83 Venture Rebuild/Restoration

[cruiserlover]

I have 2 83s.I have every part there is if you need some.CHEAP. text if interested.Email is ronbayless57@gmail.com. I am near dallas, you are probably a long way off.I would include a box full on your list to save shipping if you are interested.I will give you my number if you email me

[CaseyJ955]

Love this project. I parted out an 85 Vmax awhile back. I still have the final drive, engine/trans -heads and cams, vboost and intakes which I harvested for my 1300 Venture. If you need any of it I'd be letting it go for not a whole lot more than shipping. Not only is the Vmax final drive a touch lower but 5th is lower too in a Vmax (maybe other gears too, cant recall) It would be a little more high strung on tbe highway but acceleration would benifet. I am 90% highway on my Venture but if I lived in a congested city I would go to a Vmax pumpkin. Its really not that hard to swap em' out. There is a shock mount on the Vmax pumpkin which might be considered unsightly for your restoration, but it is possible to swap Vmax R&P into the XVZ pumpkin to preserve OEM aesthetics. A tool is needed and I believe Sean Morley (Morleys Muscle) rents or sells the tool. Btw, love the polished side covers. Thanks for documenting this project.

[gaj1917]

Well, after a long winter I am finally back out in the garage. I'm splitting time between two projects and this one won't get quite as much time as I would like, but the goal is to spend at least one evening a week working on it. I did manage to get the two halves of the engine back together and have started the cleanup. This engine had lot's of leaks over the years and so there is more to clean. I'm also making some progress on the heads. I pulled the valves, cleaned them up, then lapped them to the seats. I finished them up by installing new seals. One head is done and I will start working on the other one next week. Here are a couple of pics for the week, hopefully we can keep them coming over the summer.

 

http://www.venturerider.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=112497

 

 

http://www.venturerider.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=112498

Looking good!

[Johnnycyclone]

Love this project. I parted out an 85 Vmax awhile back. I still have the final drive, engine/trans -heads and cams, vboost and intakes which I harvested for my 1300 Venture. If you need any of it I'd be letting it go for not a whole lot more than shipping. Not only is the Vmax final drive a touch lower but 5th is lower too in a Vmax (maybe other gears too, cant recall) It would be a little more high strung on tbe highway but acceleration would benifet. I am 90% highway on my Venture but if I lived in a congested city I would go to a Vmax pumpkin. Its really not that hard to swap em' out. There is a shock mount on the Vmax pumpkin which might be considered unsightly for your restoration, but it is possible to swap Vmax R&P into the XVZ pumpkin to preserve OEM aesthetics. A tool is needed and I believe Sean Morley (Morleys Muscle) rents or sells the tool. Btw, love the polished side covers. Thanks for documenting this project.

 

Thanks for following along and thanks for the offer on the Vmax parts. I have thought about the Vmax conversion but for me it's just not in the budget to do. I know I will have more into this than what the bike will be worth, so keeping it as low as possible is the goal. Thanks again and keep checking in from time to time, it's going to be a fun summer!

[Johnnycyclone]

Looking good!

 

Thanks gaj, I'm glad you found the thread.

[Johnnycyclone]

Time for a small update. Even though not much has happened since the last update I was finally able to spend some time on it this week. I got the engine cleaned up along with a few of the parts that will be bolted back on. I think just about every part that could leak did, it was quite the mess. It's all taped off now and ready for paint. Planning on doing the paint work tomorrow after work. I will post more pics after it's painted.

 

 

 

 

 

[Johnnycyclone]

So the engine is painted, and even though I'm a little disappointed with the end result I'm not willing to strip it and redo. Way too much time to do that. Here is a pic of the paint I used, it's Eastwood's Aluma Blast. I really like the paint, it's pretty close to aluminum color, but it's not resistant to gas, so I put a satin clear on top to give it protection. What I found out tonight was the more clear you put on the more it looks like grey and not aluminum. I did one light coat and then two medium coats of both the paint and the clear. I should have stopped with one light coat and one medium coat of clear. If you look at the part to the left in the pic that is after paint but before the clear is on, so you can see how bright it is. I will post a few pics of the engine and you can see the difference. Either way it looks much better than it did yesterday.

 

[Johnnycyclone]

Here's a couple before and after pics of the pan and oil filter cover.

 

 

[Johnnycyclone]

Now for a few pics of the engine.

 

 

[7 lakes]

Looks great! I've had silver gray like that when clearing too, can be frustrating.

[Johnnycyclone]

I took another look at this morning hoping it would change, not so lucky. It still looks like gray primer to me. So I changed my mind and I am going to start stripping it tonight. In the mean time we will be weighing the options on color. I am seriously thinking of going to satin black this time. I don't think I will be able to come up with a silvery color that I would be happy with. I think the polished side cases would look sharp contrasting with a black engine. Stay tuned.....

