Minutes of a Motorcycle Addict

Audun Tveito and his 1973 Moto Guzzi Nuovo Falcone Civile.

Text: Audun Tveito

My story begins some years ago, in 2000 to be more specific. I had just finished a lengthy job on a 1951 Ariel 500. A beautiful bike, but too awkward to work on since I had to order every bolt and nut from the UK. I had to ask myself if there were any other bikes that might suit. I used to have a jap bike, but so does everybody else. American bike? Nope. I've had too many «fingers» thrown at me. German? Too expensive and not very attractive to look at (with a few honorable exceptions). I had grown tired of brit bikes, so this pretty much left me with Italian bikes. Ducati had become too popular and too many wannabees had seen the opportunity to buy themselves a cool image through the Duc.

Profoundly in love with a Guzzi

I then found Moto Guzzi. I fell in love with the Le Mans and V7 Sport.
After a few "ifs" and "buts" I bought a 1985 Le Mans 1000. A beautiful bike with fantastic sound and bucket'n loads of character. After a rather unhappy and expensive encounter with the Highway Patrol I decided that having a bike that is asking to be pushed and that behaves better the faster it goes was not for me. I am easily led into temptations with bikes like that, having horns growing out of my helmet every time I hit the throttle. So I sold the Le Mans and started looking for a bike with a more laid-back character.

Not 13 in a dozen!

I have always had a soft spot for bikes that doesn't come 13 in a dozen, and I like classic, veteran bikes so I had to check what Guzzi had done in the earlier days. After some research on the web I became aware of the Falcone models. Totally unknown to the Average Joe's of the riding community, which I kind of liked. Of the two Falcone models available, the old classic and the Nuovo, I actually liked the newer one best. Being an anachronism already at its introduction (26 hp single with four speed gearbox) not many paid attention to its special qualities. Especially when measured up to its competition of the day, e.g. Honda's CB 750.

 
Audun checking his Falcone Civilie

Falcone strengths

To understand why Guzzi could make such a bike at that time we need to take a look at the Falcone's strengths. It was developed to be practically impossible to wear out, every part being over-engineered and -dimensioned to withstand tough use. This made the Falcone a favourite among the police and army in Italy and a number of other countries at the time. Good mpg, excellent longevity and long service intervals set the scene for a bike that met the special needs of the police and armed forces.

Revamped oldie

The first Falcone model was produced practically unchanged from 1950 to 1968 in more than 8400 units. When the new time arrived the Falcone became obsolete even in Guzzi's eyes. Something had to be done. Because of its popularity in the police and army, Guzzi decided to re-vamp the Falcone, which they did on nearly all accounts: New frame with rear swing arm, wet sump, a general redesign both visual and mechanical: The only thing they kept was Guzzi's traditional one of a kind engine lay-out, a horizontally mounted single with four gears and conrods.

Instant success!

The bike became an instant success, even bigger than the previous model. In total nearly 15000 Nuovo Falcone was produced between 1968 and 1976. In the last six years Guzzi tried to make the Nuovo Falcone available to the general public. This bike was called Nuovo Falcone Civile and was produced in 2500 units. This is the bike I have in its original white body parts on a red frame guise.

Old concept

The engine construction has its roots all the way back to Guzzi's origin in 1921. The horizontally mounted cylinder protrudes right into the cooling wind with its quite special engine top and valve cover. This was to achieve maximum cooling which is good in the Italian climate which, we must admit, is a bit warmer than here in Norway. The problem with this design, though, is that the frame becomes quite a bit longer to accomodate the protruding engine. Ducati has learned a hard lesson regarding this. For this reason the flywheel housing needs to be as small has possible. The easiest way to obtain this is obviously to have a small but then again light flywheel. The catch is that you lose the momentum of the flywheel which is good to have to make the engine tick nicely in the low rev area. So what do you do when you don't have room for a heavy flywheel? You hang the flywheel on the outside of the engine. This Guzzi did and thereby created the iconic single that characterized Guzzis until the introduction of the famous V-twin in 1967.

