cowpuc

I LOVE it!!! I think Beemer did a bang up job in their effort in competing in their market segment with this one.. Personally,, and this is strickly a matter of opinion, I don't see to much connection between this one and the new Venture as far as competition goes but I certainly do see a steady level focus on the new Wing!! That Venture is a spot on shot for attracting the empty nesters in the Vic market (again, IMHO) and maybe some folks who aren't happy with HD for one reason or another but this Beemer and the Honda are in a totally different league.. Beautiful scoot Beemer = very well done from what I see and read! THANK YOU for maintaining your performance edge - there are still a number of folks out here that LOVE to be able to twist it up for a real thrill and totally appreciate that COME ALIVE feeling even in our touring bikes - YEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAWWW! Wonder where the $$ mark is gonna fall on this new one,, while I still think 25k to 30K U.S. is INSANE for 2 wheels and a motor I hope Beemer found a way to tag it somewhere in that range so it remains competitive $$ wise too. If this were so, maybe there are will be more of those gorgeous bikes out and about to play with while out CTFW!! Something I dont get about the new Honda is that they seem to have poked their fingers into more of the sport touring thought (which, being a MK1 1st Gen rider for all these years = I can relate to) with the clam shells and weight loss - I can see that in this new Beemer too. Then they REALLY sharpened their pencils and upped the game with the 4 valve heads but they held back on the HP gains that could have been theirs.. IMHO, 5 HP just doesnt seem like a lot of gain for the RnD costs.. They didnt post numbers at the beginning (I get suspicious whenever they don't post numbers on new designed motors - makes me wanna ask why) of the intro and when I saw that they had dropped intake size I pretty much new those numbers were not gonna compete with the Beemer's.. Shame too cause I think that flat 6 could have really sang a new tune!! I know one thing,, if I am ever at a Rally and have to choose between demoing a touring bike with 100 horse or one with 160 horse - you will find ol Puc over in the 160 Horse line quicker than you can say - "Mom Yam shoulda put a 1700cc V-4 in the new Venture"

WOWZY WOW WOW WOW and a whole nuther WOWZY WOW WOW WOW on top of the 1st one Riv = THAT is flat out TOTALLY awesome:dancefool::clap2:!!! THANK YOU for taking your responsibilities as "Dad" so very seriously and being the warm breeze in your daughters sails - regardless of which star her ship lands under I can assure you, it will be a bright one!! :bowdown:And Riv's daughter ,, ol Uncle Puc and Aunt Tippy here,,,, not all sea's are smooth sailing and easy fishin,,, gonna be a lot of hard work and - at times, it may seem like the world itself is set out to drag ya down.. When those times come - one thing to ALWAYS remember, ya got a Mom and Dad who love ya and are there for ya = they 100% got chur back .. They, and lots of us out here too, are PROUD of you and are rooting for ya!! Study hard (especially Math,, math math math and Chemistry - Brain Surgeons and math go together like hot fudge and ice cream), focus on finding GOOD friends to hang out with (the type that will make you proud to introduce to your family when they come to visit ya and bring ya all kinds of really special goodies) and sail on around the nay sayers. Dont be afraid to grab onto the little golden opportunities in your career path as they pop up along the way too,, those little "specialty tools" added into the tool box of life (like serving part time with Hospice or volunteering at a hospital) can really make the journey a lot sweeter!! Also know that ya got an Aunt and Uncle in the States that are thinking of and praying for your TOTAL success:happy34:!! Maybe someday, after you have sharpened your scalpel's some,, you can come to our house in Michigan with your doctoring bag and take peek inside your ol Uncle Puc's brain and see if you can figure out what that rattle in there is = be a mighty fine Hot Dog or two in it for ya if you do!! THANKS for sharing this great news and your family with us Riv!!

