembled bike like piece. He sold it to the collector who put it in a barn for 20 years! So I know for a fact the bike has certainly not run in at least the 20 years since John loosely assembled it and it stood in a barn, but it was obviously apart before that, and according to the government website it has not been taxed for the road since 1986 so there is a very good chance it hasn't run for 34 years!!!!! Till Now!!!! Knowing it hadn't run for so long, when I got it the first thing i did before even trying to turn it over, was to remove the rocker covers and spark plugs and pour some clean engine oil down the plug holes to oil what no doubt would have been bone dry bores and to visually check over and oil the top end which would also been bone dry and therefore suffer if even turned over without a spark, if not oiled manually.
I found the valves way out of adjustment , very loose and the adjusters also every loose, so I carefully adjusted all the valves to the factory spec’ of 0.22mm all round, and oiled all the valve gear very generously, and poured some more oil down the pushrods in the hole that some oil would reach the cam, yet more oil down the plug holes and then I connected up a charged battery and hoped to turn it over.
I turned the ignition key on, found power to the dash lights, power to the starter motor, but nothing happening at the starter button. I traced the power back to the starter relay so bypassed that with a heavy duty push button switch in place of the relay which would do as a starter button for now.
It turned over!
Next I started to check if there was a spark, nothing at the plugs, so traced the power back as far as the coils which were dead as the dodo, I bodged on some spare old KTM Lc4 coils I happened to have, but still no spark at the plugs, I cleaned up the points and found the gaps were wrong, set the gaps to factory spec 0.4mm and got a spark! Woo Hoo!
Then put the plugs in the heads and in my excitement skipped the obvious next step of rebuilding the carb’s, and just changed the ancient fuel hoses, put fresh fuel in the (bone dry and very clean inside) tank and hoped for the best, the carb’s were leaking and so were the fuel taps, but miraculously as you can hear above, I did get it to start and just about run! Considering the carb’s were certainly well out of tune and probably with blocked pilot jets, it actually sounded pretty good for a motor that hasn’t run in 34 years!!!!!
Now to remove the carb’s strip them down, clean them and all the jets, set them up and balance them, fit some throttle cables that have the right length outer sleeve in relation to inner cable so that they can actually be adjusted, and try it again… and if and when i then get it running and able to idle, i will check and if necessary adjust the ignition timing with a strobe light, and get it running really sweetly. ;-)
Californification here I come!
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