Flywheel sedation

The heavy flywheel makes the engine run smoothly with no fuzz with a low compression rate. Another consequense of the large flywheel is – let's call it a sedate gear change experience. It simply takes a while to change the speed of the engine. So how does this interfere in the riding? Well, I must say I've achieved exactly what I was looking for. Riding this bike in a sporty manner is not easy. You can whip it up to a max of 140 kph, but most family sedans wouldn't have any problems to keep up with you when accelerating from a standstill.

Paceworthy

The strength of the Falcone is on the other hand the way it keeps the pace. It takes time to get it up to speed, but it keeps it like it was equipped with a cruise control. You can cruise all day at 90 kph. It makes the miles go by in a very relaxing manner, with a bike like this purring underneath you without you being stressed out by poor seating position or the need to overtake every moving object on the road. Just you and your Falcone enjoying the ride. Simply lovely!

Looking for a Falcone

What do you do if you suddenly get the urge to get a Falcone? Well, in my case it was most easy to start looking in UK, even if the selection may be better in Germany. In my case I could just take the ferry from the Western parts of Norway, where I live, to UK and I was there (NB: This ferry has ceased to operate as of Sept 08, ed). I found a bike at a shop to which I got a good relation. I found it safer to deal with a shop in case something should be wrong. At least you have a chance to get things fixed.

Christmas Day!

When arriving in Newcastle, the bike stood there waiting for me. I do not exaggerate when saying I was just like a six year old on Christmas Day. I couldn't wait to get onto the bike and to feel and touch things I've only looked at on photos. After a quick look at my new wonder bike, which lived up to my expectations, it was time to fire it up and finally to listen to the sound of a Nuovo Falcone single.

Malfunction!

This, it proved, was everything but an easy task. How much we even tried, we couldn't fire up the engine. The guy bringing the bike to Newcastle was despairing, and the one picking it up – me – was mighty confused. A quick phone call to the shp to check: Well, the bike had started with no prolems the day before. What could possibly be wrong? There was only a little gas in the tank but it should be sufficient to fire up the engine. In any case we had to get the spark plug out to check if there were any spark in it and to dry it. But even this proved difficult. This particular Saturday in Newcastle it was impossible to get hold of a spark plug key! After two hours of searching and asking among taxis and bypassers we finally was adviced to where we could buy some wrenching stuff on a Saturday.

Water tank...

So when we finally got the spark plug out it was wet allright, but with rusty water and not with gas. Closer examination showed that the tank held quite some water in it, which had seeped down to the carb, which had led the bike standing parked with its tank half-filled with dirty water for some time. This in turn had led to quite some internal corrosion of the carb. But we managed to fire up the engine and everything looked much lighter again. It was fantastic to listen to the sounds of this conrod operated single for the first time. It was far noisier than I anticipated, but Guzzi didn't ever make silent valve gears on their bikes. My Dad's 1936 Indian Chief doesn't make half that noice.

Sold!

After a few test rounds in the parking lot I was sold. Or rather, the bike was. It was like riding a steam engine locomotive. I just put it in gear and it pulled from barely tick-over in an way I've never felt before. Chug-chug-chug at 300 rpm, shaking, rattling, but picking up revs without problems. Lovely! So no it's in my garage awaiting summer season. I'm so much looking forward to taking it for a long ride one sunny day. Just me, the bike and the nature. Trodding away in my own pace just enjoying the road and the view.

Come summer!

Audun's Nuovo Falcone, still with its UK plates.

Here's part 2 of the story of me and my 1971 Moto Guzzi Nuovo Falcone. A lot of things has happened since part 1.

Text: Audun Tveito

After my first summer with the Falcone, I started thinking of getting just a wee bit more juice out of the engine. You really feel there's a little lack of power when the wind hit you in the front, slowing you so much down that you feel the urge to put down the side stand. Let me assure you, though, that I got exactly what I was looking for when I bought the Nuovo Falcone. It ticked over gently, went smoothly and in a very relaxed manner. But when I toured the mountains in the western parts of Norway with the bike fully laden and perhaps a passenger riding pillion (which was not often, for obvious reasons), it was a bit slow. Its handling is top notch, actually so good that I'm certain the bike easily could have handled 50 more HP without any modifications besides perhaps the brakes.