Speaking about reloading , I was really shocked to find some 45/70 Gov Buffalo Gun brass laying on the ground at the shooting range we camped at out on the back of the Flaming Gorge in Utah/Wyoming last summer.. I made up some sovenier packages for my kids out of the treasures laying around and it was an HONOR to find such treasures!! Not all of the camping spots that cha find when out CTFW offer instant souvenier opportunities like this one did:

Heyy Neil,, I'm right over here at the Yamaha booth,, do you see me? I WISH!! Hope your having a good one brother!! If ya get this before it's to late, do us a favor and stop at the Honda booth and check out the new Wings. Maybe snap some close up's and, if they will let you - take a seat on it and let us know what you think.. Be really interested in the leg room availability = is there a spot for forward pegs?? Ohhh man,,,, wish I could have been there!! Any news on testing the new Venture? Have fun! Puc

Another something ya might check = I had something like that happen years ago on one of mine.. As I recall,, there is a wire going from the battery to the ignition system with another one of the funky terminal splices that lays right in front of the batter that had somehow jiggled loose. Got to trying to figure out what happened while setting on the side of the road with my daughter yapping in my ear, noticed that connector didn't look right, pulled it the rest of the way apart, cleaned it, pushed it back together and never did it again.. As far a name for your riding partner,,,, ,,,,, looking at the direction he is facing and knowing what he will probably see back there,,, how bout HOG KALLER ,,,,, and we friends of Hog Kaller will just call him HoKy:biker: GREAT PICS!! Thanks Vaz!

Hoping @VanRiver aint got one of them copyright do hingies on this, and if he does - that I got enough pull that I can somehow weasel out of my pirating ways = here ya go brother!!

Back when the sky was falling during the massive Y2K crisis our neighbor went and bought, besides other essential items, $1000 worth of toilet paper (SERIOUSLY!!).. Because we live on the outskirts of the civilized society, our area was hit much weaker than most area's that suffered thru that time period and, as far as I know, that person still has a good supply of that product. I know where he keeps the stuff so I probably will just depend on his preparedness and my savvy negotiating skills for me to be able to attain the necessary clean up material for this next poop hitting the fan incident. While Tip and I have never been Kayaker's, we do still have our little 12 foot row boat and a set of oars along with a couple shot guns and, of course, everyone knows we still have Tweeksis so I guess, technically speaking, we do subscribe to the "B"uy "O"ars "A"nd "K"ayak's, "Y"amaha's "A"nd "G"uns theory of handling such life altering events!! Excellent thread Jack!!

Jeff: Cheryl and I send our thoughts, prayers and deepest condolences to you and your family. We mourn with each of you at the passing of your precious Mother. We also celebrate with you folks knowing that in the sweet bye and bye, we will get to meet and thank her in person for using her time here below wisely and vigilantly in her effort to raise a good family! Godspeed Skid's Mom and THANK YOU!! Puc n Tip

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, "Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and have come to worship Him" (Matt. 2:1-2) Please tell Marca ol Puc LOVES her idea (OUTSTANDING MARCA!!) but,,, he is not gonna show this to Tippy lest he finds himself heading into town in search of: A 20' tall flag pole, 190' of rope light, 13' of ready rod, couple of nuts and washers and screws, a few tent pegs, a piece of aluminum angle and a piece of plexiglas.

,, I thought we were guessing something that wasn't addressed in his video presentation .. I never was much good at figuring out trick questions Thinking about that comment though, back when I was in college I would with the Prof's any time I would get a wrong answer on a quiz/test.. My negotiating skills in that way proved pretty handy at the end of it all cause I was always on the Dean's list and finished my Bachelor's with a 3.95 GPA because of those highly developed skills.. I would have graduated 4.0 if it wouldn't have been for similar trick questions associated with College Algebra,,,, funny how some things never change:think:!!

