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Good Afternoon Brothers and Sisters. Been a Serious Minute or 2.. I hope all of you have been doing well. Issues tied to the aneurysm had me sidelined for a long hot minute but things seem to be on the upswing these last few months with a great recovery and a decent outlook. Had to park the bike due to not being able to safely hold it up coming to a stop. Couldn't do much of anything , No work done on the cabin etc. Full Stop across the board. Its nice to be mobile again and Great to return here to bug yawl to death!! Gonna Browse the boards and try to catch up on the goings on over the next few days/weeks. Opened a small engine repair shop in an old fire House in the Center of Danforth about 12 miles from the house. Gives me something to do and I get paid to break stuff etc. So much for yarning. Yawl Have a really Great day and I be seeing ya!!! Ride Safe!! and God Bless ya!!

Thanks. It was a great trip! For my return route, I stayed off of interstates & rode 2-lane hiways for all but the last part to my house. What a big beautiful country we live in! So many awesome small towns and wonderful people you meet there. One of the highlights was the motorcycle museum in St. Francis, KS, a small town in the northwest corner of KS. The quality and quantity of bikes in this collection blew my mind! If you've never been and are within a reasonable ride to get there, its worth the effort! https://stfrancismotorcyclemuseum.org/

Some of us think that the fuel lines tend to break down on the inside due to ageing and ethanol, you might think about changing those out.

Today was spent working on the bike. I got the carbs out and started with the one I thought was causing the problem, carb on #1 cylinder. I checked the pilot jet and I could see light through it but it was dim. After spraying carb cleaner and compressed air, it seemed a light brighter when checked again. I went ahead and replaced all rubber components with what I had on hand. This included the o-ring around the jet tube and the gasket between the jet block and carb body. I also replaced the rubber plugs at the bottom of the jet block. I can confirm for sure that B12 chemtool will swell old rubber to some degree. The original rubber plugs were sealing well. I won't say they were the most supple rubber I have ever seen but they would seal against the bore of the block whereas originally they were like chalk pieces and would fall right out. I didn't trust that they wouldn't start disintegrating so they were slated for replacement. After I replaced the rubber components I went ahead and blew everything out with compressed air and carb cleaner (on all four carbs). After I put it all back together, I ran a carb sync and when the bike had warmed up, the rough running and missing was gone. I finished putting it back together and took it for a test drive and confirmed, at least for now, everything is working as intended (God willing it will be okay in the future for awhile as well!) No backfiring through the carb at low loads and would blast to high speeds on the interstate easily. I ran the tank with the remaining B12 down to 2 bars on the gauge and refilled with fresh gasoline with no additives. I know there is still some B12 in there but should be diluted and plan on taking a longer ride tomorrow and run several tanks of clean gas through it. I still can't confirm what was blocking the pilot jet, it wasn't totally blocked off which could also be confirmed that the bike didn't have a dead miss and I could see light from it. Frankly, it scares the hell out of me since I had a new filter installed when I did the new fuel pump. I can only imagine that the contamination originated somewhere between the filter and the pilot jet. I'm not sure if bad gas can pass contaminants past a filter that can coalesce into a jet and restrict it. It is also possible some varnish that cut loose off the carb bowl or some other contamination from a fuel line got in there. Really hoping I don't have to do this again for awhile but getting to where I can get it done in a day at a leisurely pace. I will update further if I have other problems, but praying this baby has been put to bed. Thanks for all the help and suggestions, have a great weekend!

Don't know how to take a selfie yet? Nice to see some faces that are happy.

Kill switch?

Yesterday was the end of my month-long, 5.5k mile test ride..... With some obvious subjectivity, the bike did not have the wind-induced death wobble issues as I previously experienced, or at least not nearly as bad. However, in certain wind conditions, the bike was still tossed around quite a bit. The worst case scenarios were with a strong cross-wind and trucks. The turbulence coming off a truck with little or no ambient wind was minimal and the bike was stable. But, oh boy, hit a strong cross-wind and the truck turbulence threw me around like a rag doll, just like my previous experience, but without any significant front end wobble added to it after tightening up the head bearing a bit. I do have the wide F4 windshield, which is 4" wider, on each side, than stock, so 8" overall. At this point, I'm thinking that is definitely a factor. I will be looking for a stock windshield to see if that makes a difference. I rode a pure stock '99 RSV from '99-'02, including one such trip as I just completed, and do not remember having these wind issues. Of course, age-related memory issues could be part of that too.

This is quite common. Often pads which withstand higher operating temperature quiet often need to heat up to a certain temperature before they become fully effective. This is why you will often see stock car drivers ride their brakes before a race in order to warm them up so they have maximum brake effectiveness during the race also another reason why just because something is used on the track does not mean it is good for everyday driving. I have also known brake pads that have amazing stopping power but loose 50-70% of it when the rotors are wet and cold. When asked I generally tell people unless their vehicle is constantly heavily loaded, pulling a trailer or running hills constantly not to buy the high end pads but stick to something closer to the middle range and for that Sunday driver or the person who only gets out once or twice a week to do a bit of shopping the cheap organic pads are probably their best choice since at slow speeds softer pads stop better and there is little or no metal in the pads to rust from sitting and metallic pads do corrode even crumble and fall apart from lack of use due to a vehicle spending more time parked than driven. Believe me its no fun trying to convince a person that the brakes on their car are scrap even though they barely have any millage on them.

UPDATE: well the camera unit mounted in the trunk contains a “built in” mic, but that doesn’t help much. All I’d get is some engine sound and rear speaker music. Fortunately it had an AV jack for an external microphone. I did some research and found a small waterproof mic, mounted it in a perfect place “no wind noise” cockpit. The cockpit acts like a reflector to pick up voice comms, some engine sound and of course music. Perfect blend! Here’s the final results. It’s the black center dot. I think it looks factory and you’d never notice it unless it was pointed out. Of course now that everything is recorded, I have to watch my “road rage” verbiage! 🤣

Thanks guys!

Short video of our ride to Bald River Falls.