The frame is a rock solid double cradled type, e.g. having two solid frame tubes from the middle of the steering head down and under the engine on each side. In addition to the frame tube led under the tank, there is also a frame profile just beneath that frame tube. The over-dimensioning is a typical feature of this bike. And it shows on its weight. When I was to MOT certify the bike, it weighed in at 200 kg sharp with a full tank of petrol. As the Nuovo Falcone doesn't stand out as a large bike, this was a bit more than I had expected. For comparison, my 1985 Le Mans 1000 weighed in at 230 kgs. The handling of these two bikes are, however, different worlds. The Nuovo Falcone has its centre of gravity low down and its handling is comparable to a modern 125 cc. That is not the case with the Le Mans. It's like taking the bull by its horns – you really needed to show who's the boss when you wanted to pull it through the corners.

 
Another angle of that wonderful bike

Just to rewind a bit back to where Part 1 of these tales ended, I was about to register the bike in Norway the first spring after I collected it from England. As I did so, a new story errupted. I came with all the necessary papers to the Customs and Excise Officer, but it suddenly appeared that the frame number did not match those in my papers. A number was different, the number 6 had somehow transformed to the number 4. As you may imagine, sweat broke out on my forehead as I pictured myself having a bike I'd never be able to register. But when the need is greatest, help is always at hand. The officer at Haugesund Customs and Excise office was one of those good helpers. I can't remember his name, but he still deserves a diploma and name written among the stars. After a brief talk about the bike's history and where it came from, he calmed me down and said that «this will be all right, after all it's not a Harley», obviously meaning that Nuovo Falcones are not on the top ten list of bikes getting stolen and re-sold. I was glad it wasn't a Harley, of course – especially since I'm not particularly fond of Harleys...

This was the moment in time when I was only too happy I bought the bike from a reputed company in the UK. North Leichestershire Motorcycles showed me what they were worth. I called them and explained the situation. He'd never heard anything like it, so he promised to see what he could do. A few days later, he calls back and asks for my home address. He'd got hold of copies of the original documents from Italy. Needless to say, I was beside myself with joy. The documents arrived by mail a few days later. Evidently, a jerk at the UK Customs and Excise office had been sloppy when hand writing down the framenumber; a badly put 6 can easily turn into a 4. With these papers I went back to the Haugesund Customs and Excise office. The officer had a look at the papers and concluded they were ok. Hence, the bike had been legally imported to Norway. Hallelujah!

After riding the bike for a while, my true nature shows itself. I wanted, as already said, more power. What started my hunt for horsepower was a newsletter from Escher in Germany. Here I could read about a total rebuild of the top end and installing a 570 cc cylinder. You can only imagine what reading this did to a complete fool like myself. So one fine day that very summer, involving bonus payment, holiday bonus salary and a holiday in Denmark which never came to be, the top end and cylinder was sent to Escher in Germany. What they did was to port it, put in larger valves, install double spark plugs, a larger intake, larger carb and finally to increase the cylinder volume to 570 cc together with a new piston.

The parts were away for some two months when they suddenly reappeared through a note from the Norwegian Royal Mail demanding an import excise duty of ca 5000 NOK. I had forgot to add Norwegian VAT to this job, and was pretty broke at the moment. Fortunately I could through my workplace borrow the necessary funds to pay off the excise duty. 5000 NOK was a lot of money I didn't have, but I needed to fix it. Obviously, I had no choice. I couldn't leave them parts laying there at the Mail Service. I have done that once, though. The starter to the Le Mans quit working, so I took it to the nearest workshop who deals with these things. I learnt that a part had come lose and it needed a few new parts. I said ok, get to it. After a week they notified me that the starter was ok again. When I got to the workshop, they claimed NOK 1600 for the work. I went into a state of wallet shock and asked the guy where the misprint was. When he still demanded that horrific price for that small job, I said he could keep that bloody starter, and that this was the last time I put my legs into that workshop. I'm sure that's not the way it should be done, but I was totally mad. So I bought a practically new starter off Ebay for NOK 1800. I do not recommend to do it this way, obviously. I'd think that the workshop would at least give me a quote before starting such an expensive job.

