MORINI 350 SPORT
The cult of the wee vee has long been strong in Europe, but Morini 350s are seldom seen in Canada. So when Steven Troupe was given the opportunity to transform a museum piece back into a roadgoing motorcycle, how could he possibly refuse?
The cult of the wee vee has long been strong in Europe, but Morini 350s are seldom seen in Canada. So when Steven Troupe was given the opportunity to transform a museum piece back into a roadgoing motorcycle, how could he possibly refuse?
Iwrote about my pair of Laverda twins in RC136, ending the article with a teaser about my 1975 Moto Morini 3½ Sport. Here in Canada that machine is as rare as compassion from your investment banker: it’s just never seen. I reached the age of 60 and have been involved in motorcycling since the age of 12, but I have never encountered a single Moto Morini on the road, and only one at vintage race days. I knew they existed, thanks to the 1979 edition of that wonderful publication ‘ World Motorcycle Catalogue’. At the time the US custom bike trend consumed almost the entire marketplace; sports bikes were few and far between. I craved Italian machinery but they were hard to find, expensive, and sadly out of reach. I had to be content with my 1971 Honda CL350 that I had made into something resembling a café racer.
Jump ahead to the summer of 2013. I picked up a 1976 Laverda 1000 3CL (seen in RC121). Fred Kolman showed me his private museum and there among all the bikes was a 1975 Moto Morini 3½ Sport; boy would I like to own it! Fred shared the machine’s history. It was Bob Guzzo’s bike, the fellow who started the Ottawa section of the Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group. Apparently this was his favourite machine and he rode the bejesus out of it. After Bob’s death in 2007 the bike had sat on display in Fred’s museum.
Jump ahead to the summer of 2014. Fred called to say that if I wanted to pay $4500 I could become the proud owner of that same Moto Morini. Enough said!
When I got it home the bike started, but it certainly didn’t run well. It had a two-intoone exhaust system !tted that had been dinged and dented almost completely out of shape. Worse, the rear exhaust was being held in by a spring attached to a hole that had been drilled into the top cylinder head !n! And as there were no baf"es in the muf"er, it was very, very loud.
I did an inventory of what it would take to certify as mechanically !t (Ontario Canada’s version of the MoT). And I joined the Moto Morini club in order to make the contacts I would needed in future. Chief among these is Stuart Mayhew of North Leicestershire Motorcycles. Since !rst contact I have received superior advice, commiseration and service from him and his staff. Were it not for him, the bike would still be awaiting restoration.
Happily the wheels were round and the spokes were solid. I replaced the wheel bearings, swinging arm bushings,
steering head bearings and of course the tyres and tubes. I mounted a Continental ClassicAttack rear and a RoadAttack front, as they have performed so well on my Laverda triples and twins.
The Morini needed a battery and signal lights and the shocks had about as much damping as a pogo stick, so I mounted IKONs. I hammered out the terribly bent sidestand and, as the centrestand was missing, I ordered an entire assembly. Bob had !tted a 50 tooth rear sprocket, which I replaced with an NOS 38 tooth chainwheel. I replaced the front sprocket at the same time and mounted a DID 530 Z-ring chain.
Cosmetically I wanted to put it as right as possible. That meant replacing the rear tail light assembly and getting the little detail bits like the rubber mounts for the side panels, the rubber cap for the top of the clutch actuating arm, the aluminium trim for the bottom of the tank and the ‘Sport’ plaque for the top of the steering head. I installed the missing centrestand and, following Stuart’s advice, an airbox to replace the K&Ns that were on it. I replaced the complex multi-piece intake manifolds with the later rubber manifolds, eliminating many sources of air leaks. I sent the 25mm square slide Dell’Ortos off to Wolfgang Haerter to have them rebuilt and ultrasonically cleaned.
The Morini came with Strada-style footrests and handlebars mounted on the top yoke. I replaced them with Tarozzi rearsets and clip-ons and added Rizoma bar-end mirrors. The petrol tank was absolutely full of rust, which entailed getting it chemically treated to get rid of what was in there, and then lined to prevent it happening again. The original magnetically-actuated petrol taps had been replaced with conventional petcocks that were in such bad shape I installed a new set.
I replaced the front brake shoes and painstakingly adjusted them to ensure that both contact the drum at the same time. I wanted to replace the rear shoes, but apparently the Sport’s shoes are unavailable. So I had the shoes relined and then machined them down to !t. I replaced all three of the front brake cables and the clutch cable.
