MOTO GUZZI CONVERT
A heavyweight Guzzi V-twin with automatic transmission wouldn’t be the conventional choice for a high-mileage ride on some of Canada’s roughest roads. But then, Nick Adams is not exactly a conventional classic rider…
A heavyweight Guzzi V-twin with automatic transmission wouldn’t be the conventional choice for a high-mileage ride on some of Canada’s roughest roads. But then, Nick Adams is not exactly a conventional classic rider…
Back in RC161 I’d sworn that if I had to choose between the Convert and my beloved 1972 Guzzi Eldorado for a long distance tour to remote places, I’d probably eschew logic and take the Eldorado, even though the Convert has all the advantages of better handling, better brakes, and a far more comfortable seat. But logic doesn’t always play much of a part in motorcycling. If it did I’d have left the Convert in the garage and taken my Guzzi Quota, my Suzuki Burgman 650 scooter… or have sold the lot of them and bought some new ‘adventure’ bike from one of those reliable Japanese companies. But where’s the fun in that?
The Eldorado recently disgraced itself. At a mere 96,000 miles, something in the gearbox had decided it’d had enough. In use, it made nasty complaining noises. When I checked the gear oil, out poured a disgusting slurry, shiny with metal bits. Sooner or later I’ll get around to fixing it, but I wanted to ride. So the Convert it would be.
For those of you not quite up to speed with your Guzziology, the V1000 Convert was Moto Guzzi’s mid-1970s foray into the world of automatic motorcycles. It was aimed squarely at the US police services market although was also available as a civilian model like mine. Unlike many bikes which struggle to perform smoothly during low speed parade duties, with its Sachs fluid torque converter, the Convert is happy to idle along at walking speed or less with no need to be playing tunes on the clutch.
It does have a clutch, mounted between the torque converter and a two-speed gearbox, but most riders soon learn just to leave the bike in ‘high’, forget about gears, and only hold the clutch while starting the engine. Once the engine is running, you can let go of the clutch and the bike will just sit there ready to move forwards as soon as you twist the accelerator. There’s something rather delightful about moving smoothly and deceptively quickly off the line with only one hand on the bars.
At almost a full litre (948cc) the Convert was considered a big, heavy bike in its day, although like so many ‘big bikes’ from earlier decades, it’s dwarfed by the road couches we see now. At around 575lb, it’s no lightweight but, as with all big Guzzis, it carries its weight low and once moving feels positively balletic. It is true that the torque converter robs a little power from the cross-the-frame V-twin (longitudinal crank, transverse cylinders) but it’s a torquey engine, with a claimed 71 horsepower, so it doesn’t matter much, and anyway, horsepower and performance freaks are not likely to find much to appeal to them in the Convert. Make no mistake though, it will hustle along very nicely. More than a few people have been surprised by the Convert’s athleticism in the stop-light sprints.
For months, every time I took my Convert for a lengthy spin I returned home with an oil soaked right shin. I had tried everything: new valve cover gasket, new breather pipe, new crush-washers on the oil line, but the mysterious leak persisted. Having ruined a couple of pairs of jeans, I started to always wear my leather chaps while riding it as the oil would just wipe off. I had been doing anything to avoid what I was knew was the
real fix: to pull off the cylinder head and barrel and replace the two little O-rings which fit on the studs below the cylinder base.
I don’t know why I waited so long. To remove valve covers, head and cylinder you just unbuckle the carb then pull the engine to pieces. There’s no need to remove the tank or any of that nonsense. The job I had been avoiding for months took no more than a couple of hours – and that includes the time I spent faffing around because whoever had assembled the flywheel last hadn’t lined it up properly (no, it wasn’t me). The helpful factory marks on the flywheel (D for ‘Destra’ – Left, S for ‘Sinistra’ – Right) no longer correlated with top-dead-centre on either cylinder. Once I’d figured that out and found TDC the oldfashioned way, I was off to the races.
I’d been perusing Google maps and noticed a thin faint line winding north through northern Ontario towards the tiny hamlet of Shining Tree. A little bit of googling informed me that this logging access road had been incorporated into the Trans Canada Adventure Trail – a loosely strung together cross-Canada route of unpaved logging roads, mine access trails and old bush tracks compiled by people who love solitude, gravel dust, bear poop, knobbly tyres and ADV stickers. It looked the right kind of adventure for me and the Convert: middle of nowhere, bumpy unpaved roads, potential for disaster – just my cup-of-tea.