Well,,, I've never owned a 2nd Gen or had the honor of working on one but I do thoroughly enjoy participating in a good motorcycle repair guessing game so I am gonna take a guess at what your talking about Sky... Thinking you are talking about something not mentioned in the video or by one of us club members in our responses I am gonna guess that you are refering to the fact that the whole job would have better accomplished had he taken the entire caliper off in the first place. This is assuming that there are pair of bolts that fasten the caliper to the bottom fork leg.. Beyond that,, the only thing that pops into my pea brain that we missed is the thought that maybe the guy would have been better off to take his scoot in and have a professional do the work but,,, what fun would that be

,,,,,, while I whole heartedly appreciate your interpretation here Raggy I think you might need just a little sharpening up on your Polish skills. Case in point,, I am pretty sure that Pawel knew that my Tales were of the true sort and "Tall" had very little if anything to do with anything.. The rest of your interpetation sounds accurate though so,, thinking you earned an A- this time

A few years ago when I was just a young Rabbit/Pheasant/Squirrel killing maniac I asked myself the same question you are proposing here Kretz. In those early days, ammo tended to be very inexpensive so other than thinking it looked like fun - there really was not much point stepping into the loading scene.. One day I was in the basement of our local gun dealers house (back in the day it was common practice for gun shops to be part of a family home - we had 4 of those operations going full time locally back then) watching a reloading operation with a full power indexable progressive shotgun shell loader in full swing.. It was impressive for my 15 year old eyes!! Couple years later I was in another gun shop fondling a pretty little Ruger MK1 .22 pistol and I noticed a Lee Load All ( just like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lee-Load-All-2-Shotshell-Press-12-Gauge-2-3-4-3-90011-NEW-IN-BOX-FREE-SHIP/171234618538?epid=6003304335&hash=item27de60ecaa:g:QGcAAOSwZ8ZW2Yoz:sc:USPSFirstClass!49445!US!-1 setting on a shelf with a price of $17.50 on it and it some how followed me home.. I ended up loading THOUSANDS of 12 gauge shotgun shells with that little loader, enough so that whenever I walked into the woods with my shotgun - any time the breeze blew - every pine cone, hanging acorn or falling leaf became an endangered species. Similar to later in my life, my early life was full of exploritory experiments and my loading techiques suffered from this tendency too.. I soon found that with a small amount of adjustment in technique I could use rocks, marbles and even corn kernels for "shot" if I had too. Talk about a BLAST!! Loading shotgun shells was good training for what was soon to come.. By the time I reach my 20's I was a deer killing crazed maniac with my Thurdy Thurdy as well as my bow but, being that man cant live in a deer blind by himself all the time, I started hunting the other type of Dear too.. I soon found myself enjoying the company of a pretty little thing who's Pop was a WW2 Veteran. It wasnt long and I was accompanying him to the shooting range and "Dynamite Shoots"/"Turkey Shoots" at our local VFW Shooting Range. My girls Dad and his WW2 buddies (wow I used to LOVE sitting at the bar and listening to their WW2 stories) soon had me hand loading Rifle Ammo with them, which,, I soon learned and came to appreciate how much I had learned from my Shotgun loader about how valuable patience, precision and cleanliness is when reloading.. I also had an early start into reading and understanding loading manuals from those early days = not a lot but enough that I knew how important stuff can be when talking accuracy and safety.. Later in life I found myself with a full blown loading operation in the corner of my man cave and, once I began seriously handgun shooting I was in really really deep!! I found holding tight groups from a hand gun at 50 yards with my own load to be just as thrilling as tight groups at 200 yards with a 7 mag which I found just as thrilling as killing a swinging pine cone with my own load.. Not to long ago I lost a lot of the use of and feeling in my hands due to Dupendrens. I knew time was catching up to me and I had long since stopped rolling my own and moved on to other interests.. Having pretty much given up on hard core shooting and already sold out a number of my guns I stopped into a gun shop to pick up a brick of .22 shells to go shooting with my son-in-law when I noticed that the 5 dollar a brick .22 shells had now arrived at 70 dollars a brick AND they were as extinct as a Dino Sore. I also went looking for those 2.50 boxes of shotgun shells and noticed they were now over 15 bucks a box and those 6 dollar boxes of Thurdy Thurdy shells were close to 30 bucks a box!! The 44 mag shells that I had loaded THOUSANDS of too were now non existent!! I told my son-in-law I was gonna go home, take some pics of my old loader and stick it all on Craigs for 6 times what I paid for it all years ago and see what would happen... Sold it all after 2 days = here's some memory pics of my history in loading.. Personally,, if I were gonna do it all over again I would do just what I did in the first place by accident.. I would start with shot gun shell loading to get familiar with the practice and make sure it was something I wanted to get involved with before I spent the big bucks on rifle reloading.. Then I would proceed to straight wall center fire and on to dealing with all there is to sizing em and neckin em and trimmin em and countin powder pieces and weighing bullets and on and on... Of course,, thats just me.... It is a REALLY REALLY fun hobby!! GOOD FUN THREAD!! Here's some pics!!