The right side Marzocchi fork tube was dripping oil, so I disassembled it… only to !nd that the problem was simply that the damper mounting screw on the bottom had not been screwed in. Tightening it up solved that issue. The left fork tube was completely dry – and full of rust. A soak in evapo-rust soon put that to rights. I replaced the fork springs with a set of progressives and reassembled the front end, using Motul 10w fork oil.
Just about then Fred got in touch to say that he’d found the original Lafranconi seamed exhaust system and sent it along.
Finally everything was back together and I was able to go for a ride. All enthusiasts have read about how well the Morini
handles. In my experience all of that is understated: the bike was a revelation! Steady, stable, "ickable, holds a line, incredible lean angles, lightness – it darts around corners with little to no rider input, as impossible as that sounds. After taking a run through my favourite local sets of corners I returned with a smile as big as the Morini’s front drum.
That double-sided single-leading shoe Grimeca drum caused me considerable consternation. The springs are so heavy it takes a real pull to make them work. I’ve found that positioning my hand at the farthest end of the lever helps quite a bit. Even so I wasn’t happy with the braking. Comparing it to the brakes on my Laverda SF twins I felt disappointed as I thought that the Grimeca lacked the feel and stopping power of the bigger bikes.
I mentioned this to Stuart, who asked me to perform a simple test: run both bikes side-by-side up to 40mph and then at the same point, make an emergency stop. I was completely surprised to !nd that the Morini stopped in almost half the distance, despite the Laverda ‘feeling’ as if its brakes worked better. Of course the Laverda’s brakes are great (‘super’ really). But despite the heavy pull of the Grimeca’s springs, the brake on the 3½ brought the Morini to a halt much, much sooner. I imagine the considerable weight difference between the 3½ and the SF has a lot to do with it!
And yet the Morini still wasn’t running well; it wouldn’t idle reliably, and the plugs would foul. A talk with Stuart and a test on the ohmmeter convinced me that I needed to have the stator coil rewound, so I packaged that up and sent it along to the UK. Unfortunately I unwittingly chose the slowest possible shipping method and the stator didn’t get to NLM for two months…
In the meantime I rebuilt the top end with new pistons, rings, valves and valve springs and replaced the cam timing belt. Once the stator arrived in the UK, the NLM team had it rewound and back to me within seven days. That’s what I mean when I say ‘superior service’!
I remounted the stator the same day I got it back, installed the "ywheel and buttoned the engine back up. With the petrol turned on and the choke levers upright, a couple of kicks and the Morini !red to life once again, soon settling down into a choke-off steady idle.
I’ve ridden it over 2500 miles since and the bike has run like a charm, never failing to start or to please. The motor is nothing like I expected it to be. I thought that like
many V-twins it would be a stump-pulling torque monster, or as much of that as a 350 could be. Instead it is revvy as all get-out, ready to climb as high up the tachometer as one wishes. The lovely sixspeed gearbox is perfectly matched to the motor so that it’s possible to be in exactly the right gear for any engine speed. That certainly helps its performance through a set of twisties.
Tempting fate and my limited riding abilities I’ve taken the Morini out on track days at a local 3km twelve-turn track. I ride in the vintage ‘old guy’ class, which means no passing in corners. Bikes range from the odd Norton Manx to Suzuki GS1100s and everything in between. While it isn’t a competition, there are times when one’s blood gets up – and the bike readily complies. At one session a Kawasaki 400 triple started ahead of me and pulled away down the opening straight into the right hand sweeper that heralds the following straight before the corners come one upon another. After a couple of laps I had caught him. We would come out of the last turn neck and neck, he’d pull away and then we’d start it all over again. We did that for six laps.
But probably my favourite ride is on any back road, cruising along at an indicated 55mph. The riding position !ts my 5’ 11” frame very well. The seat is super comfortable and allows me to just settle in or to move around when I need to. The engine hums sweetly with little vibration through the bars or pegs, and all is right with my world.
I suppose the next step is to strip it all down and powder coat the frame. It had been painted red at one time and then had black rattle canned over it with the wrong type of paint, as evidenced by it "aking off. Most of the chrome is !ne except for the !nish on the Lafranconis. The tank has a few blemishes too but I rather doubt that I’ll redo it. After all this is a rider: it was never intended to be a showroom piece.
And I am loving riding it.