So tonight was the first chance we had to run my v85tt back to back with Elaine’s. We rode a mixed bag of nice fast A roads and some town riding to boot. Half the journey was done on our own bike, we then swapped over and rode the rest of the way on each other’s bike. Elaine’s comment on getting off my machine said it all, “it’s like riding a totally different bike.” We are both running without a cat’. Elaine has a AliExpress version at £250 delivered. I have the £700 Mistral. The difference in quality is obvious, the difference in performance between the two is not. Both gave a noticeable boost to midrange response and the bikes ran much smoother and a lot cooler with no pinking under load. In fact I can’t detect any performance difference whatsoever and think it would take an accurate dyno’ test to detect any. The next step was to fit the Mistral v boost plug and the Mistral velocity stack to mine and compare the two bikes again and tonight’s ride was to see what if any difference it had made. The bike with the v boost and velocity stack is faster, pulls harder and is much smoother in the power delivery. The bloody awful rough running at low revs is much better with the bike pulling smoothly from about 2k revs in high gear whereas the none v boost fitted bike stutters and coughs. The v boost is absolutely NOT a cure, but it’s a massive improvement over standard. Needless to say, we have a second one ordered for Elaine’s bike. Hope this helps anyone else thinking of making some of the mods we have tried, there’s a lot of misleading cr@p out there with people sl@going off products (and then offering to sell you their ‘better’ version).
Hi Interesting post, always good to see the results of actual comparisons.I’ve made decat y pipes for most of my guzzis. I would expect the only difference between the expensive one and the cheap one to be quality and not result. Is there a map available from Beetle for the v85? I remapped my stelvio with a beetle map and the difference was amazing. From what I understand the problem with guzzis and other bikes is they are set up too lean to meet emissions . A boost plug just tells the ecu that the engine is colder than it is so it adds more fuel. A beetlle map sets out to give the correct fuelling from the start.
i emailed the creator about a bettlemap for the v85tt and he replied quite quickly to say it isn’t available.
there is a product from italy (g corse?) that can remap it. bucky moto on youtube who is in the Guzzi club over here has done this to his, instead of a booster plug, says it works well. you can return the bike to standard as well or reapply the remap, which would be needed after a dealer software update for example.
it’s not cheap though!
edit: found the remap kit here