Introductions & questions

[Gunny]

Not new to motorcycles been riding for 40 years but this is my first Yamaha been a Honda man and actually the Honda's I've come to love is what brought me to the Venture Royale I currently have an 83 V65 Magna and an 86 VF500 Interceptor and I love the power and performance of the V4's and now that I'm getting older I really wanted to get something a bit more comfy and since Honda never made a V4 powered touring bike (sure the V65 Sabre is technically a sport touring bike but it's just so ugly kinda like a dump truck) so after some research and a fair amount of shopping I picked up a 93 VR a couple of weeks ago the guy I bought it from was the original owner and put over 82K miles on it but he is now in his 70's and just can't ride it any more, always garage kept and very well maintained, to be honest the mileage kind of scared me tell a saw it and talked to the guy the bike was in the best shape of all the bikes I've looked at however he only rode the bike few times last year and not at all this year so the gas that was in it was from last year so it was running rough so when I got it home I ran a half a can of seafoam and a fresh tank of gas through it and I now on my 6th tank and its now running much better. So far I'm pretty happy with the bike overall the ride is nice and it handles surprisingly well for such a big bike however the performance is just not what I was hoping for its got great power in 1st & 2nd ,OK in 3rd & 4th but kind of a dog in 5th even riding 2 up the Magna still pulls like a freight train in 6th gear. today I went on a 250 mile ride up in the mountains a ride I've taken the Magna on several times, and on every up hill it was in 4th and it just doesn't seem to like 75 - 80 mph which is what the speed limit is on some parts of the freeway around here. other than that the bike ran great, smooth and not so much as a hiccup, it got 48 mpg on the first tank which was the high speed flat part and around 40 on the hilly high altitude parts a little better than the Magna.

So my first question is this normal performance for these bikes or is there maybe something wrong with it? if so what should I check?

Second question is the starter sometimes misses and makes a clunking noise now on the Honda it's usually a broken little spring on the starter clutch and a fairly easy fix so is there something similar for that I need to fix for this?

Also how is parts availability? I'm missing a few things for the most part just cosmetic but I'm really curious about carburation & ignition parts on the old Hondas for most of these parts are used eBay only so I'm hoping Yamaha is better.

any help / advice will be greatly appreciated.

Anyway kind of a long first post (sorry) but looking forward to what I hope will be many years of riding enjoyment from what I thinks is a beautiful bike and making some new friends along the way

[syscrusher]

Your V65 Magna weighs 618lbs and has 116HP. Your 93VR weighs 785lbs and has 97HP, 5.33lb per HP vs 8.1lb per HP.

I think you should notice a difference here. With some modifications you can put VMax heads and the VBoost stuff on your VR.

I was once told that jugs and pistons were available to make the displacement as large as 1.8L.

Unless you strip it down you will still have an extra couple hundred pounds to carry around.

My suggestion is to accept that the VR is built for a different purpose than the V65 and is likely to perform a little differently.

[Freebird]

Syscrusher is right but still those Ventures typically run very strong if everything is right. They actually run very decent on only 2 cylinders too and I've seen lot of people who rode them on 3 cylinders and were pretty happy and then got it running on all 4 and were amazed at how much power they have. I don't know what yours is doing but I would start with making sure it is actually running at it's full potential.

[Venturous Randy]

First of all, welcome to VR.org and we hope you join. If you do, it will be the best $12 you will spend on your bike(we come along for free).

Freebird is right about the performance of these bikes and a properly maintained and running 1st gen Venture does not usually get complaints on how they run, especially in the higher RPM's. Given the lack of running for a period of time, I would start out by baselining the bike and making sure it's where it needs to be. These bikes seem to be a bit sensitive to sparkplugs, and with putting about 150,000 miles on my 83, I have found that cheap plugs work fine. I use cheap Autolites and change them out every year or so and especially if I have run a heavy dose of Seafoam. Also, the sparkplug caps have a resistor that can get corroded and may work under light load, but may breakdown under heavy load.

As far as the carbs, you need to pull the covers off the sides and check the diaphragms. Pinholes can definitely affect the performance. Another thing, especially on a bike that has been sitting, is the pilot jets can get plugged up and Seafoam can help, but sometimes a good carb cleaning is in order. Also, do you know the last time the fuel filter was changed?

Anyway, hope you get everything worked out and you will get plenty of help on here.

Randy

[Marcarl]

All that has been said is excellent info, keep in mind also that it's a good thing to keep the rpm above 3000 for a good power band, i think you'll find a bit of a difference so it will need a good cleaning and going over if it's not missing then maybe you have poor fuel delivery give it a good going over and be happy

[Gunny]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm sure your right Venturous Randy so I just paid the $12

checked each exhaust with an infrared thermometer and all 4 heated up the same so I don't think it was a dead cylinder but I think I will throw in a new set of plugs, fuel filter & check the diaphragms which I hope are still readily available cause there not on the Hondas.

[syscrusher]

Thanks for the replies.

check the diaphragms which I hope are still readily available cause there not on the Hondas.

 

There has been a sticky link to this thread, but here is where to get the ones I bought.