Another New Guy Spokane,WA.

Lance

Lance

Directly above the Center of the Earth
Joined
Jun 18, 2020
Messages
27
Location
Spokane,WA
Bike
2010 Silver NT700 ABS
I picked up a 2010 ABS NT today only rode it home. ran sweet, handled pretty good, power was better then i expected.
Been a Guzzi guy for a long time,own a Victory KingPin tour now nice bike but #1 too loud# 2 heavy after a 250-300 mile day i am ready for a bourbon
Anyway long time gear head, Retired Broadcast Engineer . Into old MGB's , Just finishged a ground up restoration of a 1969 B
I have been riding since 74.
Hope to contribute something here
thanks
Lance
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Good to have you with us, Lance! I've always loved Moto Guzzis,, even though I've never owned one. My first bike was an '83 Honda GL650i Silver Wing -- it had a transverse V-twin and I always used to pretend it was a Goose. After it, I had two '99 C-10 Kawasaki Concours before getting my '10 NT700VA (like unto your own, except for the fact that mine's got 136,000 miles on it now).

My first wife and I had a '74 MG-B that we bought in California. It was a pretty decent car after we replaced every single piece of rubber (except for the huge rubber baby bumpers on the chrome bumpers). But then we moved to Casper, WY, and things started down hill. We got rust and, even worse, my son started driving it. He destroyed the upholstery on the driver's seat by carrying sharpened pencils in his hip pocket, and by having wrecks that damaged both passenger side fenders. While he had the car after the rest of us had moved to Limon, CO, the electrical system went to pot and we never did get that figured out. I finally sold the car to a lawyer who was able to get it running long enough to get it out of town! It had been fun to drive while it ran but after leaving work in the oil field and going back into ministry and, then to top it off, going through a divorce, I just didn't have the money to fix it.

My son bought a '76 MG Midget in 2001. It was in good condition as far as its body and interior went, but it quit running about 600 miles after he bought it. He managed to get it to a mechanic who had worked on MGs. The guy told him it would cost him between $1,000 and $1500 to fix and he didn't have the money for that. It sat in his dirt-floored and not-very-well-sealed garage until 3 weeks ago. He is moving and decided he needed to try to sell it. It cleaned up amazingly well -- the tires even held air after he pumped them up. It took him about 15 minutes after cleaning it to sell it for $1000.
 
Welcome to you Lance, from Down Under (with Seagrass).
Coincidentally, I am in the process of getting a 1975 MGB running again for one of my customers.
It was imported from the US in about 1995. It was blue but is now red (repainted in the US).
It had been sitting for 12 years, unused, when it came to me on a tow-truck.
The engine now runs sweetly but many of the underparts have seized up. I have replaced the rusted wheel cylinders and clutch slave cylinder.
Next is the seized handbrake cable (perhaps today).
I am sure that you will enjoy the NT, but please be gentle with the pannier catches.

Macka
 
Welcome to the group! We have a couple of other guys in your neck of the woods who will be along shortly to welcome you. If you are into MG's then you will likely be bored with the NT. Not much to do except ride it and farkle it. It will always get you home as well.....no adventure in that either.

Seriously, you will like the NT more and more every time you ride it.

Mike
 
Thanks for the welcome
I had several Guzzi Norges and while they are beautiful bike never gave me a lick of trouble the pegs were the size of your little finger and at 6'1" it was killing me.
had about 4 Guzzi California type bikes the last one being sold a few months ago, same thing, great bike never gave me issues. but i felt like a monkey on a football.
I have hardly put any miles on the NT, but the ride home was pure joy. I had 2 ST 1100's and enjoyed the comfort the handling. So i do know about the appliance , no soul, description tossed about. The NT just seems like the prefect platform, I am retired so lots of riding is on the docket for me. but now i want some thing lighter, and yeah this bike is lighter then what i have been riding lately.
 
