The V85 TT Break in Run

Me on Lucretzia

I never ran a Moto Guzzi in from new before.

The V50 Monza I once had, I acquired from a guy advertising it in the local Johannesburg newspaper and it had 6800 Km on it by the time I picked it up from him a few days later.

It was pretty well run in at that stage of the game.

I had been riding a Yamaha YB100 as an intermim emergency bike at the time, so it came across as plush royalty compared to that Yamaha.

The next Guzzi I had a few years later was a white 850 Le Mans III and that had 7000 Km on the clock when I bought it from the widow of a guy in Pretoria who had died while ejecting from his South African Air Force jet.

It was perfectly run in at that point of it’s existence and was in pristine condition.

The third one was also well run in by the time I got it for next to nothing at an auction in Kempton Park and it was an ex-CHP California T5 setup for a CHP workload.

It even still had the CHP logo and blue lights on it.

It had done 30,000 miles by the time I took possession of it but it felt like it had done well over 300,000 miles.

I think the single sprung by springs fat wide saddle that came from the 1930's had a thing or three to do with that perception for the uninitiated Guzzi rider.

Here was a 1980's Italian V-Twin trying to be a Harley Davidson USA Police Patrol bike!

So, when I snapped up a new 2025 V85 TT from a San Jose dealer at the end of August 2026, with just 9 miles on it, of which I had done 4 of those 9 miles myself on the short test drive, it was a first for me from a Moto Guzzi run in POV.

The only other bike I had owned from near 0 miles was my 2025 KLR 650 Adventure and a Moto Morini 500 Sport back in 1982.

Most of the Yamaha 750 triples I had owned from nearly new had 1350 Km on them and I did not really need to run any of them in per se.

I drove those carefully in any event and did not need to race them, they weren’t that sort of machine, they were highway cruisers designed to eat miles and miles of long straight roads for breakfast in a refined and competent way between 120-140 Km/h all day long.

I gave them the respect they deserved and used them for their designed cruiser purpose.

For South Africa, chain drive setups was for the birds, dirty and short lived, chains and sprockets are a shit way of driving the rear wheel IMHO.

Everybody else from that era was piloting Katana 750 or Kawasaki 900 Ninja fare and I cared for neither of those machines.

The Kawasaki Z650 four was a popular middle ground machine in South African conditions but they were way to expensive for what the package was per my continually scheming synapses.

Kawasaki did make a 750 four-cylinder Shaft drive Machine called a GT750.

Red Kwakker GT750

I tried one for a few weeks, but I preferred my older Yamaha XS750 triples a whole lot more in every way to the GT.

The GT motor was too peaky for my liking; I wanted smooth low-end torque throughout the power band range and not something you had to stir with any sort of aggression.

The GT 750 wanted an aggressive edge from the pilot’s right hand to get the most out of it’s motor.

One of my pals bought one and spent the entire time he owned it pining for a Yamaha XJ-900.

Those Mikuni carbs needed constant rebalancing and that exhaust system was just what South Africans referred to as "Lekker Kak".

There was too much GPZ550 thinking in that thing.

The XS750 triples did not have to deliver much past 170 Km/h either, I was not into suicide canyon carving living on the edge styled riding anymore by then.

That shit did not make my boat float, and I had worked that out of my system with Yamaha RD350YPVS LC fare and finally a truly radically insane Honda NS400 when I was younger and more delusional about my riding capabilities.

What I sought now was ultra-low-cost reliability and shaft drive anything.

I ended up with a silver and blue Yamaha XJ-650 which was also a shaft drive machine and traded that in for an XJ-900 shaft drive machine before going to an FJ1100 chain drive machine, which promptly snapped on me at 160 Km/h on the freeway around Johannesburg one fateful Monday morning.

The XJ-650's one weakness was it had no real power band and was a very boring and very under powered machine compared to the XS-750 series, but it was molto reliable.

I fitted Power-Flo exhausts to every XS750 series I owned as well and that made a dramatic improvement to low end torque.

The Katana series lived up to its name in the canyon carving regard and the 900 Ninja was far too brutal for most blessed with sanity and caution for the pickings we had from this era.

For me, my ideal bike at the time was the BMW R100RT.

I sadly did not have the beans to pay for one and secondhand ones eluded me with a passion for more than 8 years.

Those BMW’s were highly sought after gems that many people lusted after with a serious passion.

In truth, if I really wanted one I could have done it, but I could not reconcile the R1350 I paid for a hardly used Yamaha XS750E shaft drive vs the R24,000 the R100RT demanded.

