cowpuc

Say Frogster,, I have owned a few and installed a number of them through the years.. Personally, I prefer the manual lift blade.. The winch style is ok but you do tax your electrical system and they are slow to activate.. Its a LOT faster job lifting the plow with a handle.. I have altered a number of handles over the years though to add leverage for some underpowered ladiemen... Cycle Country is the best known around here and they use a universal lift and blade with different mount kits for each atv.. Tuff blades for what they are too!! I also have a 10 horse 2 stage blower.. Honestly,, for moving deep snow, you cant beat a blower as it tosses the snow away instead of just piling it up.. Also, if you live in a windy area, remember that piled snow creates snow drifts that create bigger piles that create bigger drifts... Up in Gods country (U.P. of MI) the Road Commision uses truck mounted blowers for their serious business... I also use to have a nieghbor who had a 4x4 Kabota with a rear mount PTO driven blower - what a hoot to play with that bad boy!!! It could take out 4' of snow in seconds!! Big $ outfit (to me) but he did indeed just laugh in Mother Natures face.... Alas, I am becoming more and more interested in "snowbirding" every year... Michigan in summer and Arizona in the winter...... 'Puc

I was going to ask that same question Mammie,,, oh wait,, mine wasnt about holeshots/burnouts - mine was about dolls.. I watched a News Show last night and they had some women (not spring chickens either) on there who spend thousands of dollars on these little "look like real" dollies.. They are sooo attatched to these little pieces of plastic that they take them everywhere with them and treat them just like a real child.. The real answer to your question and mine is - we do it cause it makes us who we are and it gets other folks to look at us ,, we are human beeners that need to be recognized once in a while.. All right guys,,, all together now,, let 'er riiiiiiiiiiiiiiipp

I dont recollect how far North Interstate 15 goes but I have ridden it a bunch of times and REALLY like it cause its on the west side of the rockies - much less chance of snow, rain and the like.. It goes directly into Vegas, From Vegas there is short cut across to Needles that is a fun ride - cant remember what that road is but real fun rolling hills on it.. take 40 east (or is it 26,,, this is all memory,,,) thru AZ and your in business.. I wouldnt ride/drive on the east side of those mountains during the winter if I didnt have to!!!! I am headed that away on the bike as soon as it warms up - gonna ride Route 66 start to finish and do some more exploring at the Canyon and some Ghost Towning... Anyway,, have a GREAT trip!! Puc

Shep and WIfe: Truely sorry to hear about your mishap - but THANK GOD you two are ok!! Hoping and praying your total recoverys come quickly!! I agree with using U-Haul.. THey are cheap!! ANother thought on hauling,, if you have to lay the bike down on what ever trailer you get - go to a store that sells beds and pick up couple queen size mattresses - lay the bike down on them and your good to go!! I have hauled several bikes cross country like this and it works GREAT!!!!!! 'Puc

'Puc

Thanks for the reply Dan but actually that doesnt sound like it.. These hobos were saying that its right off 40,, down a couple unpaved roads but fairly close to the highway.. they also said that it is NOT occupied and that the historyof the town is acutally unknown... Thanks for the reply though and I DEFINITLY will check that out this coming year!!! 'Puc

I have 8,,, yes I said 8 inches of fresh powder here at the house.. Muskegon Mi - lake Michigan shoreline - wayyyyy to cold for my blood!!! \ 'Puc

Ok all you far riders and local yocals to the great state of Arizona.. Reading the recent post about the Canyon area brought up a question for you guys.. A few years ago I was exploring the Black Hills of SD and stopped for lunch in a small town.. There were a couple hitch hiker backpacking hobos there who I got yappin with.. We got talking about how much fun exploring Ghost Towns is and they asked me if I had ever been tothe one just off 40 - I think they said west of Flagstaff - that no one has been able to figure out exactly where it came from.. Anyone know what, where, how to find it and the like on this?? Any other really cool out of the way Ghost Towns and the like you would be willing to share??? Planning another bike trip!!! Thanks for the help!! 'Puc

That is soooooooooooooooooooo awesome you girls did that!! I travel the desert region every year and EVERY time I see pics like that it still stirs a longing in my heart - indeed,, there is NO WAY pictures can do that region justice.. Everytime I see the canyon I just stand there looking over the edge thinking "that isnt real - it isnt possible that something could be that beautiful... Thanks for sharing 'Puc