I have no idea where the "appliance", "no soul" came from but I have heard it too. My NT (Traveller) has been a joy to ride since the day I brought him home from the dealer nine years ago and now 114K miles later my opinion hasn't changed one bit. We've traveled together in all of the lower 48 and one province and not once have I ever wished for more power or better handling. Every time I hit the "go" button I find an eager partner ready to take me wherever I want to go. He will cruise all day long at 85+ mph on the slab if I am so inclined and passing safely is just a matter of rolling on the throttle. What's not to like?
 
Appliance, my ass! Like Mike, I've been happy with my NT almost since I bought it. When I headed home to Ft Morgan, CO, from the dealer's in Denver, I wasn't entirely sure that I hadn't made a mistake in abandoning my '99 Kawasaki Concours for the NT. But 30 miles later, I knew I'd made a good decision. Since then, I've put 136K miles on mine. When I got it '10, I had already ordered about half the farkles I've put on it.

I rode it everywhere I went for nearly everything I did. My wife had quit riding after developing bursitis in her right hip, so I've never ridden with a passenger that I can recall. On the last day of April I left for the first-ever Iron Butt Association ever done in the whole Western Hemisphere on an NT700V! I did a Saddle Sore 1K that day and have done two more of those plus a Bun Burner Gold (1524 miles in 23 hrs, 48 min) in Nevada, in temps down to 13F. Another NT owner and I rode to Alaska together as the first part of my 2013 "Epic Post Retirement Ride to Alaska, the Four Corners of the US, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador," a little jaunt that was 21,000 mile over 80 days. After I had knee replacement #6 I had the bike lowered, which helped with some things, but gave me problems that nearly ended my riding. The dealer who installed the lowering link wouldn't shorten the sidestand.

A friend shortened it, but not enough. When I'd get on or get off, I'd compress the suspension and the sidestand would lever the bike to the right. If I hadn't parked in just the right place, I was liable to drop the bike. I got to the point where I absolutely dreaded getting on and off, and since it's hard to ride without doing that, I was dreading riding. But my friend shortened the sidestand some more and I've quit dreading that! Now I'm just afraid of forgetting where I was going, but GPS helps that. :)

I'll meet Mike Simmons Tuesday in St Francis, KS, and on Wednesday, we'll ride to Spearfish for the NT/ST-Owners National Rally. After that, we'll ride with a couple of your neighbors from Spokane (Coyote Chris and Frosty on the Forum) west to the Big Horns, then do Beartooth Pass (if the snow melts) and the Chief Joseph Highway, before coming home through Casper.

Why don't you join us in Spearfish?
 
Welcome from sunny Portland Oregon! I started riding in '78 and have owned/ridden a lot of different bikes. The NT is by far the best bike I've ever owned.
 
Welcome to the Spokane contingent. If you like Brit cars, maybe Frosty and I saw you at the Brit car rally last fall. We both have had Brit cars. Which station did you work for? I was a "broadcast" engineer (Electronic communicaions specialist) for the state patrol before I retired. We are getting ready to leave for our rally in Spearfish SD right now. Frosty still has his NT...Mine was at the Valley Honda dealer the last time I saw it. The NT is a wonderful motorcycle for touring and with the big lids and a luggage rack, it is very practical. You will find this forum is full of wonderful helpful people and is the best layed out as far as what you want to know as far as maintenance, etc of any forum I have seen.
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I was an Engineer at KREM-TV we did everything weld 480 plumbing climb towers go to remote Transmitter site in the dead of winter always an adventure
thats me checking out our HD antenna side mounted on our tower 850 feet or so.
what year is that B 60,s it looks to be.
 

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Lance said:
I was an Engineer at KREM-TV we did everything weld 480 plumbing climb towers go to remote Transmitter site in the dead of winter always an adventure
thats me checking out our HD antenna side mounted on our tower 850 feet or so.
what year is that B 60,s it looks to be.
Click to expand...
Ain't enough money in the world to get me that high off the ground less'n I was in an airplane. I envy those who have no fear of heights. BTW, Phil had a great idea! Why don't you join us in Spearfish? It would be a great shakedown voyage for your new scoot!

