A friend of mine used to have a V7 with a nickel plated frame. It was gorgeous.
I bought a crashed and burnt T3 from an insurance company back when I had a bike shop in the early 80's. I had to rewire it, replace all the carbs, switches, hoses and rebuild the brakes. My brother was a auto body and painter on the Cord, Auburn and Deusenburg registry and I talked to him about the problem with old Guzzi gas caps. My idea was to cut the top out of an early 1980 Kawasaki tank and splice it into the top of the Guzzi tank. He made it happen and it looked factory when it was done. I was able to BS a few Guzzi guys into believing it was an Italian domestic model tank until I started laughing so hard I could barely stand and I came clean about it being custom.
Me and that bike almost died together around then end of October 1983 when drunk driver plowed into the back of my Guzzi while I was moving. I think he was POed that I had passed him but I'll never know that for sure. He hit me doing about 20 MPH faster than I was going. A year later I put that bike back together. I had lost my bike shop so I didn't have the same resources so she was always a ratty machine After that. I put another 30k miles on that bike before engine troubles took it off the road and I was a broke college student at the time so I eventually had to let the bike go. Of the dozens of bikes I've had, it's the one that I remember most fondly...
Tony