[Johnnycyclone]

What a pain stripping off the clear and the paint, but it was well worth the effort. Here it is with a few fresh coats of satin black.

 

 

 

[Freebird]

Looks great. That bike is going to look fantastic when you are done.

[Johnnycyclone]

It's been a few weeks and although much hasn't been done I thought I would post a couple of pics. I ended up going backwards and had to take the heads back off. I forgot to put the chain tensioners for the cams in before putting on the heads. I have since printed out the section from the manual on rebuilding the engine so hopefully something like that won't happen again. Now I refer to the manual before putting anything back on!

 

First pic is of the clutch. This looks pretty new so we are going to install it as is.

 

 

Next is the engine case cover that I cleaned up and polished last year. Looks pretty good against the black engine.

 

 

And finally for now, I put the oil breather back on along with the oil line. I'm using new stainless hardware where needed.

 

 

Here's what we will probably be working on next, it's quite the mess, but it should clean up pretty nice.

 

 

 

More later............

[uhfradarwill]

Hats off to you man, much respect.

Being a EE I can tare down to bare bones any part of a 25 million dollar radar system without a second thought, but this kind of in-depth on a motor scares the hell outta me!!

KUDOS

[uhfradarwill]

One piece at a time, and tonight I decided to clean up one of the engine covers. Not probably what I should be working on, the frame needs some attention, but given I didn't feel like working on it anyway I did something that didn't take too much effort. Here is a pic of the before and the after. It still needs a little attention in the area where the shift numbers are but it's pretty much ready to bolt back on, even though the engine is still sitting on the floor, untouched.

 

https://www.venturerider.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=107780https://www.venturerider.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=107779

 

Because I do a lot of gun re-bluing I have one of these, with the floor pedestal option. 600 grit compound on left and 1,500 polishing on the right.

Oh, and a 2" thick rubber mat surrounding the whole area in case I catch an edge funny and it rips the receiver of barrel out of my hands!!

 

[Johnnycyclone]

Hats off to you man, much respect.

Being a EE I can tare down to bare bones any part of a 25 million dollar radar system without a second thought, but this kind of in-depth on a motor scares the hell outta me!!

KUDOS

 

My job is in electrical engineering but it's 95% mechanical engineering. Anytime I need to troubleshoot electrical issues it's not as easy. I'm not well versed in reading schematics and working with electronic boards, pretty much lost. So I guess it's just what you are used to working on. I love the mechanical side and so I have always been drawn to it. Not always successful for sure, so there have been a few project failures along the way. Thanks for the comments and I hope you keep following the project.

[Johnnycyclone]

Because I do a lot of gun re-bluing I have one of these, with the floor pedestal option. 600 grit compound on left and 1,500 polishing on the right.

Oh, and a 2" thick rubber mat surrounding the whole area in case I catch an edge funny and it rips the receiver of barrel out of my hands!!

 

https://www.venturerider.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=113936

 

 

Yep, I have looked at those several time over the years, but really don't have any room for one and I don't polish aluminum often enough to buy one yet. But it sure would save a lot of time versus doing it by hand.

[Condor]

I notice in one of the pics you mentioned using SS fasteners, and thought I'd mention to coat them with silicon before screwing them into the aluminum block. The silicon will prevent the dissimilar metals from the nobility scale from making contact and prevent galvanic corrosion in the future.

[Johnnycyclone]

I notice in one of the pics you mentioned using SS fasteners, and thought I'd mention to coat them with silicon before screwing them into the aluminum block. The silicon will prevent the dissimilar metals from the nobility scale from making contact and prevent galvanic corrosion in the future.

 

Wasn't aware of that, thanks for the tip Condor!

[Johnnycyclone]

Well, we didn't get to far on the cover other than getting it disassembled. That's about the time I noticed the big dent in the bottom. I can't believe I just now noticed it, but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. Here is a pic with the dent circled. Looks like I will be looking for another cover.

 

[Johnnycyclone]

On a more positive note I got the braces for the frame welded in. So now I just need to clean up the frame a little and it's off to the powder coaters.

 

[Flyinfool]

I have a complete disassembled engine from an early 85 that does have the 2nd gear issue. I think it is the same covers? I will look to see for sure.

[Johnnycyclone]

I have a complete disassembled engine from an early 85 that does have the 2nd gear issue. I think it is the same covers? I will look to see for sure.

 

Sounds good, let me know if you have one.

[Johnnycyclone]

A little eye candy for everyone this evening. The frame is back from the sandblaster/painter. I opted not to go with powder coating as that would have been a little pricey. This is painted with epoxy and then baked. Turned out fantastic!