Now for Pt. 2!! I am speechless!! All I can say is THANK YOU @VanRiver = just amazing!!

Understanding the purpose for this first video will require you, the viewer, to watch part 2 of this series to totally understand what's happening here. I invite you to do so but even if you don't, I say THANK YOU to my friend and fellow club member "Riv" for the amazing early Christmas gift and I also bid him and you- the viewers of this vid, a very Merry and Blessed Christmas Season!! Puc,,,,, Tip and Tweeksis too!!

Personally I cant stand automatics. I find them boring, problematic (I am sure this is because they dont like me either), above my pay grade and hard to understand to repair compared to manual shifts, worthless when out playing on gravel roads or sand dunes and no where near as user friendly or fun in the snow or on the icey roads of Michigan. That said though, because Tippy and one of my daughters refused to drive stick shifts = our family cars have always had to have been auto's so when we went car shopping back in 07 and came home with a 25k 05 KIA Spectra it is no surprise that one of its special features was an automatic tranny.. While thumbing thru it's little owners manual that I found in it I noticed it specked every 30k for a ATF change.. Seems how I already knew everything there was to know about taking care of cars at the time, that was the last time I read that portion of the manual until the little gutless car got to 85k miles and decided it was going to change it's shifting habits. I pictured it's reluctance to shift at it's normal intervals and it's growing tendency to shift hard with it did shift as being contributable to some hydraulic spools (I have done a fair amount of maintenance repair/upkeep on hydraulic presses that use "spools" to control fluid flow) somewhere in there snagging up because of dirty fluid or something along that line.. About this time I remembered the owners manual and was pretty sure I was late on a required ATF change = oooppss.. I figured the little car at least deserved an ATF swap before it got towed into the local steel recycling joint just to be fair to it. Besides,, I was interested to know whether or not a fluid swap would help. Something I noticed thru the years of my experience with automatics was/is that none of the ones I have had experience with had fluid drain plugs or spin on filters (still dont understand that less than admirable design) and our little KIA appeared no different when I slipped under it (I could actually bend over back then) and checked it out.. As I was asking myself how I was gonna get the fluid out to put the new fluid in I noticed the little tranny cooler lines coming from the radiator and thought,,, I wonder?? After removing a line and sticking it into a bucket I started the car and it started squirting fluid into the bucket = pumps,, gotta love em!! I let the car run till figured the bucket had about 3 quarts in it, hooked the line back up, topped the tranny off with fresh fluid, started the car, dropped her into gear to make sure things were still cool and then redid the same process.. I kept going thru this excersize until the color of the fluid in the bucket was the same color and cleanliness as the new stuff I was topping off the tranny with = I went thru 2, 2 gallon containers of tranny fluid I believe - those may have been 1 gallon containers but it seems like they were 2 gallon jugs. At any rate - they werent that expensive compared to what I was gonna spend in finding another car. As crazy as this may sound,, Tip and I went out for an afternoon ride in our KIA to see if it's tranny's attitude had changed and WOWZY - did it ever!! I swear I could "feel" those imaginary or non-imaginary spools freeing up and by the time we had taken three laps around my personal private race track (after season State Park camp ground) the little KIA's automatic tranny was shifting like a new one!! The End P.S. = this little episode did have an influence a deeper understanding and appreciation for the little KIA and, while I was rereading it's little owners manual I also noticed the column concerning cam belt swapping.. I found out that the little fella's motor is an "interference motor" and was sure to end up in the scrape pile if that little rubber band used to spin the cam let go so I decided to swap in a new one of those too.. It ended up with a new water pump, idler gear ect. at the time and I now have a hunch that all of that has contributed to it still being used by us at this time (KNOCK ON WOOD)..

