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Late reply here....my wife and I travelled down that way through a short section of Skyline Drive in early October. The Blue Ridge Parkway was closed at that time due to the hurricane damage. The section we travelled was beautiful that time of the year. We came across Hwy 250 from the 219. Hwy 250 from Huttonsville to Staunton WV looks fairly straight on a map...Wrong. It was a beautiful twisty road with breath taking scenery. It was obvious to me afterwords that going over the mountains is going to be a little twisty and up and down. It was a challenging ride to say the least, all loaded up with my wife on the back. I'll bring the Venture next time, I think it would handle the twisties better. We made it to the Howard Johsons just after dark, which wasn't wise travelling in the dark as we noticed lots of deer appearing at dusk. Made it safely and there must have been 25 motorcyclist's staying at HoJo's. Most of those bikes were in the class of adventure touring, which seems to be a popular way to ride, especially through the mountains. It was a great ride and hope to do it again next year and this time travel south down the Blue Ridge Parkway. Mark

I made the mistake of hosting the wife’s family dinner, a very small group. I seem to only be able to cook like it’s my family (35-40 people). There’s enough left over for a Venture rally supper. Now we get to go Saturday for the big one, at least we can leave the leftovers at my brother’s house.

I got my new vanity plate for the bike today. Looking forward to putting some miles on it this spring.

Hope your bellies are full and family is happy n healthy.

oh wow did I get full and because not as many showed up we brought enough home for a couple of days.

Tonight I replaced the 4) rubber coolant plugs and re-assembled most of the bike so it is ready to re-install the carburetors and once that is done get air filter system re-installed, gas tank, re-configure the wiring since I disconnected a lot to not put stress on the harnesses as I was taking everything apart. I re-filled the coolant (Used Prestone 10yr) and put in 3.5 quarts of Amsoil with a Mobile 1 110a oil filter.... should be able to finish getting it all back together by end of this weekend so I can make sure everything runs right and put it thru a heat cycle or 2 so I can double check coolant and other fluids and once I know everything is good to go and I wont have to tear anything apart again to troubleshoot any potential issues I will do a carb sync. I ended up doing a total re-build on the 4 carbs but did not replace the outer diaphrams, hopefully that does not bite me in the ass but figure as long as everything else is good I don't have to fully remove the carbs to replace the diaphrams if there ends up being an issue with them tho I dont expect to have issues... they were a little bit stretched, it was pretty obvious that these carbs had never been taken off the bike or worked on previously but they did not have any tears or other visible issues and overall the carbs were in really good shape. Only weird thing I ran into considering how well the bike ran was how far off the floats where set from the factory specs in the service manual...maybe my gas mileage will go up now that they are properly set - at least I hope I set them right :-). I installed Ivan's needles and main jets so will be interesting to see how that changes the bike attitude, assuming it will be a fairly subtle change.

I honestly donn’t know. but I feel that the government has somethinng to do with it. I just don’t believe that in this day and age that all these drones can be flying around and the government has no idea what they are. With all our advanced technology, radar, night vision, etc., they have to know what they are.

I've had Bison Burger, but not a sandwich. Tasty as well.

What ever sandwich my wife fixes me to eat.

I had some pretty rough injuries when I was a kid. Sports and jumping out of trees and off roofs, motorcross and a few other things trashed my knees. I had a Dr tell me and my parents (when I was 17 mind you) that I would probably need a knee replacement by the time I was 40. Lived in Cleveland until I was 40 and during the cold winters I couldn't decide which leg to limp on first LOL. Moved to the Houston area when I was 40 and it's been substantially better. especially since there is only about 2 months of cold and wet weather instead of 5 or 6.

Glad it’s not any worse. I watched Col Steve Austin as a kid, now I think a lot of us are becoming the new $6 million men. I’ve got the screws and anchors in my shoulder and a hardware store in my back according to the X-ray tech a couple weeks ago. This getting old stuff ain’t for sissies 😫

It's been a wonderful day kicked back in the recliner with my foot propped up on pillows while my beautiful wife made a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner for us. I pray everyone has had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. Ronnie check out the pictures I posted on My Ride post.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Yes! We had a nice gathering with family and friends earlier than normal. Belly is full and I have no more space for dinner. I am so ready for leftovers tomorrow. Enjoy the football game and to whatever you are doing tonight.

