2018-2020 Moto Guzzi 254

Back home I was itching to start working on the little bike. Because that was one of the first things that stood out, it's tiny! Not much bigger than my mates Zundapp 50CC. And light! Actually I look a bit silly on it with my 1.94m but hey, who cares.

So first thing was removing the seat and all the plastic bits which leaves you with a quite different looking bike. All the plastic was faded an ingrained with dirt so a bit of elbow grease was going to be necessary with that but I decided to leave that unpleasant task till later (as usual). Checked the compression on all 4 and this did seem quite OK. Odometer said 18.000 km which I believe to be accurate. So I decided to see if it would run first. If that was the case and no bad signs would be evident maybe I could leave the engine well alone. There was no petrol left in the tank and it looked remarkably clean inside. No rust of course, it being plastic. Hoping the carbs would be just as clean inside and using a made up fuel line arrangement, the original fell apart and a car battery, after an oil change, I gave it a whirr. Electric starter worked a treat but nothing other happened. Checked for sparks and did not find any. The double set of contact breakers were found dirty and coroded but a bit of fine sandpaper worked wonders. It sprang into life!

It wouldn't idle and the exhaust note did not sound what you'd expect from an original set of mufflers but no funny noises were observed from within the little powerplant. It was howling quite happily and sounded very much like an oriental clone. Things were looking up!

A closer look at the exhaust revealed that behind the chrome coverplates at the rear ends, which were riveted in place, the mufflers had been tampered with. They appeared to have been opened up and welded. Comparing these exhausts with foto's on the internet showed that the coverplates were not original. Also the last 5 cm of the mufflers seemed corroded from the inside, perhaps as result of the welding and were wafer thin. The downpipes, although a bit rusty from the outside seemed quite solid still. Actually all the chromed bits on the bike were in poor condtion, including the forklegs. This could be the result of years of dampness but I suspect that the quality of the original chroming was not of the highest standard. It was possible to salvage the downpipes but they were welded on to the mufflers. Left and right sides were single complete units, connected by a detachable balancepipe under the engine. I could cut the welds, seperate downpipes and mufflers and use some  standard aftermarket mufflers but started looking round if I could find an original system first. This proved near impossible. They are still available new. There is a German Benelli parts supplier who still stocks them but they don't come cheap obviously. I found a left system offered on Ebay but this was also way to pricey. Apart from that there wasn't much. A british manufacturer could make me some but needed the bike there to take measurements. But after a few months scouring the net I struck lucky on an auction site in Japan of all places. It was a complete system but although seemingly solid, the chrome was looking poorly. The price was low but getting it shipped costed just about the same amount. But hey, who's complaining! How it ever ended up in Japan is a mystery to me. Did the japanese really import italian Honda clones? But I won the auction! Not much demand in Japan for this item I suspect. 

No other surprises were evident on the bike, dirt, normal wear and tear and some corrosion being the main snags as was to be expected. So lets take the thing apart!

No getting away from it anymore...... I had to get to work on the plastic tank and sidecovers and the tail. These are made from compression molded relatively soft plastic. You'd think that would scratch easily and you'd be right. There were no major gouges but a lot of small abrasions. The orange-red colour was slightly faded and were there was accumulated greasy dirt which seemed to have ingrained itself into the material, just like on a plastic garden chair that has been exposed to the elements for some time. To get rid of all the above it seemed necessary to sand a few tenths of a mil of the top layer. Luckily it was coloured through and through so no problem there. Another option wound have been to paint the lot but it would look not original anymore. Besides, later models were produced in diffferent colours, like metallic light blue, but internet photo's showed this paint often peeling, showing orange underneath! Apparently adhesion of paint on this kind of plastic is poor.

So sleeves up for sanding and polishing. Sanding proved fairly easy, it being soft plastic. Polishing however was a lot harder. Possibly because of the flexibility of the stuff. I experimented with several polishing disc materials and compounds and eventually got the result I was after. Also very important to have the disc spinning at low speed. Otherwise it starts to melt. All in all it took about two days of manual labour.