As he understands it, Moto Guzzi started V7 serial numbers at 1000. Frame and engine numbers weren’t matched at the factory Paul’s engine is number 1337. “The bike was not the best one I could find, but it had a low serial number of 1204,” Paul says.
Paul collected the Guzzi when he and Keith Fellenstein (author of the Motorcycle Classics tech column, Keith’s Garage) went to the 2015 Barber Vintage Festival in Alabama, detouring to Georgia on their way home to get the bike before returning to Lawrence, Kansas, where Paul was living at the time. Overall, the Guzzi looked as though it had been run into the ground. Someone had attempted to fix it before giving up and improperly storing the pieces. Purchased from an eBay seller in Georgia, the 1967 V7 was really not much more than a frame, engine and gearbox, with other parts in crates. Paul started the process late in 2015 with a less-than-ideal candidate for restoration. “When I figured that out, I thought it would be cool to have the project ready for the date,” Paul says. With 50 years gone by since the V7 left the Moto Guzzi factory in Mandello del Lario, 2017 is the machine’s Golden Anniversary, and Paul didn’t want to miss such an important date.
But then Paul realized that 2017 marked a rather significant milestone.