No riding for me today up through the weekend. With the Thanksgiving holiday and weekend is upon us, people love to party and some may be venturing on the road slightly impaired by too much food and alcohol to drink. With that said, I am not riding my bike. Enjoy your Turkey days with friends and family.

I don’t use my saws very often so I switched to canned Tru-Fuel. 2 year shelf life. Saws sit months at a time but fire right up.

Sharp saws use a lot less power and battery,,,,, just sayin.

2012 RSV. Got everything torn down today to get ready to finally replace my leaking valve cover gaskets! Also going to pull apart the carbs for a full clean and install Ivan's Performance jet & needle kit (FYI...they are running a 10% off Black Friday special right now that started on 11/29 and goes I think till either 10/2 or maybe it was 10/6?). Since I pull a trailer at times and have heard great reviews on Ivan's kit boosting the power some I figure it will be well worth it even tho I am sure the tradeoff is a little less fuel mileage. With carbs open I am gonna figure out how to check my float levels and correct them if needed since I have seen a few threads on here saying they were pretty far out of spec and getting them right can positively effect gas mileage. I have 4 of the K&L carb re-build kits on the way which include new needle valves/valve seats/orings as well as the other orings needed and the float cover orings. Never had any carb issues with this bike as I mostly run Non-ethenol and always use stabilizer but only makes sense to go thru them now since its so much work getting them pulled out. Definitely a good deal of attention to detail required to do this job but sick of seeing the leaking engine oil all over the back of my engine from those leaking gaskets. Have done MANY carb re-builds over the years but never anything as intimidating looking like this bundle of 4 carbs! Figure if I take my time and take plenty of pics I will be able to figure out how to get them all put back together into the bracket system. One question.... I am at 800ft elevation but living in NC do trips to the NC & TN mountains which range between 3-4k elevation, can anyone who has installed the Ivan's kit confirm that the recommended jet sizes ended up working the best for them? I received his kit yesterday, looks like the recommendation is 117.5 on the left 2 carbs & 115 on the right side carbs. I havent pulled them apart yet but from parts diagram it appears that carb #1 & 2 both have 122.5, #3 carb had 117.5 & #4 carb has a 122.5 installed from factory. Can tell that these carbs have never been removed from the bike before. Also replacing the 2 twinkle gaskets as preventative maintenance while everything is apart. Have fully drained coolant from radiator, cylinders, overflow bottle and the water pump in order to change that & also replacing the 4) rubber cylinder plugs. Doing engine/oil filter change to out some fresh Amsoil in there. Installing new NGK Iridium spark plugs, etc. Will be going thru and checking all the valve clearances, not sure if I will find any valves out of spec or not since only 31k on the engine...if I do find issues I will do that at the same time of course. Hopefully everything goes smooth putting her back together once the valve cover gaskets are replaced and will do a carb sync last. Should be good to go for the next few years with no major maintenance work required since I just finished installing new rear tire (Shinko 777), installed new wheel bearings on the rear, re-packed the swingarm bearings and went thru the final drive thoroughly as well as obviously cleaning and re-greasing the drive pinions. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Heading to MN later this week to visit my Son & 2 grandsons! Oldest turns 7 while I am there and the 2nd was just born in Aug so stoked to spend some time quality time with them.

That usually comes from too much oil in the crankcase.

Definitely enjoy it, always end up doing more that I really need to & call it preventative maintenance. I run high stress/stakes jobs so tinkering in my shop is my happy place and where I spend many of my evenings & weekends to unwind. Always have plenty to do since I DIY everything possible. 4 vehicles (2 are for my kids) the RSV, a Honda CRF300L dual sport, 6 quads and lots of chainsaws and other misc stuff with engines. My neighbors usually call me when they have mechanical issues on their boats/toys/mowers/etc doing that kind of work never gets old to me since its not a "job" :-). Doubt I would ever retire since I thrive in stressful situations and never sit still for long but if I ever did this is the kind of stuff I would do every day. Told the wife that when the kids move out I am getting 100 acres out in the woods somewhere, building a smaller home and a 20k square foot shop, lol

This is leg up system I installed. Definitely holds the weight when I'm stopped.