But first I had to pack the bike and get there. I’d recently bought some Nelson-Rigg waterproof ‘adventure’ bags to use on a forthcoming mega-trip on the Burgman (stop laughing now), and soon found that they fit nicely above the Convert’s hard panniers that contain my tools, spares and sundry bits and pieces. The waterproof bags held my clothes, sleeping bag and hammock, with the heavier stuff in the panniers keeping the weight low. I was eager to get started, but we were in the middle of a heat wave. I don’t mind the cold but the heat really bothers me and, since it was steadily above 30 degrees and humid, I stayed home hugging the air conditioner for a few days, hoping for a break in the heat. Eventually I could stand it no longer and had to get rolling.
My February riding trip to the UK earlier this year had reminded me just how different motorcycling is in the part of Canada I inhabit. Distances between places are huge, and sitting at a steady speed for hours on end,
unimpeded by the irritations of settlement or traffic, is completely normal. As I rolled along the Trans-Canada highway, the big needle on the speedo dial pointing straight up, I reached down and placed my naked hand on the left side rocker box. Despite the road speed and the 30 degrees Celsius air temperature, I could leave my palm there for a full five seconds before a little voice in my head said, ‘It might be wise to remove it now’. The Convert was running nicely cool, showing no signs of distress, unlike its rider who, by mid-afternoon was beginning to wilt.
My route took me along familiar roads through the Madawaska Highlands, past Khartum – a place with two prominent road signs but no buildings – and, skirting Algonquin Park, on to the Trans-Canada Highway. If that name conjures images of a massive four-lane motorway snaking across the country, think again. While it is a major artery, for most of its length in Ontario it is just a broad two-lane road with big, sweeping bends, which rises and falls with the roll of the country. The posted speed is 90kph, but nobody pays much attention to that.
The Ottawa River, which I was following upstream, was once a major canoe route into the interior of the continent for fur-trade canoe convoys and, for thousands of years before that, an important intracontinental trade route for First Nations people. After 100 miles, the Ottawa River valley turns abruptly north, while both the road and the old canoe route continue west, the canoe route now heading upstream on the Mattawa River while the road follows its valley for another 40 miles to the city of North Bay. Beyond North Bay the road continues west, much of it built along a 10,000 year-old post-glacial shoreline, from when the Great Lakes were just one massive body of water. None of this stuff is readily visible or obvious to the casual traveller, especially since the whole landscape is covered with trees, but it’s the kind of stuff that occupies my mind through those long miles. But before I bore you with more irrelevant details, I’d better get back to the bike.
Despite the heat and a 10am start, I ended the first day 300 miles later in Sturgeon Falls. Throughout that first day the Convert behaved itself beautifully. My right shin stayed totally oil-splatter free as the bike hummed along at a steady 60mph for mile after mile. I reset the odometer at every fuel stop and was pleasantly surprised to find I was riding roughly 10 miles for every litre of fuel consumed. Because of the drag caused by the fluid torque converter, Converts have a reputation of being less fuel efficient than their 5-speed counterparts, but with its 23 litre tank, this still promised me a range of well over 200 miles with each fill-up. Not that I was too worried: I had an extra 5 litres in a can on the rear rack and another 2.5 litres in a small jug in one of the panniers. I may like to travel to remote places and accept
the occasional break-down, but I’d feel a complete clown if I ran out of fuel.
The seat may be comfy, but for anything more than a couple of hours in the saddle it’s a little on the soft and soggy side. On long trips it’s not unusual for me to spend at least a dozen hours a day in the saddle, so I countered my tendency to sag by adding a sheepskin and beads. These distribute my weight across a broader area, so I sink less and gain a few valuable centimetres of leg room. I suppose it is a measure of the success of this approach that when I stopped for the day my backside had yet to start complaining. After a quick trip to the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario – government run booze shops) for a six-pack, I was done for the day.
Like a good cowboy I like to see to my horse first so, after unloading the things I needed for the night and cracking a beer, I checked the oil level and made sure nothing was coming loose. So far, so good. I pulled a chair out in front of my room and spent a happy hour drinking my beer and admiring my steed as the evening cooled.
At 6 the next morning it was chilly enough for me to need a few extra layers, but it didn’t take long for the sun to start throwing some heat my way and for me to start shedding clothing. By the time I’d ridden 90 miles it was warm enough that the air-conditioned Tim Horton’s coffee shop was a welcome break.
