Leaderboard

So we've been riding since we were a kid - oh gods it's been 25 years - and in all that time we've never owned anything bigger than a 250. But then our daughter discovered the existence of touring bikes and shoved her iPhone in our face with a picture of a Goldwing on it, demanding to know why she "has to hang on for dear life" on our Puch when she could have been comfy and luxuriating in a world of armrests and cupholders. But like hell we're going to end up on a Goldwing, and we prefer vintage bikes so after a bit of looking we decided on a Venture. Then, as is our usual MO, we did not do sufficient research and bought the first one we liked. Which was this particular '83: After a week of riding it around and poking and prodding at things reality started to set in and we realized that setting this beast straight is going to take a lot of work. In no particular order we've already identified the following issues: The water pump is weak, leaks coolant through the weep hole, and it runs very hot, particularly when sitting in traffic. The plastic bodywork is not in great shape - there's several pieces missing, cracks & broken off tabs all over the place, and it's partially held together with zip ties. The anti-dive system on the front brakes is disconnected. The air suspension system is non-functional. The headlight is very dim. The CMS is throwing a battery warning despite the battery / alternator appearing to be fine. The speedometer reads about 15% faster than actual speed per GPS. The left side of the dash is shattered and the previous owner just screwed a solid plate of ABS over it, rendering the coolant overflow canister inaccessible. The lock over the gas cap is broken and opens with a screwdriver. Second gear currently works fine, but it's got 40k miles on it and there's no evidence that the faulty split-washer's been replaced. So that's looming. The cassette player's missing and has been bypassed. The left rear turn signal is held together with duct tape. The forks make a clunking sound when going over bumps. #1 appears to be the plastic impeller issue, and we've already ordered the parts to deal with that. We're going to reflow the solder on the CMS to hopefully deal with #5 and #6. From what we can tell on #10 it may be more economical to just swap in a 1300 from the 2nd gen when and if it starts popping out of gear. #13 is apparently normal on 83's? The previous owner threw in a set of 2nd gen shocks so it might be worth it to try and swap those in if they're interchangeable. Don't think there's much we can do about #7 since it's cable-driven. Most of the rest are just a matter of hunting down replacement parts, but we're going to need help with #3 and #4 - we don't know how much of those systems are missing and what's broken or how to set it straight. So yeah, we appear to have landed ourself yet another Project 😅. At least we're wrapping up things on the Puch. Wouldn't want to get bored, after all. Bonus pics of the two next to each other. The Venture sure makes the Puch feel tiny as all hell!

Guess what you might call the cable, the inner flex shaft.