Had a good weekend ride to AR this weekend, was going to try to catch the bike rolling over 100K miles but lost track of time and miles and missed it by a few. It looks like it happened a few miles after Chelsea, OK and Vinita, OK on RT 66 so that was pretty cool. I took a few pictures after we stopped in Afton, looks like someone is working on a really cool exhibit. Here is a few pics I was able to take before heading further on the trip.

Smoked horsemeat on homemade raisin bread.

I really like them too, they stick really well and do very well in the couple times I have been caught in some rain. Crazy story - I bought front/rear Shinko 777 tires in May of 2022 from Revzilla and when I got them I noticed the rear tire was dated 2121 and the front was 4821 (always check that just in case) - anyway 5-6 weeks ago I noticed a noise starting at the rear and isolated it too a wheel bearing starting to go bad so I removed the wheel to get the entire rear serviced and noticed right away that the rear tire had cracks inside all the tread siping but otherwise still looked really good. Had about 3500 miles on them. Not expecting a whole lot I contacted Revzilla and sent them detailed pictures and submitted some other data thinking I may as well see if they would warranty them since perhaps they had a tire run during that time period that was a bad lot since the front tire shows none of those cracks at all and looks perfectly normal. When not riding the bike is in garage 100% of the time. Too my surprise they agreed to replace the tire, told me to buy a new one and they sent me an RMA to return the old one to them and within a few days of the old tire getting there they fully refunded the purchase price of the new tire! So I was pretty stoked that they stood behind their product even after that much time/miles, if anything it further sold me on those tires since these days especially its rare for a business to step up and do the right thing.

Thank you for the pointers! I have not bench synced before since I have never done a quad setup, I have researched it some so I can do it correctly and then I have a Carbtune to finish re-syncing them once the bike is running again. I will probably use the "drill bit method" to bench sync unless someone can recommend a better way? I took apart the outer supports last night as well as stripped the float bowls & needle diaphragms along with all the internal parts. Came up with a method so I would not loose track of which parts go to which carbs, I numbered the carbs and also numbered areas for all the parts to go. Haven't finished disassembling the the quad setup yet as I haven't yet found good instructions on how to do it properly (no videos I could find showing the quads being separated) but I will figure that out one way or another this evening even if I gotta just wing it. Don't these carbs have ever been disassembled before, still had the caps over the mix screws and no scuff marks on them at all showing they had ever been popped off (all 4 were set to 3.5 turns out). I am 3rd owner, I know for sure the guy prior to me was not a DIY guy and from what he said he bought the bike from original owner with extremely low miles so doubt original owner had any reason to do anything either. Carb Internals are in surprisingly good shape for being 14yrs old, even the o-rings look pretty good tho I am obviously still going to replace everything. The float bowl o-rings show the worst build-up and there is a little bit of normal black build-up in the carb throats but no debris or sign of ethenol phase separation at all in the carbs & none of the jets had any build-up in them whatsoever, really helps make a case for running stabilized non-ethenol fuel like I have since getting the bike in 2021. Obviously when I take trips I use whatever fuel I can find but always switch back when on home turf since its readily available in my area since I am close to the largest lake in NC with a ton of boaters. Thanks again for helping a noob out!

And make sure that when you snug them altogether that the pots are all perfectly flat with each other. You will need a perfectly flat surface to set them on to accomplish this. So first you make sure that they are tight together, and then you bench sync them.

And some are 10s when you take em home but 2s the next morning. 🤪🤪🤪

My sound effects are different though. I sound more like Rice Krispies when I’m moving.

around 2007, when I bought my 07 venture. some of the members of Star 297 Ft. Lauderdale told me about it.

I had them installed on my Honda Valkyrie Interstate this spring after having Dunlop D4's. Two trips to the US through the mountains and twisties of Virigina and West Virginia HWY 250 and 33 and a short drive through Skyline Drive and they worked well. 2nd trip to Vermont this time in some rain and they worked very well in all conditions. I would give them a thumbs up! Mark

Loretta's got an Apple pie in the oven now and will be making a pumpkin roll. Thursday we have my youngest son, one of his neighbors and his wife since they have no family in the area. Friday and the weekend we will actually be celebrating Christmas with my oldest son, daughter in-law and the grandkids. Friday desert will be a peach cobbler. Can't wait for the left overs LOL.

Rode the bike to work this morning, 47 when I left the house. Still enjoyed the ride. Layers are important. Should be a gorgeous ride home at 70.

