Welcome to a Portal Into Eric Bergman’s Reality
Some years ago I was thinking about launching an on-line community for people in the Colorado region who appreciate old Italian motorcycles. The density of such is just not great enough to support a traditional club, but I thought maybe a website would be amusing (I launched the Norton Colorado website over 20 years ago). I came up with a fun domain name (MotoVICE = Moto Vintage Italian, Colorado Enthusiasts) but I lost momentum and never created the website. Now, thanks to Jerry Doe (impresario of dev2host.com), something is happening but I’m not too sure what it will be. It will still have a major focus on Italian motorcycles (and other motorcycles that interest me) but I no longer want to try to start another “club” so the domain should probably now be interpreted as “Moto Vintage Italian, a Colorado Enthusiast”. I will try to stay away from commentary on my other interests or the state of the world. My professional activities are covered at the Global Seismological Services website.
I posted two pages dealing with my 1956 Laverda 100 Sport today. There will be additional pages for this one, documenting a full engine rebuild and other matters related to these wonderful little motos.
Installing the oil pump on this engine was tricky enough to warrant a separate page. Maybe you’ll be lucky!.
I’m starting the reassembly of the engine from my 1971 Laverda 750SF and I’m trying to document things as well as I can. I made a page with nothing but photos of the engine cases, for anyone who is curious about the innards of a Laverda 750. There is another page covering the first session of reassembly of the bottom end.
Well, I blew up my 1971 Laverda 750SF last fall, not too seriously, just a hole in one piston, and recently I started to deal with it. I’ve done the full teardown, received new parts from Wolfgang, Patron Saint of North American Laverda Owners. I just added pages on the teardown of the top end and the overhaul of a used set of gears I will use on the rebuild.
I’m very excited about observing the full restoration of a Laverda SFC by someone who knows what they are doing, namely, Scott Potter. I’m sorry to say the SFC doesn’t belong to me but it could belong to you when it’s finished. Scott and I have agreed that this is a golden opportunity to document what makes an SFC different from a standard production Laverda so we’re going to try to record the process very
I’ve finished the initial assessment of top end components of the Moto Morini 175 GT, and found a couple surprises. After some to-ing and fro-ing I think I’ve worked out what I want to do with these bits. Of course once the metal chips start flying plans can change!
I’m still hurting over the death of my friend Bob Ohman a couple days ago after a long illness, especially with his beloved Old Bike Ride happening tomorrow. He had not been able to lead the ride in the past few years, due to declining health, and sometimes he was too ill to even attend the gathering and take-off, but we always knew he was anxiously awaiting news of how many people showed up and
I’ve posted three new pages with details about the disassembly and reassembly of the engine of my 1957 Moto Morini 175 Gran Turismo. One is about taking apart the top end (head and cylinder) and the other two are concerned with the gearbox, one on disassembly and one on reassembly.
Today I added a page introducing my 1971 Laverda 750SF, a bike I owned and rode in France for 14 years before bringing it the U.S.
<p>Today I started a page for the Moto Morini cafe racer originally built by Andi Seiler, which is being re-united with its original engine, but punched out to 400cc.</p>
