First Ride

Less than two weeks after the arrival of the 1928 Moto Guzzi Sport 14 in a crate from Verona, Italy, I had the gas line repaired and ready for my first attempt to start and ride the motorcycle. I had looked over every part and component and overall I felt this machine was familiar to me. With the red paint, magneto ignition, and rather straight forward mechanical, this machine was not unlike the farmall tractors from the 1920s and 1930s that I grew up repairing on the family farm.

I turned on the gas, then the oil, primed the carburetor with fresh gas and started kicking it over. To my surprise, after two dozen attempts kicking it over while adjusting the spark, throttle, and choke, the 500 cc single started thumping. It felt great to hear it run!

Julie took this video. Here is the unedited start-to-finish first time kick-starting the 1928 Moto Guzzi Sport 14!

Let me skip ahead one day to the next morning after I posted this video on Facebook. Joe Waleno, the “Guzzi Doctor” from Chicago area called me on Facetime voice. “That’s one helluva fine machine you have there!” he says, following that up with, “but your doing it all wrong. I can tell you used to kickstart a Harley, and you made a comment in the video about the compression. That’s not how you start this machine. Let me put it this way, your still thinking blue jeans and black leather harness boots. I want you to think khakis and loafers.” After this Joe explained exactly how to use the compression release lever on the right handlebar to get the flywheel spinning and then release and let the flywheel start the engine. This took some getting used to, but again, it is just like some of the John Deere farm tractors from the same era.

Back to the first ride… after some initial tuning the spark and gas, I was ready for our first ride downtown to the local brewery and back. Maybe 4-5 miles in total. You will notice at the end of this next video the bike stalls out when I idle down. I had this happen twice on the run when we weren’t filming video. We’ll get to the root of the problem in the next post.