State of the Quota, pt. One
Quota on the operating table in Patrick’s garage
If you’ve read my first post or the About section, you know I’m planning on riding a Moto Guzzi Quota 1100ES on the first several sections of the Nevada BDR (along with my brother on his KLR 650) in spring 2020. There’s a lot of prep to do before then, but let’s start with the State of the Quota.
The bike in question was made in Mandello del Lario, Italy at the historic Moto Guzzi factory. Moto Guzzi, established in 1921, is the oldest European motorcycle works in continuous production. The Quota 1100ES was made from 1998 to 2001 but was only sent to the United States, in very small quantities, for the 1999 and 2000 model years. I can’t find a definitive source, but the consensus seems to be that only about 130 units total were sent to the US. The one I own is model year 2000 and is the only one I’ve ever seen in real life. It’s probably a safe bet that only half of those original US-bound bikes are still on the road. It’s a very small club.
V11 Quota / Quota 1100ES
There really isn’t a bad angle.
The good news, though, is that, although the frame and body components are entirely unique, the motor and drivetrain are assembled from common Guzzi parts and are easy to come by. That said, it would really be smart to buy a second Quota as a parts donor bike. Some things, like shift levers and body parts, are getting harder to find (and much more expensive). The club is getting smaller.
I acquired my Quota in the spring of 2018 from my buddy Patrick in Seattle who collects, builds and barters all things Moto Guzzi. I’m not sure how or why he had it. He’s not an “adventure” rider. I think he just thought it was cool. Which it is.
The bike needed a bit of work when I bought it and part of the deal was that we’d do that work together, in his garage, before I trailered it back home to Portland. So, over the course of a weekend, we replaced a head that had a stripped out exhaust stud with a spare Patrick had laying around (see note above about collecting and bartering), swapped out the middle muffler for straight-through Y-pipe, changed the fluids, and adjusted the valves.
Sounds all very simple, but there was a hiccup. After installing the replacement head and moving on to reassembly and connection of the accessory components we discovered that there was no place in the new head for the head temp sensor, which is used by the electronic fuel injection (EFI) system. In the original head, there’s a threaded bore into which the threaded end of the brass sensor unit is screwed. No such bore on the donor head.
Jury-rigged temp sensor
Look closely. You can see the brass nub sticking out at 2 o’clock from the exhaust. It’s lashed there with stainless safety wire.
After some calling around to Patrick’s Moto Guzzi mechanic friends, it was decided that the brass heat sink of the temp sensor simply needs to be in contact with the head somewhere and that would provide enough thermal transfer to give the EFI the engine temp info it needs to adjust fuel delivery properly. So, Patrick drilled some small holes into the cooling fins on the inboard side of the head and lashed the temp sensor assembly to the head sideways, brass to aluminum. It seems to work. It’s been working for two years. All the same it’s not like me to jury-rig something like this, and it bugs me constantly. Even more so now that I’ve admitted my mechanical transgression publicly.
You’ll note in a later post that I have stainless safety wire on my packing list…and you’ll know why.
With that out of the way, here’s a catalog of what’s been done to date and the current state of the Quota.
Mods & Repairs To Date
Electrical
Battery (upgraded to Odyssey AGM)
Stator (replaced failing unit)
Regulator / Rectifier (retrofit a Drag Specialties Harley Davidson part less finicky about AGM batteries)
Headlight (retrofit an MZ Skorpion head - the original is dangerously anemic)
Riding / “see me” lights (added)
Voltage meter (added to dash)
Mechanical
Right-side head (replaced with donor)
Head temp sensor (bastardized, see above)
Middle muffler (replaced with Mistral Y-pipe)
Front crank seal (replaced)
Exhaust crossover removed, headers wrapped (done by previous owner, these always crack)
Running Gear
Rear wheel rim (replaced with Sun Rims wheel from a wrecked Quota, found on eBay; the original Excel rears are crack-prone)
Tires (Avon Trekriders 50/50 adventure sport)
Pinned shift actuator lever to shaft (it kept falling off while I was riding!)
Accessories
USB charge port
Phone mount (Perfect Squeeze from Hondo Garage)
Tool tube (from Agri Supply)
Barkbusters
Heated grips (added by previous owner)
The bike also has OEM Hepco+Becker Moto Guzzi hard bags which, in my opinion, are really made for road travel. I’m considering whether to use them on Nevada BDR trip. Leaning toward no; the mounting hardware makes a good platform for soft luggage, though.
Next post we’ll look at the to-do and wish lists heading into Nevada.