 
The new piston

Now where was I... Oh, yes: Now I was ready to mount the modified parts onto my Nuovo Falcone. Again I was eager as a child and could hardly wait for the spring. Everything was ready when the spring finally arrived and the time was ripe for a first test ride. The bike started up and went very well. But soon it showed that not all was like it should be. As always, when I start up projects like this... The problem was that whenever I had ridden the bike for a while, it just died. Especially if I put some load on the engine. I addition I detected knocking during accelleration. This was the start of the longest diagnosing job I'd ever done. I think I was working with these problems for about two years. TWO BLOODY YEARS! And that with my patience – I, who feel that making micropopcorn is too slow. A couple of times during this period I wanted to sell off the bike, but as it didn't run properly that was not a realistic option. So I put it all aside and started to ponder the deepest secrets of carburettors through buying and reading Dell' Orto parts manuals and such. I was sort of a pioneer in this area, as beefed-up Nuovo Falcones are far and few between in the whole world – and none except mine in Norway. How many know for instance the size relation between the nozzle letting gas into the carb and the main nozzle? Try to find that out – I know it!

To proceed with something I could actually do, I took of the massive flywheel. It's so heavy it should belong on the QE2 engines. I put it on the lathe, adjusted it after my best abilites, and started working on it. Have you ever lathed a flywheel of this size? Then you'll know that lathing off 3.5 kgs of metal produces a lot of shavings. Yes – I actually removed 3.5 kgs. I'm sure I could've sold steel wool by bulk. Not only did it produce a lot of shavings, but it took a lot of time. I started a four o'clock in the afternoon and worked on it until way past midnight. I remember my dream from that night, it was about things turning, and turning, and turning...

 
The original flywheel, which I shaved 3.5 kg off.

 

Piston with a damage (ca 12 o'clock)

But I had more problems with the engine and had to do more research. The ignition is to be set from 10 degrees static preignition to 0 degrees, thereby loosing ca 10 degrees at max, which is supposed to be ca 34 degrees. So I had to find ways to overcome this. I tried to rebuild an electronic ignition set from a V50 III, put in a new rotor and everything, but nothing helped. Since this old set is not programmable, obviously, I couldn't play with different settings. So I put back the old mechanical system with centrifugal weights. I then thought of milling a longer track for the centrifugal weights with my Dremel, that way setting the ignition to 0 degrees but still retain max impact of 34 degrees. A genius solution, I thought! At least it worked in my head, but it did no difference to the fact that the bike still stopped after a while.

The knocking was solved by using the Dremel to polish off all sharp edges on the piston top. The new piston was made to suit a top end where the valves were positioned at 9 and 3 o'clock. My valves were positioned at 12 and 6. To solve this there were milled out new pockets for the new vales. This in turn makes a lot of «hills and valleys» on the piston top. So I milled these round and nice and after that, the knocking for all practical purposes disappeared. With the correct ignition timing set, this was no longer a problem at all. Evidently the inlet valve had touched the «pocked», so it was about time to sort that out anyway. A quick inspection of the valve showed no evidence of damage, so it was put back in place. A wee bit of luck there... Then I tried to disconnect one of the plugs and put the ignition back in the original position. I hoped this would help – but it didn't It still stopped. I was slowly going crazy, and I hadn't even started with the carburettor!

A carburettor is magic beyond the sum of its parts. I bought a set of new main jets from dellorto.co.uk, took a deep breath started working. 48 hours, a sixpack of beer and a notably thinner hair later, the air/fuel mix was as good as it gets. But still the bike wouldn't run properly. In addition to stopping after a longer ride and with full throttle, there was more not working as it should. A mail to the UK and a post package later, a new carb piston arrived. It had a different cut-out than the one I already had, and also had a different jet which was supposed to give a fatter mixture at half throttle. But with this carb pistion in place, the bike ran even crappier. The new jet gave some positive results, though, and fixed the lag that was evident on half throttle. Finally something that worked!

