88 VR Mods... Ya, went a little overboard

[The Crimson Knight]

Well, as some of you know I traded my 89 Honda Hawk in for a 88 Venture Royale about 2 weeks ago. The first weekend I got it I put about 400 miles on it and then parked it, planning on quickly completing a short list of changes. Well between learning more about the condition of the little do-dads on the bike, reading all the magnanimous ideas here and the internet, that short list quickly turned into 2 pages of 'things' to do... hehe.. *sigh*

 

So... Since some of these are ideas already on here and some are my original ideas I thought I would post them all with pics to share. Some are finished and some I will be posting later as I complete them.

 

So here we go!

[Rocket]

planning on quickly completing a short list of changes. Well between learning more about the condition of the little do-dads on the bike, reading all the magnanimous ideas here and the internet, that short list quickly turned into 2 pages of 'things' to do... hehe.. *sigh*

 

 

So here we go!

 

Not hard to do........ Trust me, it happens.............:mo money:

[The Crimson Knight]

Well this first one came up sorta unexpectedly. After the first weekend of riding I noticed 2 things about the speakers. They were OK for 20 yr old speakers, but loving my music as much as I do, I knew I was going to swap them out for newer better ones. THEN, on my way home on Sat, I noticed that the upper left vent louver, next to the speaker, was loose. It looked like it was about to fall out. So right as I reached down to grab it, the little SOB popped out, hit me on the shoulder and hit the ground. Of course, by the time I circled around someone had flattened it. Devistated about the newfound hole in my dash I knew I had to do something... Then it hit me... What's right next to the vents? SPEAKERS..

 

So my plan, remove both vents, modify the covers to accept a larger speaker.

 

I opted for two Polk Audio 5 1/4, 2 way marine speakers. I tried to find something bigger, but looking at the dimensions, it wouldn't be possible. Not to mention the power rating was almost 5 times what the old speakers were. AND these had tweeters that you could aim and point at you.. nice touch.

 

So the first step was to disassemble the covers, dig out the speakers... This was very time consuming for me, not knowing how everything came apart, but I took it slow and it went well. In the pics you can see the left cover with the missing vent. Also the back of the stock speakers and the cover with both vent and stock speakers gone.

 

Then I took some comparison shots of both new and old speakers.. quite a difference I must say. Made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

[The Crimson Knight]

Next step was to fabricate new peices to cover the holes and mount the speakers to. This I took very slowly. The plastic was cut out of a very large battery box bought from Wal-Mart. I got this idea from Utadventure! Thanks bud! It worked very well.

 

I started by cutting some templates from cardboard for both sides and using the them to cut out on the plastic. Used dremel to cut out the plastic and then razor knife to smooth out the edges and get it down to detail.

 

I used a compas to cut out the holes in the center for the speakers as I cannot draw a circle worth a damn. Worked very well. Some more plastic melting with the dremel and I had two holes.

 

I opted to drop th speakers in the holes and having the outer lip of the speakers on top of the plastic versus mounting them on the back for two reasons. (1) Stability - because of the thin sections of plastic after cutting out the speaker hole, I was concerned about it loosing it's structural integrity when mounting on the bike. (2) I was concerned that the flimsy plastic would not be able to hold up the weight of the speakers if only used screws.

 

I used super glue under the edges of the speaker that sat on the plastic AND screws to hold it in place. Better safe than sorry. They turned out to be very very strong hold.

 

In the pics you will notice the large silver 'rim' style speaker covers, but I later took these off because of clearance issue when putting the left and right panels back on. I would have had to butcher them to get it to fit. Better off with out them.

 

Wired them up and installed them. Carefully placing screws (later replaced with black ones to blend in better) through the plastic into the covers after putting predrilled holes to prevent splitting any plastic.

 

Last pic is one took today.

 

Speakers were easily 100% - 100% louder and clearer and everything I had hoped they would be after the install. Once I get everything back together I will be aiming the tweeters in the center to my ears.

