Warning: Web page from 1993 below 

        Uno               Due                  Tre

Il Progetto LeMans Uno

OK gearheads, let's talk Moto Guzzi motorcycles.

Call it obsessive, but almost every moment that I'm not at the Robotics Laboratory at UC Berkeley, I'm working on completely stripping down and rebuilding my Moto Guzzi LeMans I. The reason for this is that, although it looked like this in Italy. it ended up in three crates:

So, as you can tell, I'm quite busy with this project. When do I hope to have it on the road? I'd rather not say for fear of misleading people so basically...stay tuned.

Update:

At 19:30 on 29 January 1995 the LeMans turned over with its newly painted body work and full tank of gas.

At 1:37 on 5 October 1994 the LeMans turned over. Needless to say I was quite happy. However, I have been unable to get my tank back from the guy that is suppose to paint it. I should have some new photos in the next few days. Looks great and at least I know that the electircal is all in tack.

Check back later for video.

Breaking It Down...

Something on the order of 90% of the time has been spent on simply stripping down, cleaning, and preparing the parts to be re-assembled. Suffice to say that it's very time consuming. Sort of the type of thing that one can put many many hours into and barely notice a difference. In fact, I can hardly believe that so much time spent results in only this brief paragraph.

Building It Up (engine and gearbox)...

Recently, I finally got to cusp of the project, that is the point were I flipped the switch on the socket wrench to start assembling rather than disassembling.

At that point I had the crankcase and crank stripped almost all the way down. About the only thing that didn't come out was the connecting rods and crank. The front, back, top, and bottom of the crankase were all cleaned, preped, and ready to be assembled.

I greased the appropriate parts and put the new timing chain on. Newly coated pistons, rings, and circlips were attached to the connecting rod. Next it was a simple matter to compress the rings and get the cylinder into place with new gaskets, of course. With the carbon deposits being completely cleaned off of the head and valves, the actual assembly of the head and valve rockers was a snap. I repeated this same process for the other cylinder.

Next, I placed the valve covers on and got ready to seal it up. Of course not without a thorough lubing with grease and oil where appropriate. I replaced the oil sump and looked back -- the motor was finally finished.

During the time I was cleaning parts, I had my flywheel lightened, and now it was ready to be assembled. I spend the good portion of an evening getting it and the clutch plates all mounted correctly. Finally, the gearbox, which I had worked on several months earlier was ready to mate with his friend

Building It Up (frame)...

While all this engine work was going on, I was able to have the entire frame powdercoated. Now I was ready to bring the engine and gearbox out of my basement so that I could raise and mount them into the frame. My what a great looking piece of machinery After a long day listing and aligning the engine into the frame. Later I got a few more pieces onto the frame.

Building It Up (misc.)...

In parallel with rebuilding the motor and gearbox, I was doing other smaller jobs, like rebuilding the carburators, all of the wiring, and plenty of other jobs to clutter my workspace

What's left:

Fix charging problem, attach side panels, register, and ride....

Return to Moto Guzzi Home Page

Eric Paulos / paulos@robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu / 11 October 1994