Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126904
Keith Campbell set a lap record of 118.56 mph during the 1957 Belgian GP. Note the low build and compact dimensions of the V-eight. (Above) The V-eight in its ready-to-race look in 1957 with massive aluminum gas tank. (Below) This historic picture shows the Moto Guzzi factory team during practice at Monza in 1956 with a V-eight in the background. (Above) Two Moto Guzzi V-eights sit outside the team's garage at the 1957 Isle of Man TT. (Below) The left side of the bike shows the exposed clutch, twin camshaft driven contract breakers and part of the fuel system. When eight was great By M ick Woolett A 500cc racer powered by an eight-cylinder engine even today that sounds sensational. Yet the Italian Mota Guzzi factory designed, built and raced a V-eight 30 years To keep the center of gravity low. the radiator was mounted as low as possible. The box next to the radiator is part of the ignition system. 28 ago. One of the great names in racing, Guzzi was famous for th~ir h?rizontally-engined, single-cylinder 250 and 350cc machines and fo-!: a _m~!}ty 500cc V-twin they campaigned for nearly 20 years from the early '3Os to the early '50s. Realizing that they needed more thana twin tocombattherival Gilera and MV Agusta four-cylinder racers, Guzzifirst produced an unusual four. This was powered by a water-cooled, four-stroke but instead of mounting the engine across frame,like the rival machines, Guzzi had it in line and driving the rear wheel via a shaft. Raced in 1953 and 1954 this proved fast but the torq ue action of the longitudinally mounted crankshaft made the machine very difficult to race on twisty circuits and it soon became obvious to Guzzi's brilliant designer al1d race manager Giulio Carcabi that, despite its small frontal area, it was not the answer. It was backto the drawing board. Garcano, having learned the lesson of the faults inherent in a machine with a four-and-aft crankshaft decided his new engine must have the crank across the frame. At first he toyed with the idea of a straight six (a design later tried by first MV Agusta and then, successfully by Honda). Garcanodiscarded this idea because rough sketches showed him a 500cc six engine would be too wide. He then decided that a vee layout would be beSt and after considering a V-six he went the whole hog and designed a very compact V-eight. This was some IO-inches narrower that the straight six design he had drawn up and was also very much slimmer than the rival Gilera and MV Agusla four-cylinder machines. With a bore and stroke onTx 41 mm, each tiny cylinder had a capacity of just over 62cc. Valve sizes were 23mm and 2lmm inlet/exhaust and 10mm spark plugs angled into the combustion chambers. The angle between the two banks of cylinders was 90° and each fourcylinder block had twin overhead camshafts gear driven from the right side of the engine. The pump to circulate the cooling water and the oil pump were also driven by these gears. Each bank of four cylinders had its own coil ignition system with a contact breaker (driven from the end of a camshaft) and a battery.