 

Speakers were about $90 on crutchfield,$50 on ebay new and shipped

[The Crimson Knight]

Sorry got click happy. Here are the pics for the above post.

[utadventure]

It's looking great!! I look forward to seeing the other improvements you have on your list.

 

Don't forget to ride, ride, ride. Winter is coming and you'll have time to work on the bike.

 

Dave

[dynodon]

Thanks for posting the article of your mod.

 

First, the factory speakers are quite impressive! Very big magnet structure and decent sized coil. New Polks are obviously better, but the factory ones aren't bad.

 

Second, now that you have the new speakers where the vent used to be, did you close off the vent? Otherwise, you may blow air and maybe even rain right at the back of those new speakers.

 

What are you going to do for speaker grills?

[The Crimson Knight]

As far as what goes THROUGH the speakers.. I have gotten a cable from 'Mother' on this website that arrived today from Canada, Thanks Mother!

 

This will be replacing my Cassette deck and give me a 3.5mm plug. That will then run to my Garmin Nuvi 760. As it also has a card slot and ability to play MP3 with it's media player.

 

BUT, I have read that the cable can cause low volume. So, after all that work on the speakers, NO WAY i'm going to let that interfere with my new beauties...

 

So I searched for a 3.5 mm in line amplifier... Only one I could find that I trusted ran off a AAA battery... I sure didn't want to replace batteries after a ride. So I went and bought a custom dc adapter that put out 1.5v. Solder that onto the terminals of the amp and boom! No battery changing. I'll be installing this tonight. I'll update with results. Wish me luck!

[The Crimson Knight]

Thanks for posting the article of your mod.

 

First, the factory speakers are quite impressive! Very big magnet structure and decent sized coil. New Polks are obviously better, but the factory ones aren't bad.

 

Second, now that you have the new speakers where the vent used to be, did you close off the vent? Otherwise, you may blow air and maybe even rain right at the back of those new speakers.

 

What are you going to do for speaker grills?

 

Yes you are right about the factory speakers. I was very impressed by their audio quality knowing their age and probably played their share of music. I'm one of those people that, when it comes to electronics, if it's 20 years old, I gotta upgrade it if possible.

 

Yes I removed the duct work and plugged the intake under the front light.

 

Not sure about grills. I'm going to leave them open for now, just have to be careful. I would like to just find some speaker grill sheets, if that makes sense, and cut out my own shape.. but I don't even know if you can get anything like that, or where..

[The Crimson Knight]

well when I got the bike the right horn was dead as a doornail and the other one sounded like a giant metal mexican jumping bean... Also had plans for adding some driving lights for better visibilty. Then ran across post about Squidly's brackets.

 

Went about ordering squidley's brackets and a pair of new, crome covered and hopefully very loud horns. about $60 total.

 

Removed the old horns and cleaned up the wires. WD40 all screws and mounting holes for easy install. Brackets were a perfect fit. Horns also got matching wires and they were easy mount too.

 

This was fairly straightforward. But after install looked alot more noticeable (in a good way)

 

Next will be the lights. They are finished but have to post tomorrow. I have a bike waiting on me

[RoyalPain]

Nice mods so for Night!!!

I'm looking forward to you sharing your future projects! At the rate your going, I'm begining to suspect you might be a fellow insomniac.

Pain

[The Crimson Knight]

Nice mods so for Night!!!

I'm looking forward to you sharing your future projects! At the rate your going, I'm begining to suspect you might be a fellow insomniac.

Pain

 

Yes, I'm proud to say that for the last 2 weeks I have not gone to bed earlier than 1am. Mmm. Maybe proud is the wrong word..

[MasterGuns]

Yes, I'm proud to say that for the last 2 weeks I have not gone to bed earlier than 1am. Mmm. Maybe proud is the wrong word..

 

 

Ah, "dedicated".

[RoyalPain]

ROFL, I knew it!

You have to admidt, there is something to be said for living a 20 hr day.lol