:dancefool:

Indeed,,, and WOWZY was it strange smellin stuff.. I always thought the factory fork oil in those real early Yamaha DT's smelled like some kind of fish oil - man did it stink!! If I'm liein I'm diein - I honestly think the Japs were compressing whale fat or fish hides to get the oil out of em to use in forks or something.. Was also the day and age when a gangster ripping around on one of those DT's could stop at the Yam shop and buy "Oilzum" 2 stroke oil from them right out of the 55 gallon drum and Klotz bean oil was the sweetest smelling stuff EVER if you were running pre mix!!! Be interested to know what you think of the Rotella when ya swap er out Duey!!!

Here's my take on lowering with spring height instead of raising the forks in the trees Mike. The problem with cutting down the preload on the springs (cutting the spacers) to reduce overall height of the scoot is that you are essentially reducing the amount of travel that you have in your front suspention. I suppose that the arquement could be made that raising the tubes in the trees actually changes the steering geometry but,, I have a hunch that reducing the travel by allowing the tubes to travel into the fork legs (increasing sag) will have the same effect because the forks move at a rear ward angle when they compress too.. I think if it were mine and knowing the type of riding I do (pack heavy, get a little off roading in once in a while so I need all the travel I can get) I would be inclined to move the forks up in the tree's even if I had to get short set of bar risers to make the job doable.. Another thought,,, I have found that on my 1st Gens that I ALWAYS swap in Progressives on that when I do go with the Progressives I NEVER run air in my forks.. If I am understanding you here (thinking your shrader's on are the fork caps?) = I think I would consider removing the shraders and capping the holes and see if the fork caps would then fit.. Wonder if the flat caps off a 1st Gen would fit your scoot and give you the added clearance you need?? I know,, ol Puc is all ,,, all comin from a good heart though

My nephew bought a brand new one in 06. It was the "S" model with all the xtra chrome.. Nice scoot that served him well. He sold it to his brother a couple years ago when it had just under 35k on it.. I rode it quite a bit while Jon (nephew) had it = nice scoot!! I know that he did do the aftermarket seat routine as he and his wife toured a little on it and found the OEM seats to be to hard. It seems like a couple of the few issues he complained about was wishing it had a taller 5th gear in it (thing was a torque monster = could have idled at 70 with a little gearing) but told me that they did make taller pulley's for em - he just never got there with it.. I know he also bought pipes and a tuner = this did increase it's performance although stock it was very good IMHO (comparing his Strat to the new Venture (both 113 inch) = I still think the new Venture is 10 or 15 HP down compared to the stock Strat that Jon had - seat of the pants comparison = combined with the Venny being a LOT heavier,, the Strat FLYS compared to the 3rd Gen IMHO). If I recall the stock bag locks had some kind of issues = seems like the tumblers liked to go south on em if not careful. Also, because of high torque = hard on rear tire and oil change method was kind of time consuming. Definitely a VERY worthy scoot and have seen them around on our local Craigs for very reasonable $'s = 3500 to 5.. Jon talked about 3rd gear issues and lifter issues for the early ones like his but to my knowledge, never had a problem with his!!

anybody understand Polish?

and then a few still shots of us with Pawel just in case those vids failed to make it!!!!!

As long as we are running into technical difficulties with no end of problems in sight,, lets double the trouble, see if I can REALLY mess up our club house and try for part 2 here ..

,,,,,,, how bout this one? Is this any better? Sorry bout that gang!!