Kris and I have been talking about doing some landscaping clean up on the back side of our small, park like back yard. We got a couple estimates to remove some over grown and/or out of place pine trees and just generally clean up the layout. I was amazed at the $10,000.00+ prices! Today I decided to start on the job myself. I tackled one of the smaller, out of place blue spruce trees at the back of the lot. It was about 8" di. at the base and 25 feet or so tall. My Bauer(Harbor Freight) 18V 10" chain saw made short work of felling, limbing, and sectioning the evergreen. One 5Ahr battery still had 2/3 charge after it was all said and done. I'm thoroughly impressed with this inexpensive tool that I bought as a onetime use item for pruning a 40 year old apple tree last spring.

I have the Ryobi also. Battery does good and it cuts well -- With a sharp blade. Biggest job it's done was some careful plunge cutting into a couple large stumps to prepare for burning them out. I don't have any other chainsaws as living I the city I haven't really needed them. Teh 2 hand axes I have work fine for what I do. 40 - 45 years ago my dad insisted I use a double sided ax. He was not going to spend money on a chain saw since he had a strong boy LOL. For limbing or trimming we had this old bow saw. That blade was a beast, almost lost a finger to it. We'd climb tree to cut limbs and I will never do that again.

Got everything torn back apart last night and removed the carbs. Nothing was obvious regarding the fuel dumping out the overflow, it was the rear left cylinder #1, you could see a little fuel inside the intake boot mounted on the cylinder and the top of the piston was also wet when I removed the spark plug. No other cylinder pistons had any access moisture in them. Pretty sure it had to be one of the needles/valves not sealing properly that caused this. On side note I do think I set the floats a little too high (or low when carb is upsidown) since factory setting was really far off as other people have previously noted when they checked their float heights (mine were set at 6.0mm from factory and spec is 8-9mm). When tab is bent to "raise" the floats to the proper level, when it pushes down on the needle into the valve seat it pushes the needle sideways a little bit and I am guessing that had to be the reason the needle didn't seal correctly so gonna find a happy medium where I can get the floats close the the recommended height with the tab as straight as possible so that hopefully doesn't happen again (I did install new valves/needles/o-rings previously), thinking if I go with 8mm or .0315 it should prevent that and I will be within spec, initially I had set them at 9.0mm or .036 which is on the high end but when re-measured after taking the bowls off again they were all closer to 9.3mm so gonna be more careful this time around resetting them. Another thing was when I previously re-assembled the carbs after re-building them I noticed that my vacuum slide diaphragms had shrunk a little bit which I guess is too be expected being 12yrs old and they were tough to get back into the outer grooves when re-installing the outer diaphragm covers, I used a little dielectric grease on the outer edges of the diaphragms to help them slip into place but when I removed the cover for the Cyl #1 cover I realized that it had pinched the edge a little. So bit the bullet and ordered 4) new OEM slide diaphragms last night which will be here in a week. I know that would not cause the flooding/rich condition.... if anything once running a bad seal on the diaphragm would cause a lean condition but glad I caught that since I would have potentially fixed the flooding issue and then had to pull it all apart again later once I realized the bike wasn't running right since with a vacuum leak I would never have been able to sync up the carbs properly. Honestly if this is the only issue I run into after stripping the bike down as far as I did over the last 4 weeks including tearing off the entire rear end including the swingarm, I will be pretty happy! Once I got her back to running right my last planned upgrades for the winter include removing the front wheel to also replace the bearings/seals on the front wheel (already did the rear and there was VERY little factory grease in them)...same with the swingarm bearings tho I did not replace them, I just cleaned them out and re-packed them properly with Lucas synthetic marine grease as well as all the needle bearings in the suspension linkages. I also recently bought 4) of the Polk 402 speakers & foam baffles that I plan to replace to get a little better sound, maybe down the road I will add an amp under the rear trunk and install a good head unit where the factory cassette player currently is. The only issue on this bike I have never been able to resolve is the fuel sender gauge. Since buying the bike in 2021 the fuel gauge has had 8 blinks.... from my research that pointed to replacing the fuel sender assembly in the gas tank. I replace it in 2021 and the same thing kept happening, thinking I got a factory dud I sent it back and get another new replacement, installed it.... and same thing. I have ohm'ed out all the wiring and done everything else I can think of and never been able to figure out that issue so I have just always reset my trip when I fuel up and keep an eye on it that way but damn its annoying not to have a working fuel gauge even tho I know they are never totally accurate on motorcycles and boats. You know what, now that I think about it even tho I tested all the wiring the one thing I have not done that could cause this if all the components & wiring are good is make sure that the connector that you unplug to remove the gas tank is making a perfect connection when plugged together, think I will remove both of those connectors and direct wire them temporarily to see if somehow there is a bad connection there. See, sometimes talking to yourself gives you light bulb moments! Lol Happy holidays!

