GP800 - Seat Lowering

Although I am a shade under 6 feet tall, I am somewhat short in the leg and long in the body. Combine this with the width of the GP800's seat, and I have often been left with one leg dangling when "paddling" in heavy traffic.

I have previously had a custom seat made for my R1100RS by Melvin Hunter and he was my first (and only) port of call for the GP800.

http://www.zen113982.zen.co.uk/mysite/mods.html#seat

The R1100RS seat foam was simply "dished" slightly and a "gelastic" pad inserted - and a new custom cover was made. This time I was looking for as much lowering AND narrowing as possible - and the narrowing was more critical than the height.

One of the problems of having a seat conversion is the small matter of despatch. Not only do you have to pack a large seat (suitably protected), you have to get it to a post office and pay Postman Pat an inordinate amount of money to take it to Coventry. Then of course, you have to pay Melvin a similar amount of money to send back to you.

Something of a "result" presented itself to me when I realised how close to the NEC that Melvin was based - Once I knew I was attending this year's Motorcycle Expo (trade show) I arranged to drop the seat off on my way up - and Melvin agreed to provide a same day service and I collected the seat the same afternoon.

This timescale prevented the fabrication of a completely custom seat and cover like the R1100RS - but it did allow for a comprehensive re-shaping and "pulling" down of the existing cover together with the fitment of a "Gelastic" pad to provide additional comfort given the amount of padding which was removed.

These days, Melvin has handed over the fabrication to his son Ross and I am please to say that he has obviously handed down his skills efficiently as the job was clearly a top quality piece of craftsmanship. When I collected the seat, I did have an initial reaction of disappointment as it didn't seem as if anything had changed - but feeling the seat contours made me realise that the sides had been gently "scalloped" and the seat lowered very neatly and subtly.

Riding the bike with the new seat is excellent - although it doesn't seem much narrower, the combination of scalloped sides and reduced height means that I can have both feet flat on the floor - I am certain that once I'm back on the daily commute this will be a godsend in really heavy traffic.

It was only when taking the "after" picture and montaging it together with the "before" that I realised just what a comprehensive piece of work had been carried out. You can click on the image to see a larger version but the points to note are the significant reductions in "meat" above the solid plastic nose section as well as above the seam that follows the line of the riders leg. The narrowing is evidenced by the lack of a "ridge" along the lower edge of the seat base (much more obvious in the "before" picture by the shadow below).

Without having to pay for shipping, the cost was £95 including the gelastic pad. Worth it ? - I think so. Highly Recommended

You can find Ross and Melvin at http://www.motorbike-seats.co.uk and their website has an image gallery of some of their work.

GP800 Speedo - The Final Solution

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This time the solution IS definitely final.

Having identified that all the last update provided was some legible MPH markings, without addressing the speeometer innacuracy isssue, I decided to do the job properly.

I cleaned all the markings from the dial - easy enough with a spot of nail varnish remover on a cotton bud - then went out with the trusty RoadPilot MicroGo. I marked the speedo at the significant "GPS correct" MPH speeds then cut out and applied the speed markings from one of the spare MPH stickers from the original set.

Here's the result - neat enough but more importantly GPS correct all round.

Is this the perfect solution - in a word no, but it is final as far as I'm concerned. The downside is that you can't clearly see the markings in the dark - only now evident as the nights are fair drawing in (and it's also dark in the morning when I head in to work) but this is countered by the fact that the Roadpilot's illuminated readout is hightly legible in the dark.

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GP800 Rear Sprocket Problem (loose)

So, the cause of my clanking is confirmed as a loose sprocket – as it was when I had the tyres fitted. One of the bolts had sheared off at the head. This time it was worse and the bolts simply didn’t want to tighten up in situ.

I removed the rear wheel (a relatively straightforward job) with the intention of removing and refitting the sprocket (replacing the sprocket if the holes had elongated in any way).

This is where the fun started. Despite being loose enough to allow a degree of rotational movement in the sprocket, the bolts were simply too difficult to turn in either direction. Remembering that the are already weakened by the action of the rotating sprocket, I applied localised heat and very gentle (but maximum) force with the result that a further three sheared to go with the one that had already done so.

Only one came out cleanly. This revealed the cause of the problem as well as a paradox. The entire thread had been liberally coated with enough threadlock/superglue to keep the propeller on the QE2. I still can’t figure out how they became loose in the first place. This was of course compounded by the natural action of a steel bolt to seize in an aluminium thread.

As the wheel was already out of the bike, I lifted the carrier off the cush rubbers and headed for my mate in Potters Bar who is equipped with a bench, a sturdy vice and a set of “Easy-Outs”. Even with further application of maximum heat, and being drilled clean through these bolts were not coming out – with the inevitable result that the Easy Out snapped.

The carrier then went to CAM Engineering in Potters Bar http://www.camauto.com/cameng.html – it would have been fairly straightforward for them to drill out the sheared bolts – but the broken Easy Out added another dimension to the problem and increased the estimated cost to “up to” £75.

