I recently acquired what must count as a 400 grey bike, but one that's a little bit different. In common with most of the other models represented here a UK model was available but there's a lot that have been brought into the country since. Mine is a 1980 model which was imported in 1990-ish.

It's a different flavour of bike being a naked, V-twin rather than a fully faired 4 cylinder, and Italian to boot. Although made in Bologna it isn't as run of the mill as a Ducati...it's a....



Moto Morini 3 1/2 Sport - a thoroughly quirky example of Latin motorcycle design and manufacture. It's a pushrod V-twin with a part magneto and part electronic ignition (made by Ducati!), a dry clutch, separate ignition and steering locks, electric fuel taps, kick start, a weird as hell starter motor, and a very odd rising position as standard.
The Standard / GT / Strada version has a relatively upright riding stance with quite forward set footpegs - a heel/toe rocker was available for the (right hand side) gearchange so that you didn't have to dirty the uppers of your hand made Italian shoes to change gear. The Sport has clip-on bars so you lean forward over the tank but uses the same footpegs so you end up bent in two. Enter Tarozzi with some nice alloy rearsets. Though in typically Italian fashion they don't really work unless you add a spacer to the kick start and cut down the end of the brake lever so that the bike can actually be used!

Models vary in desirability, early wire wheeled variants tens to fetch more than alloy wheeled ones. The 'holy grail' mid= 70's double sided twin leading shoe ones change hands for even more than ambitious Ebay sellers want for NC35's! Then there are front disc braked wire wheels, single front disc alloy wheels and finally discs on the rear too. Later models acquired rear bodywork around the seat and are generally less favoured as people tend to like the stripped down cafe racer look.
You might think the seat shape doesn't lend itself to carrying a pillion, even less so the earlier version



But you're not thinking like an Italian! What do you really want when you have a young, slim, shapely, latin lass with you on the bike? A seat that makes her slide forward and end up squeezed close against you of course.

More to come as I have a good go over things and work out what needs doing.

Great little bikes, a mate had a 350 & it's 500 big brother. Takes a certain type of person to put up with the wonderful design quirks of Italian bikes of this period, I've got Guzzi Le Mans and love it even if it hurts to ride it for more than 1 hour and you look at the clocks through the screen.

Nice little bikes but sadly have a left side kickstart which I've never been able to get on with.

Fit the second....

Having gone over things and identified what needs sorting sooner and what can be done later some progress is beginning to happen.

When the rear suspension was unloaded (i.e. on the centre stand) the axle was hitting the exhaust and has left a dent. By undoing the exhaust hangers, the various pipe clamps and a bit of judicious levering with a surgical 2x4 the exhaust now clears the rear axle.


As you can see there's a gnat's clearance - as long as it's not a very well hung gnat!
There's a ding in each pipe but they're relatively small and aren't too obvious. At some point the pipes will get a good clean up and polish so I will swap them side to side and the marks will then be hidden underneath...

The brake lever was well and truly bent where the kick start had been clouting it so that came off and I used the fly press at work to gently straighten it. The pin in the end needed shortening to ensure clearance so a few minutes work with a lathe made up a new one. Now everything goes smoothly past everything else and I can get a proper swing on the starter.
This shows the kickstart extender block which is a bit...agricultural...so at some point I'll round off the edges and make it look a bit more like it ought to be there. The distance between the footpeg and pillion peg is foreshortened but you'll still need to tolerate playing a bit of footsie with whoever is on the back.

Whilst on the starter topic I've got the electric one stripped down. There's nothing obviously wrong but most of the bearings are a bit less free running than they ought to be. One of the brushes wasn't moving freely and the holder looks a bit discoloured so it's possible that it wasn't making a good contact and got hot. The gears have a bit of wear but should last a while yet so 30 quid's worth of bits from simply bearings later it's ready to go back together again. That's 5 bearings and 2 oil seals just in the starter motor itself!

Being an Italian bike i decided to go through the electrics thoroughly. A handful of connectors which had fatigued and weren't gripping properly got replaced, and the ends of the main fuse needed a clean up to make a proper contact but the rest seems pretty good. The tacho light relies on earthing via the - painted - body so wasn't doing anything useful.

Fit the third...

After a few goes and rather a lot of rude words the starter s back together, it turns out that just about every part is handed i.e. will only go together one way round. The only problem is that it's not clear which way that is until you've got it back together again! It's still a bit sluggish but that could just be down to the cranking capacity of the battery, after all you really don't need much if using the kick start all the time.

The clocks have proven interesting. Having got the light in the tacho working the gauge itself just refuses to read anything. Having access to such toys as oscilloscopes and signal generators at work I've ascertained that the signal is at a nice healthy 0-12V and the tacho reads OK with a 0-10V signal. For some reason though the two just don't want to play nicely together.

As you can see the speedo needle was bent where it had sat against the stop for 40 years so I thought holding it straight and applying a little gentle heat might persuade it to straighten out. It's a pretty thin U shaped plastic thing with no real strength and unfortunately it promptly warped, twisted, split and generally f'd up! The central boss isn't solid but is thin walled on the side with the needle. A little bit of lateral thinking, woodwork and painting later and I managed to make a passable imitation of the original.

Believe it or not it's a pared down wooden cocktail stick painted to suit.

I'd noticed but not really recognised a few odd brackets on the chassis around the footrests. What I had assumed were the original footpegs and levers amongst the box of odd bits turned out to be a left foot gear change conversion set. Apparently in the 70's Harley Davidson - in their desperation to stop imports of far better bikes - got a rule introduced that slapped a tax levy on bikes with right foot gear shifts. (they were probably pissed that Brando and McQueen rode Triumphs!) a So Morini's answer was to devise a conversion for bikes going to the US.

After wash and brush up - or to more precise an hour or so polishing the silencers back to a nice shine - sorting out some period indicators and reinstating the wiring it sailed though an MOT despite blowing a bulb mid-flash. The silencers are a bit of a misnomer....it's pretty loud....enough to make small children stare open mouthed and scare grannies. Of course that just demands a healthy throttle blip on downshifts to generate the proper soundtrack, complete with popping and crackling on the overrun.

Having ridden it to work and back as a shakedown it appears to be fitted with more than just the one neutral. In fact there seems to be one between each ratio! Methodical and thorough is the method for gear changing, it's nothing like the instant and positive shift of the RVF.
Next jobs will be balance the carbs (you can actually see and get to them on this!), drain and refill (maybe just fill) the oil in the forks, and get some glow worm food to improve the headlight. If you think the H4R bulbs aren't too bright try a 1970's sealed beam unit. The MOT testers comment was along the lines of "the aim doesn't really matter, it's never going to dazzle anyone!"

Fit the fourth...

A few more miles clocked up and the number of neutrals fitted in the box seems to have dropped. That or they're getting harder to find! There's still an amusing lack of correlation between the neutral light and the actual point at which the box isn't in a gear.

Left foot braking still feels a bit odd, evevn though it's a drum brake it's pretty effective so I'm having to learn sufficient finesse having left a few black lines here and there. Fortunately because the bike's character is so different it's not too difficult to remember that the controls are the other way round.

For those who thought "italian electrics - best avoided" you'll be heartened to hear that the 3 indicator bulbs which survived the MOT have all blown within a week! I'd also swapped in a sealed beam headlight unit out of an MG I'm restoring which gave a much brighter output that the rather dim yellow. That also crapped out and dip beam cried enough. Time for a seperate power feed and relay to run a standard H4 bulb then.