Removed the "twinkie" while everything was easy to get too and cleaned up everything... there was a little crud in the bottom of that opening that I got all cleaned out before cleaning up all the parts really well. Put a little dielectric grease on the new gaskets and re-installed everything using the 7.2ft lbs of torque specified in the service manual

Hello everyone, recently I picked up 2008 Venture with 29,000 miles, and I absolutely love this thing. I took a break from riding for few years, and I am getting back into it. I would like to head south from Denver, and not wait for spring thinking of going to New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Any roads, scenic routes, point of interest I should visit and see? I am planning on camping during my trip. Any recommended camp sites/camp grounds? Will pack as little as possible. Have all of the needed gear (small tent, bag, air pad, etc). Have gym membership for showers when needed. looking forward to connecting with people from this group too!

At least it’s before Christmas! There’s many after Christmas.

Fish Rueben, grilled or blackened.

I guess as long as it is getting better, that is something to be optimistic about. Cold air is in place this week in our area, so no riding for the rest of the week. I guess I'll have to hit the treadmill this afternoon.

Yep,, some are 40 at 80 and some are 80 at 40.

I really liked that show and I would even stop working on my homework just to watch the show for an hour. Your new $6 Million dollar men sounds reasonable taking into account inflation.

Hey Earl, Thank you for the reply, I didn't think to check the member vendors portion! Haven't gotten into this yet as work has been pretty crazy, I have been doing a lot of traveling & I leave again for a week on Dec 4th so likely wont start tearing the front end apart until the middle of Dec but will absolutely PM you if I have any valves out of spec. Would definately love the valve cover gasket install instructions, I have seen quite a few people post about still having leaks after doing the work and that is the last thing I wanna deal with since its fairly time consuming to remove everything in order to get this job done. I do already have gaskets in-hand for the valve covers as I have had this on my to-do list for quite a while and also recently got the 2 twinkie gaskets for preventative measures. Was thinking I would take the carbs apart for a cleaning while out & I have ordered one of Ivan's jet/needle kits as I have heard nothing but good things about them. I am guessing everything else in the carbs will likely look pretty good or at least be easily cleanable since I run ethenol free fuel w/ stabilizer 90% of the time but know from experience that its always a good idea to replace the bowl gaskets. I have done many carb re-builds in the past but have never taken these apart, I do have the gauges to do a carb sync once its all back together. Do you know if the K&L carb float bowl gaskets are good quality? I know 95% of aftermarket stuff for carbs these days are crap. Will post link to the kit I was looking at getting, basically 4) K&L carb kits for $80. I intend to keep this bike long term so I keep doing little upgrades to keep it in top shape. Appreciate you! https://www.ebay.com/itm/192095629148

Sorry for the slow reply gents, was out of town, and just got back. Here is the link in the Member Vendor's section. This kit has the shim tool, picks to remove the shims, About 80 assorted shims and feeler gauges. I also send out a set of new Valve Cover Gaskets, and instructions for a flawless gasket install. Feel free to PM me if I can help. Check out the link for more info about what is in the kit. Earl.

Every time I use one of my saws, I don't put it away until I sharpen it. I just use files, but if you do it every time, it only takes 5 or 10 minutes per saw, and it's ready to go again. If you keep it sharp, and ONLY use ethanol free gas with a quality oil, you'll have a lot less trouble with 2 stroke gas equipment.

Or choke cable length.

Not really newer but definitely not worn out. This one is for sale locally, he started out around $7k several months ago. I’m not looking for one but if the price keeps dropping I may have to. I just don’t want to start over since I’ve gone through mine and preemptively fixed all the known issues and added all the extras I wanted. And yes that is the correct mileage 6700.