Mike
 
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Lance said:
I was an Engineer at KREM-TV we did everything weld 480 plumbing climb towers go to remote Transmitter site in the dead of winter always an adventure
thats me checking out our HD antenna side mounted on our tower 850 feet or so.
what year is that B 60,s it looks to be.
Click to expand...

That looks like fun! When I was a kid, I was terrified of heights. My dad dragged me screaming and crying up a concrete viewing tower at the Vicksburg, MS, battlefield when I was in about the 3rd grade. IIRC, it had about 3 levels. You went up a spiral staircase in the middle of the tower and even on the top level, there was about 10-15 feet between the staircase and the cement railing. I just knew I was going to die! But something changed and by the time I was in the 6th grade, my friends and my brothers and I were building treehouses that were 30-40 feet above ground. When I was in my mid-30s, I worked in the oilfield and loved climbing to the top of drilling rigs -- that took you about 80 feet above the drilling floor and about 100-140 feet above ground. Offshore I probably got to 150' above water a couple of times while hanging onto the outside of a net basket that was used for bringing cargo up from work boats. One crane operator, "breaking me in," had me about 100' above the water and released the brake and dropped me into the Gulf of Mexico up to about my knees. I was smoking a pipe and I'm pretty sure he thought I'd panic and drop it. It didn't bother me that much, so I just took a big puff and waved at him as he picked me up and put me down on the work boat's deck.

About the MG-B in Chris's picture, it must be earlier than the one we had. IIRC, our '74 was one of the first with only one bigger SU carb.
 
Phil that's awesome I worked derricks. in Oklahoma. In and around the Anadarko Basin.
We were Wildcatting looking for Gas. 3.5 to 4 mile deep wells we would be on location around a year or more.
it was a great education for a young man.i did that for about 4 years then went to electronics school. But man i sure missed working in the Oil Patch. for the longest time.
thanks for the warm welcome guys doing the OL JB weld on my luggage lids now
 
I worked for five years for SiiDrilco ('75-'80). We made most of the drill collars in the world at that time, and also made Heavy-Weight drill pipe, kellys, stabilizers, steel spring and rubber shock subs, and reamers, as well as a self-priming centrifugal pump degasser. I started as a drill collar inspector in Lafayette and Houston, then moved to sales in Alice, management in Healdsbug, CA (where most of our business was connected with geothermal drilling in northern California and western Nevada), and then became the product line manager for the western US (basically Farmington to Williston and everything west of that) for tubular goods in Casper. In '80, I left Drilco and went back into the United Methodist ministry until I retired in 2013.

There was a period of about three weeks in the spring of '79 when I thought I was going to be moving to Elk City as the District Manager for Drilco there. But my boss in Casper changed his mind. You might have been in the Anadarko Basin during that time -- it was running hot and heavy then!
 
Lance said:
I was an Engineer at KREM-TV we did everything weld 480 plumbing climb towers go to remote Transmitter site in the dead of winter always an adventure
thats me checking out our HD antenna side mounted on our tower 850 feet or so.
what year is that B 60,s it looks to be.
Click to expand...
When the patrol hired me, my first words were, "Do I have to climb towers?" No, they had their own tower crew. I had to go to my sites on Mt Spokane, Calispell Peak, Steptoe butte, and a bunch of sites in the Cascades summer and winter. I maintained the NOAA weather transmitter and the Em Broadcast Network. Besides com centers, and 100 trooper cars and portable radios and radars, and remote radio sites, I was just bored to tears. :LOL: The older I get, the better I was. They used to call me, "Old White Knuckle". Two steps up an aluminum ladder and you could see my finger prints indented in the metal.
What is Michelle Boss really like? :love::love::love::love:
 
Lance...I'm very glad you are enjoying my former mistress. I felt good knowing you would take care of the bike. I'm also glad you connected to this forum of mostly good guys. LOL
You sort of made my need to post that I sold my NT almost exactly 10 years to the day I brought her home brand spanking new irrelevant. Good luck and stay safe. If you and your wife ever want to go riding, lets see if we can put something together.
 
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