Thats odd,,, I got one last year and havent heard a thing,,,,,,, maybe its cause we got a new house hahahahaha THANKS for the update!!!!!! 'Puc

Do as mentioned about draining the carbs and then shooting carb cleaner in the draing hoses - put the little red tube from the cleaner can up in to the carb overflow tubes and DROWNED each carb.. Let the carbs drain back out.. Find the fuel hose feeding the carbs and splice it a spot where you can get the nozzle of an air gun into it.. Pick up a air chuck for your air compressor ---- you know,,, the kind used for blowing high pressure air for parts cleaning.. attach a piece of tubing on the air chuck that will fit tightly into the gas line - got a do a little McGivering.. WIth the bowls EMPTY apply 60 pounds of air in quick puffs into the fuel line.. What doing it this way does is drops the floats down so the float valve is open and debris can pass thru.. Now pick up an inline filter and place it where you spliced the fuel line.. Unless for some reason your float valves have been compromised and are ruined this works great.. The tapping on the float idea is also a VERY good method and simple fix.. I once tapped on sticky floats while crossing the country on a 69 Honda 750 Chopper with rust in its tank... Bike would start running rich and I would reach down and tap on the carbs and it would clean right out.. 9 days of riding, 4000 miles and 2500 taps,,, had a blast but those carb bowls looked like a wood pecker had attacked them them hahahha 'Puc

Done deal - prayers sent for your hubbies safe return!! 'Puc

A laughable one: My daughter and were Mountain riding on a two laner in Colorado and came upon a cone marked section of the road with a Signal Girl and a Work Ahead sign near her.. We road that section of road for MILES and never did see another person OR any evidence of work being done or needing to be done - STRANGE.. A not so funny one: Michigan is in BIG TIME hurt over this economy.. I got ticketed last summer for 2 - I AM NOT KIDDING - 2 over by Bronson Village Police (tiny town on 12) who happen to be running radar right where their little village marker is on the outskirts of town.. I explained to the officer that I had a CDL and that us truckers have to really watch our point count - can be job threatening.. He says "we are running a sting and by law we have to write EVERYTHING over the limit - beside for 2 over there will be no points just a small fine".. I called the area court to find out what my small fine was and was informed that the officer was not properly informed.. the going fine AND points charged are the same for 1 mile over as 10 miles over.. THe clerk told me that I could fight it but I would have to appear in Court to due so - 4 hours from home!! I later asked a State Trooper about this "sting law" that says the officer has no choice but to write the tickets during a sting.. He saidthat is absoulutly not true - the LEO ALWAYS has the choice to write or not!!! He informed me that a LOT of small towns are going thru very hard times right now and that LEO State funding is getting tighter and tighter creating a "bring in the cash or your out of a job" situation.. Apparently here in Michigan all that ticket money goes to the State and is used for LEO funding state wide!! BOttom line folks - if you cant abide by MI Law (and there are all kinds of tricky little traffic laws that NOBODY even realises exist) you dont want to travel here!!!!!!! 'Puc

Did you guys have to re-order the calendars or are they shipping out to everyone who got them last year?? Thanks for the info! 'Puc

For kicks, let the air out of your forks, sit on your scoot with the weight of the bike on the tires, now look down at the front forks under the bars and you will be able to see the dust covers on the sliders.. Bounce up and down a little and notice how badly your springs are sacked out - unless those puppys have been changed they ARE gone.. Little bit of inside info to go with the new progressives your gonna want to install,,,, it seems that back in the good ol days of producing really really really fast touring bikes Yamaha spent sooo much cash on R and D for engine design that they couldnt afford quality fork AND there was an abundance of fish oil left over from the resturants in Tokyo sooooooo guess what ended up in the forks of our bikes??? Seriously,,, your scoot has probably never had a fork bath, pump er clean - purge it with some 7 wieght and pump clean again and fill to spec.. I use a syringe with a piece of metal tubing in it to get the fork fluid exactly equal... It probably wont handle like an R1 when your done but it will do nicely up to 135.... 'Puc