I checked with http://www.gileraspares.co.uk/ online and a new carrier assembly is £74 – but delivery time is “up to” a month (there’s that “up to” again !)

So, CAM Engineering sorted the original carrier – after removing the broken bolts and repairing the damage, the carrier was drilled right through to allow slightly longer bolts with Nyloc nuts to secure the sprocket - there’s plenty of room behind the sprocket so I can’t understand why it wasn’t made that way in the first place.

If there’s a small crumb of comfort in all this, there’s absolutely no discernable wear in the original sprocket – even after 10,000 miles.
Of course in hindsight it might have been better to have taken it in under warranty with a "loose sprocket" but any workshop would have faced the same problems - it would have been their problem not mine and I might have been without the bike even longer (let alone the inconvenience of taking it there in the first place). This way although it cost money I was back on the road more quickly. At the end of the day the fault lies with Piaggio for supergluing the bloody bolts in the first place.

MPH Speedo - again !

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The final speedo solution - probably not.

My need for a clear legible and accurate speedometer for the GP8000 is starting to turn into an obsession. I found these on eBay and thought I'd give them a try.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300322400500
They arrived promptly and certainly seemed neatly made. 100mm is the correct size for the GP800 so after a little bit of trimming, I offered it up to the Speedo. This is where we found snag #1.

The GP800 has a 100mmm diameter speedometer but the cowling makes it fairly deeply recessed - and the cowling encroaches on the speedo by a couple of mm all round. I didn't think that trimming by that amount would be a particularly neat solution so I decided to (gulp) remove the speedo.

This involves a considerable amount of bodywork removal. If you've ever wondered what a GP800 looks like naked, here it is in all its glory. Dismantling to this degree is not difficult but it is fairly time consuming. You will definitely need the workshop manual(thanks Jim) to find all the various screws and the correct order to remove them. Even then there are two screws not mentioned in the instructions (although they are fairly obvious). I can also pretty much guarantee that at least one of the trim clips will fall into the void somewhere. Once the body panels are removed, taking the speedo out is a little fiddly as the electric screen mechanism gets in the way. A degee of leverage on the "dashboard"helps.

With the speedo removed the job is now looking much easier. I did consider stripping down the unit itself in order to scan the dial face and make a proper job of it - but to be honest it looked a little scary - and I'm sure that water ingress would be the inevitable result. Perhaps when the bike is out of warranty in another years time I might give it a go.

Fitting the sticker is very straightforward. I debated trying to set the numbers correctly for "real speed" as opposed to indicated speed but I decided that would potentially compound any errors and anyway the GP800's speedo gets progressively more innacurate as the speed rises so it would ony be correct at one speed. I decided to stick to marked speeds as I have the GPS speedo for accuracy anyway so I just lined up the 0 position. Once fitted I was left with some sticky residue from the tape I had used to hold it in place while lining it up. I tried simple cleaning but here is where I made my mistake. When cleaning things like this, they always say "try a little on a small area first". I can see why ! If you're planning to do this, remember that nail varnish remover will take off ink from speedometer conversion stickers. You can see the evidence of this (and my attempts to rectify the problem) at the 100 and 110 mph positions - thanks to "write all" CD pens.

In use it's fine - it's aesthetically OK but obviously not matched to the GP800's instruments. Most importantly it gives you the "quick glance" indication of speed so essential on todays roads. The degree of error in the GP's speedo means that an indicated 30mph is about 29, 40 is about 36-37, 50 is about 44-45 and by the time you get to 70 your actual speed is bareley over 60 - but that's the GP800's problem not the speedo sticker.

In all, recomended to all GP800 owners in the UK.

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GP800 - GPS Speedometer

I have said it often enough - but it stands another repeat, the single worst feature of the GP800 is its speedometer. It is illegible in MPH to any normal human. The numbers are too small and it really should not be necessary on a £6,500 bike to paint lines at 30mph and 50mph to ensure that you are within the speed limit of the multiplicity of "safety" cameras that blight this land. It's not as if Piaggio are a small importer, they are the biggest PTW manufacturer in Europe and are consistently the number four seller of bikes in the UK. The GP800 is their flagship product - if they can't be bothered to give it and accurately marked MPH speedo, they could have simply fitted a digital one. To add insult to injury, the accuracy of the speedo is appalling. On a journey where I was using the Nokia GPS Sportstracker feature on my mobile phone, I may have exceeded the speed limit by a small margin - the GPS tracklog showed I was travelling far slower than I thought I was.


I had looked at replacing the speedo face - there's a place in Germany that will make the first one free but I couldn't face the amount of dismantling required to get to the speedo (or the loss of use of the bike while it was done) so I just kept moaning. There are also plenty of overlays that go above the instrument glass but I think that's too "cheap" a solution - I may change my mind as the bike gets older (and/or this country's persecution of speed gets any greater)

I had pretty much given up on a good solution when I happened to notice an "Indic8tor" on eBay. A little reseach showed that there were a number of these GPS speed camera detectors on the market (Indic8tor, Talex, Road Pilot etc - I won't link to them all, if you've found this blog you can probably use Google all by yourself :-)) . They are perfectly legal in the UK as they do not actually "detect" the cameras (Laser based camera detecters ARE illegal), they simply use a database of locations just like a normal SatNav.