It was a conundrum of epic proportions.

As the years passed and I got into flying gliders, power planes and rotor wings, I sort of convinced myself motorcycle riding as an art in California, where I ended up living was a statistically pretty dangerous proposition.

However, one of my kids bought a Kawasaki 250 a few years ago to take to college down at UCSB and I rode it a few times and it re-planted a seed in my motorcycling soul.

I knew the second I rode it that I definitely wanted to bike again.

The opportunity finally arose in 2025 when I snapped up a KLX 300, added a 4.1 Gallon gas tank and made many other mods to it which was perfect for my CSMP and re-introduction to motorcycling phase.

However, it was not ideal for levee road adventure biking I was now partaking in post M2 certification.

I had hoped the local dirt trails would meet the riding need I thought that I desired.

In hindsight, I was very wrong in that regard.

If I'd had a truck to get it to said trails and dedicate the entire day to riding dirt tracks on it and then drive home with it on the truck like most of the participants did, I could probably have stuck with the KLX.

Once I had the CSMP course done, which I finished on the KLX, as I was not in a good spot with the Lifan 200's the CSMP training school then operating out of Pleasant Hill offered as equipment, getting to ride it as intended was proving to be a wee bit of a problem.

I started looking for a replacement and advertised the KLX, which was now seriously enhanced for what it was.

I had found a 2006 Buell Odyssey in Half Moon Bay which had 47,000 miles on it for $3500 and proceeded to enhance that platform once I had established the owner was dyslexic and it was in fact a 2009 model.

This bike was a truly astounding machine, but it had far too much power for an adventure bike for my particular needs.

The stated power was 103 hp, but I am certain that the Erik Buell racing pipe it was now adorned with and the Buell racing ECM it had been tuned for at Laguna Seca produced around 125 hp to the back wheel at the very least.

It also had the original exhaust with original ECM as a reserve for a fallback in case the CHP intervened, with a new set of Dunlop tires and a spare belt drive but it now needed some work and basic upgrades.

I had most of the parts I needed for the upgrades when my better half made me get rid of it, bar the three-bearing rear wheel rim and parts and a new stainless steel exhaust system that made it legal that is.

In hindsight, we should have just stuck with the Buell and spent the $7000 it needed to make it new again.

Instead, my other half had a problem with the cash it was sucking up that buying a new KLR 650 Adventure did not solve either due to my weight and the nature of the KLR 650 Gen 3 platform.

I had thought its price was a winner and it could have worked if I was 40 lbs lighter than I am now.

The engine on a KLR is underpowered but it had oodles of low end torque for serious levee road and B road styled riding.

Where it became a death trap was dirt track stuff that had to traverse deepish sand of any kind.

With its massive weight and power disadvantage, the front and rear shocks with lack of a fork brace in these conditions showed me rather violently one day why this was not going to be my forever machine.

I could have upgraded the front and rear shock with stuff from a company in Utah that specialized in KLR shock upgrades, but this was not going to solve the weight and power problem, just make it vastly better.

Whatever I bought next had to be a good highway cruiser, be balanced and also be able to handle moderate gravel and be easily serviced by the owner.

In that respect the KLR was quite disappointing as the single cylinder 652cc engine was water cooled and getting at the valves was a 4 hour job of nightmare complexity for the owner without a motorcycle work bench and all the tools that this sort of work required.

The Buell had self adjusting valves and was itself a big operating cost saver for the fairly capable average owner.

Paying the various power sports stores $1200 just to set valves every 15K on the KLR was not my idea of mechanical nirvana.

I should have understood the Power Sports store's insane labor charges more deeply to understand this aspect better.

An air-cooled Moto Guzzi V-Twin had a shaft drive, was easy to work on to set the valves every 6000 miles and do oil changes for the engine, gearbox and final drive with basic tools.

I was initially a bit perturbed when the Spirit San Jose financial guy tried to con me out of $4K for four services on the thing, but I have since changed all the oils myself and setting the valves is not a problem for me.

He went on to insult me further with a staff discount of down to $2500 for the same 4 services he had tried to con me out of for $4000.

In two sentences he went down 37.5% for services and he was still ripping me off!

I will let Elk Grove Power Sports do the first service at 932 miles for MG warranty purposes, have them set the TPS and valves as well as check the head bearings for me and after that it’s all going to be on me.

The running in is proving to be rather interesting on this machine.