But the stopping thing got even worse the more I tried to fix it. I opened the tank cap, but everything was in perfect order. The vents and everything else were as it should. So the bike was put aside while I, after advice from my wife Katrine – the best wife a petrolhead like me could have , bought that Griso I'd always sought after since I saw them as a prototype years earlier. What a dream bike! It goes like on steroids and turns like a ballett dancer. The only thing I had to do was adjusting the spring and dampers. It had a tendency of falling into the corners, if you see what I mean. After this adjustment, it was like changing a cruiser for a sports bike. It still feels a bit heavy at walking pace, but it disappears as soon as you get some speed on it. Then it runs like on rails.

But back to the Nuovo Falcone. The next season, which was 2009, brought the Italian Spring rally to Jæren in the south western parts of Norway. I dusted off the Nuovo Falcone and said to myself that I really needed to get this thing going. Jæren is not long from where I lived at the time, in Haugesund, only a 2.5 hours ride. So I did some more fiddling with the carbs and was ready for another test ride. I rode from Haugesund eastwards, and everything went so smooth that I just rode and rode. Without a single misfire or any other problems I rode to Røldal, ca 2 hours away. I was in heaven! I'm going to Jæren with it for sure – nothing can stop me!

So that Saturday morning I saddled up and rode away. I had ridden some 4 kms when the problems return. But by now I was so fixed on the idea to get to Jæren on the bike that I would take it even if I needed to put it on a road rescue vehicle. The problems got worse still. I could ride pretty ok, but as soon as I gave it a bit more RPM, the bloody thing stopped. Fortunately I got through the subsea tunnels without any problems though.

I missed the rally spot by a few kilometres as the problems increased to a level where I seriously doubted I'd never get there. It is not fun to stop every 300 metres along the highway. I felt like everybody was laughing at that idiot riding a veteran bike, or rater – standing with his veteran bike beside the road. I tried to ignore the feeling, but it's not easy when you try to get into the traffic again and the bike dies. Again and again. This repeated itself until I finally found the rally site after I'd passed it three or four times.

When I got there I met old Guzzi friends and we started to try to find the culprit. We had a hard time finding it as the bike suddenly went like never before. Then the stopping habits returned, it coffed and spat, and the bike lumped back to the rally site for further investigations. But when I got there, everything worked normally again goddammit! After test ride number 3, the bike died totally. Finally we would be able to find the cause of this behavior. We found no spark on the spark plug and concluded that it all had to do with the ignition. We borrowed a multimeter but couldn't detect anything wrong. Then we turned to the coils, as we found that electricity went to the coil and to the point, but with no spark we thought that the coils were the culprits. We got hold of some new coils, but still no spark. By now I was going seriously mad! Suddenly one of the venerable Guzzi riders, Arnt, burnt himself on a fuse. Now we where going somewhere... By a quick look a fuse, which is of the old round type, looked ok but by closer inspection the metal around the edges had corroded. There was a little contact that fooled the multimeter, but when you wanted more power through the fuse the resistance got too large and the coils didn't get enough juice. So we changed this fuse and the return trip went without missing a beat! This one fuse had been the culprit all along. I'm going crazy, being fooled like that. I've turned this fuse once in a while to make sure there was enough contact between the fuse and the holder, and now it showed that this may have been a cause to the bad contact. Now I've bought a new fuse box and the plan is to mount it this season (2010), with modern fuses...

So now I've put on a new rear tyre and the bike and I are awaiting the spring. As said, the bike now runs a lot better than in its original guise. It's possible to squeeze 50 hp out of these engines, but mine is at approx. 40. It runs like an ordinary bike, and after having got hold of new sprockets it's now comfortably cruising at speeds up to 100 km/h. That's quite a change for a bike that was struggling going uphill at 60 km/h.

I can warmly recommend the Nuovo Falcone. It is a great handling bike, and it's fun ridin git. My next project is to weld a M18x1.5 nut on the exhaust pipe to put in a lambda proble and hook it up so that I'll have full control of the combustion. I'm looking forward to doing this, and will probably have it done before I take the bike out this summer. I'm so looking forward to season's start because the bike is fun to ride and so easy to handle – it's like a moped! As I wrote in part 1, the feeling of cruising around on a veteran is more relaxing and nice compared to racing around on a more modern bike. Of course I do that too on my Griso, but the Nuovo Falcone is far more peaceful out on the roads. At least it is for me.

Audun