What's more (a bonus for the dedicated cheapskate) these things start at around £50 complete with their first camera database subscription - and once that is out of date, they cost £50 per year to keep them updated. Once they are "Database Expired", they appear cheaply on eBay.

The Talex and Indic8tor looked good and their LED displays looked highly legible but a quick trip to Halfords revealed that their size might make fitting diffcult on the GP800. The Roadpilot MicroGO did however look just the ticket.


A few days carefully watching on eBay and I picked one up for just £18 :-).


In a nutshell it's an excellent (if not quite perfect) solution. It fits neatly on the top of the dash and it's connected to a standard cigarette lighter socket fitted under the dash next to the battery (wired to the fusebox). The device has no internal battery at all so it is only powered up when connected.


The normal suction cup mount is screwed down and it's a pretty sturdy fit. It doesn't affect the movement of the electric screen in any way and the power lead drops down throught the screen mount slot.


when removed, the mount itself keeps the lead in place.

As soon as the bike is fired up, it switches itself on and starts searching for satellites. It seems slower to get a "fix" than my Garmin Nuvi 360 in the car but once it does lock on it seems to hold the signal perfectly well. As with all GPS devices, if you can't wait for the fix and start moving, the fix takes even longer. I tend to do this and it cakes up to 5 minutes to fix - I live with this - it's not as if it's my only speedo, its a supplementary device anyway. once it has achieved a fix it immediately tells you that the database has expired but you simply press the single control button and it goes to the speed display.



When moving, it does exactly what is says on the tin - it dispalys the speed in mph pretty clearly - and way better than the OE analogue speedometer. It catches up quickly with rapid acceleration (at least as good as a Citroen car with digital speedo) and slows down almost as fast.

It doesn't seem to vibrate too much (doesn't affect clarity) and the only effect of the vibtration is to caust the flip out antenna at the back to drop down. When this happens, the number of satelittes "seen" reduces but the lock is maintained. I just flick it back up when I notice it - but I may employ a high-tech piece of blu-tack in future.


There is a problem with visibility in bright sunlight but I thing that's a result of the possitioning rahter than a fault with the unit. Having said that, it could do with a brighter backlight. The manual claims that it has a myriad of backlight colours to match - and these can be endlessly cycled through in the settings menu but to be honest (as the pictures show) it always seems to look like "LCD green/grey" whatever the setting. It is much better in the dark where it does show a sort of washed out version of the orange backlighting of the GP800's centre LCD panel. I may look to ocnstruct a smple "hood" at some time in the future if the summer proves to be a good one.


Of course it does also work as a speed camera detector. Even with an outdated database, it still warns of longstanding cameras (of course I am fully aware of their location anyway ) and if you wanted one of these for its stated purpose I'd say it does a good job. The screen dispalys both the speed limit and your speed and the diplay is flashing if you are over the limit. It does feature an audible warning which I suppose would be useful in a car but I have this switched off.

All in all, I'm very pleased.

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GP800 - Givi Screen

A little while ago I removed the "Heath Robinson" double screen from the GP - aesthetcially I had started to hate it. I was planning to live with the shortcomings of the standard screen during the "Credit Crunch" - but a blustery trip on the M4 combined with driving past a Givi dealer led me to an impulse buy.

The Givi D352ST is a very nice pice of kit. Fitting was a breeze all the holes lined up correctly and it sits perfectly on the bike.

A quick trip up the M1 proved that it is as effective as it is good looking. In the fully upright position it's a little noisy but the buffeting that comes with the standard screen is replaced by a little ripple on the sleeves of the upper arms. On the way back I lowered it and it was much better quieter - but without the windblast that the low position gives you with the standard screen.

£77.74 "all in" from HGB in Ruislip (not a stock item but delivered from Givi in one day) http://www.hgbmotorcycles.co.uk/

GP800 - Tyre Replacement

The Pirelli Diablos have been on for a few hunded miles now and I'm very impressed. Much better handling in town and no issues with high speed stability either. As long as they wear reasonably evenly, and last at least 5,000 miles they'll do for me.

The OE Michelin Pilot Sport SCs managed 6,700 miles and the rear was still comfortably legal when when the tyres were changed. It was however comprehesively squared off. The front was just coming up to the wear bars and had lost profile dramatically - Google "cupping" or "scalloping" to see the effect. I'm sure the front started with less tread depth because the only other bike that I've owned that wore front tyres as fast as rears was the R1100RS and that's down to the Telelever front end.

Another contributory factor may be the fact that I'd increased the rear shock preload to stop the bike wallowing and that may have "loaded" the front too much. I don't think it's unreasonable that a bike of this calibre should have adjustable damping - jacking up the preload to stiffen up the bike is not really the answer - higher levels of damping would properly slow the rate of movement of the shock - rather than just reducing its travel.
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