FOUR VALVES BAD?
Launched at the 1983 Milan Show, the four-valve V65 Lario came into the brave new world flanked by its near-identical but smaller capacity henchmen, the Imola II and Monza II (not to be confused with the two-valve Imolas and Monzas). They shared common styling but the Imola was a 350, the Monza a 500 and the Lario topped the range at 650. The Lario was available until 1989, accompanied for a while by some four-valve oddities including the mysterious French/Japanese market only V40 Capri. This might’ve been a 350 sold as a 400. The Capri I’ve seen looked like the Imola, except it had a single seat and tail cowl arrangement.
Then there was also the extremely uncommon V75 four-valve, a downright odd-looking bike with a washing up bowl fairing, usually seen in metallic brown with stripes. Guzzi reverted to two-valves part way through the V75’s short production run. The V75 had a stroked Lario motor which didn’t live up to expectations. Simon Howells wrote in the Moto Guzzi Club GB magazine, Gambalunga, how he bought one new. He had the engine rebuilt by Raceco UK who found the conrods to be unsuitable Lario items, prone to breakage as they were too short for the V75, and there was a host of other inadequacies. Once rebuilt and re-engineered the bike was fantastic, but it was an expensive labour of love. The V75, still on the road, was featured in RC154 and is a rolling testament to its owner’s dedication and an example of what the factory should have built.
Most of the available information about the four-valvers concerns the Lario, which appears to have sold in greater numbers than 350 and 500 machines. So much of what follows is about the Lario, although there is much crossover with the others. According to Mario Colombo’s book on Guzzi history, Lario engine numbers run from PT11111 to 15032 and V75 from PX11111 to 12000. Most of those V75s were two-valve and not four. Allowing for sketchy Guzzi numbering, that’s not many four-valve bikes… there may be good reasons for this!
If you know the two-valve small-block Guzzis then the four-valve bikes will seem pretty familiar, as their design and components were an incremental development of an established range, not a completely new design. The gearbox, Cardan shaft drive and bevel box were as used on previous models with minor changes to ratios and the