I was given strict instructions by both the dealer and my Mandello Del Lario connections to cycle it through a limited rev range to 4500 RPM and not keep it at a constant speed and rev range during the break in period.

This break in period comes to 2000 miles in total by the way.

The initial break in period is 1500 km which is 932 miles. At this point they replace all the oils.

After that there is more cyclic breaking in until it gets to 2000 miles.

After the 932-mile service I can take it to 6000 rpm, still cycling it through the range constantly and not holding it at a constant highway speed for any constant period.

However, you don’t need another service at 2000 miles, it’s just a marker for taking it easy until it gets to that mileage.

I will of course change all the oils again at that point in any event, just to check it’s all going rather swimmingly.

The issue with this long break in cycle is the synthetic oils it uses are too advanced for normal break in purposes a la Japanese motorcycle.

If anybody made a mineral oil with the Mandello Del Lario specifications, this would be ideal before switching to synthetic oils.

On the KLR, I had switched from mineral oils to full synthetic Motul 7100 10w40 at 1253 miles on the clock.

It was still like new when I traded it in on a 2025 Fuji Rosso specimen Spirit had a lot of inventory of in their warehouse.

My concerns with a bike on the showroom floor since 2024 was tires, oils and everything being tight nut and bolt wise, as well as firmware and other updates to the motorcycle control unit.

The distance and highways between me and this dealer was also an issue.

I had wanted to buy from Elk Grove Power Sports and had test driven a good few Moto Guzzi specimen there over the prior 6 months but at the point of purchase I was informed they were no longer a Moto Guzzi reseller.

Typical!

I had already decided the V85 platform was for me, the only choice being between the TT and the Adventure model.

Scuderia West in San Francisco was the only other dealer option, but their mechanics and sales setup struck me as a tad basic and too light.

On the drive home from Spirit, I had a lot of bits fall off the TT and they have yet to replace the parts that came off.

I spent my own money buying these from AF1 in Texas and will keep what they send me as spares when they do eventually arrive.

I won’t hold my breath though.

Spirit do not return my calls, can’t tell me where the parts are and are clearly fairly incompetent from the standards I was used to from a motorcycle dealer in South Africa, the UK and Australia over the course of my life to date.

So, I drove it over to Elk Grove a few weeks ago to investigate them working on it going forward for the first service warranty POV as I found out they still sold Vespa and Aprilia and wondered if they could still service the Moto Guzzi fare.

This V85 is a very good bike and as it is running in and getting smoother by the day, I am marveling at what a competent machine it is turning out to be.

The test drive was no help in this regard, and I had concerns driving it home that have since been put to bed.

Elk Grove are still an Aprilia dealer, it’s just the Guzzi part of the relationship with Piaggio that came to an end.

They will service Guzzi fare for the next 5 years though, so any major work I need doing can be undertaken by them.

They are also much closer than San Jose and I don’t need to traverse the suicide highways for motorcycles to get there either.

The ride back to Antioch from Spirit on it was a very scary experience indeed.

The 280, then the 680, up the 84 to the 580 and on to Vasco road that took me to Highway 4 and then the 160 freeway was a reborn Christian type affair and I definitely never want to ride that ever again on any motorcycle.

Getting there on the KLR was also an experience I don’t care to ever have to suffer again either.

The only machine this highway combo is feasible on is the BMW GSA 1300 Adventure bike and as usual, I will never part with $34K to buy one unless I somehow win the lottery one day.

And I will make it look like a CHP version if that ever happens, with a Sandton City Star logo that looks like the CHP logo.

This is just to negate the idiots who traverse these highways on a daily basis.

The standard of drivers on California highways is truly shocking and shameful.

Most of the car drivers are inconsiderate pigs with near zero driving IQ and the truck drivers are something else to witness.

How these folks got drivers licenses underlines a very serious problem in California.

Don’t forget I spent the first 15 years of my motorcycling life in South Africa and drove in Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Mozambique and good ol Zimbabwe.

I also drove bikes in the UK and the EU a whole lot as well over the years.

Africa has much better driver standards than California based on what I have seen on Bay Area roads since 1995.

The quality of the roads themselves are on an equal footing to Africa, making you wonder what the hell they are doing with all the tax money they rape and pillage from Californians on a daily basis.

I have my own ideas about the deep corruption going on in that regard that is responsible for that situation, but we won’t delve into that here…..

That epic saga is for another day…

I have some 550 miles on her now and with new oils she seems to be purring like a well fed and happy big savannah cat.

I will post updates here as I go...

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