Google maps shows the road to Shining Tree as a clean white line, which might suggest to the innocent that it would be a nice shortcut, shaving 30 miles off the more well-travelled, paved route. The first few miles could lull you into a false sense of security as the well-graded gravel road threw up nothing that would challenge the average family car and little that bothered me on the Convert. However before too long the road narrowed considerably, started to hug the bank of the Wahnapitae River, and became a mix of loose gravel, soft sand, and river cobbles liberally sprinkled with large, sump destroying rocks. On the bike I was able to avoid most of them by weaving around: in your family car you would have been less lucky.
I stopped for a breather, and when I went to start the bike was greeted with clicks and
no action. This has happened before, so I turned off the lights, pushed the button a few more times and, eventually, the starter engaged and the bike started. Usually this occurred because road vibration had loosened a battery terminal, but I knew the lawn-tractor battery I was using was weak. I had packed a fresh new spare in my panniers so gave it little further thought.
Although progress was slow the miles were gradually ticking by. At one point I almost dropped the bike as the front wheel slewed sideways in a deep patch of pea-sized river gravel, and I often had to brake hard to avoid sump-crushing rocks.
You might think that the linked braking would be a handicap on the unpaved roads I favour, especially when combined with the limited engine braking the torque converter allows, but I haven’t found it a problem. Initially I thought that without direct control of the braking force to the front, I would be in danger of locking the front wheel if I braked hard on the loose stuff. It has never happened. Even when I’ve had to shed speed quickly, the bike has slowed under perfect control with no signs of either wheel skidding. Admittedly I ride like a granny, but I’m sold on linked brakes.
Linked brakes are nothing new. RudgeWhitworth had them as early as 1925, but Moto Guzzi was one of the first companies to widely use them across a range of motorcycles. Sadly many of Moto Guzzi’s finest bikes from the period have been abused by people de-linking the brakes, presumably to make it more normal. Even worse, some unmentionables have ripped out the torque converter, clutch and 2-speed gearbox and replaced them with a conventional clutch and 5-speed from one of the other bikes from the same period – usually to make some ghastly café racer. If you want normal, don’t buy a Convert!
Personally, I find the linked brakes powerful (for the time), secure and effective. The hydraulic proportioning valve, lying just behind the right-side cover, does a great job of sending the right balance of braking force to the left side front disc and the rear disc, activated by the sizeable pedal above the right floorboard. The front right disc is controlled as normal through a right-side handlebar lever. When I’m riding solo I sit well back on the soft seat with my knees bent at 90 degrees and my feet flat on the floorboards. And no – despite my 34-inch inseam, my knees don’t bang into the cylinder heads. From this position the brake pedal falls naturally to foot. If I’m riding with a passenger I shift forward slightly and the pedal is less accessible, but Guzzi cleverly provided a special peg for your heel so that the pedal is still easy to use.
A second caliper operates a parking brake to the rear disc, activated when the bike is parked on the ‘Harley-style’ sidestand. Before I got it, the bike had been left parked on the side stand for a long time, allowing a shallow area of corrosion to develop on part of the disc surface. It is virtually undetectable under
normal road-speed braking, but it causes a noticeable pulsing during the final few yards of coming to a stop. If I was any kind of owner I’d have swapped in a new disc ages ago, but you learn to live with these idiosyncrasies and I no longer find it disconcerting. It didn’t even cause me any issues as I trickled along beside the river.
On these northern roads I invariably reach a point where I think to myself, ‘I’m a long way in if anything happens’. By this time I’d travelled fifty miles, with fifty more miles to Shining Tree and had yet to see another vehicle, person, building or any other sign of human activity other than the strip of gravel I was riding. The road was rough but manageable, although I was beginning to bounce across a few shallow gullies where storm water had washed part of the road-bed away. I had barely made my way around one large exposed boulder when I put the brakes on and came to a full stop. The road bed had gone AWOL.
When the logging companies build these roads across a creek or stream, if it’s large enough they build a steel and log bailey bridge. For smaller or seasonal watercourses they lay a large metal culvert in the bed of the flow, then bury it in gravel. Usually this works well, but from time to time a sudden influx of storm water exceeds the volume the culvert can handle and the water finds another path downstream, washing out the surrounding gravel in the process. Ahead of me, the full length of the culvert was exposed with a metre-wide gulch of missing road bed on either side. I’m no Evel Knievel. There was no jumping this one.
NEXT TIME: can Nick bridge that gap? And how does the Convert perform as the miles mount up?