I just cant even imagine or explain the life long memories that my children and I wouldnt have if we had to live under such oppression.. Socialist simply have no idea what happens to a people when they are withheld the God given right to live free.. Ironically, we freedom seekers here in Michigan have been fighting with our Governor (who by the way is a socialist thru and thru) for years to give us back our right to choose and she simply wont do it.. Now our own President just sold out our way of life to socialism and many people like myself believe it is going to take some very serious hard work to ever get our country back... Truely, I feel for my brothers on the other side of the border but PLEASE be rest assured - your not alone in dealing with such nonsense! 'Puc

Thanks for the compliment Joe.. My wife of 28 years and a number of really close friends have been twisting my arm for a while now to staple all my ride stories together and create a book.. Another very close friend went behind my back and got with a designer and put together a cover/title and the like and gave it to my wife,,,,, the guy is always trying to stir up trouble.. All that said,,, I have told all of them over and over again that if I ever did actually persue such an honorable task that I would only do so because of responses like yours.. That "stirring of the soul" that your talking about is what 50 years of "Cowboy Biking" has always done for me so I KNOW how important it is in our lifes!! Thanks again!! Pitbull, I rode out to Lake Placid this past summer with my brother and some of his friends.. That group had to head home and I went off by myself exploring the mountains between Placid and my daughters house in Greenville SC.. I found all kinds of really cool stuff on that little weeklong jaunt to her place.. I found several real old abandoned coal mines, even strapped a classic vintage coal miners axe onto the front of my scoot that I found in the hills.. Found several old mountain shacks buried under Kudzu Vine and even found a couple real old car bodies on the side of a two track.. During that whole time I never did see one of them Cowboys your talking about..... Side note,,,, I did pass by a drinkin joint along the way that had a bunch of bikers sitting around drinkin but they didnt have any trail dust on em...

Having raised 4 kids in the sticks of upper Michigan and having tasted the freedom of our great country with one of them at a time on the back of my scoot has always brought about thoughts simular to the starter of this threads thoughts.. Up before dawn, breakfast of fruit from the bag hanging on the antenna,, ride the prairie/mountain two tracks,, stop and pan gold for a few hours,, pull into a small western town about 1 hour east of Jackson Hole Wyoming.. Can feel the dirt on my neck cracking as I turn my head to answer the lady with the Cowboy hat on behind the counter.. Yes mam,, gallon a water - box of granola - bag of Jerky and just a minute,,,,, Wahooo (daughters bike name she earned by making it 4000 miles without complaining) - you want some gummy bears (her fav).. Sure Dad she says - I smile at her when she smiles at my question cause she is COVERED in prairie dust and her eyes look like racoon eyes where her goggles left em clean... After we pay for our gas and groceries we meandor back out to the old 84 Royale that just cleared 135,000 miles on the ode.. Having learned longggg ago that you always saddle up from the right side, my daughter headed that way.. About that time a Cowboy riding a gorgeous Mustang all solid in dark brown color except for 3 white feet comes around the corner of the old building we just walked out of.. The old guy smiled at us, tied his reigns to a hitching post beside the building and walked over to Wahoo and I.. He asked where we were from. My daughter being only 12 was still shy and she kinda winced at me like we were in some kind of trouble.. I pulled my googles back off (dont always wear them but on this particular day it was REAL windy and prairier dust in the eyes aint much fun) and told him we were from Michigan.. He asked how long we had been out - 17 days I said.. He said it looks like you two Cowboys are having a blast.. I told him that he was right on target and I told him thanks for the compliment of calling us Cowboys.. He said that it has been MANY years since he had actually seen folks like us that still practiced the real art of Cowboying and that it did his heart good to meet us.. I asked exactly what that meant to him.. He said he could tell by looking at our bike and us that we didnt take to moteling and that the water jug hanging from the antenna and bag of apples under the jug told him we also probably lived off the land and only came back to civilization when necessary - I smiled and told him he was very observant.. He asked what I would do if we were miles back in the mountain and the bike died.. I laughed and said,, what would you do if you were miles back on your ranch and your horse died?? He said he would walk out.. I told him that I had always told the kids that if we did get into a broken bike to the point that I couldnt fix it that we would give the bike to some Indian kid and take a bus home - he laughed and said "you know what - just from the little bit I have talked to you I can tell you are serious - and I was... I also told him that he was correct about not being motelers either,,,, that there is just NOTHING like riding morning till dark and dropping the bag on the desert floor whereever you happen to be after riding 16 hours... He laughed and asked my daugher if she got bored sitting back there... She smiled and said "life with my dad has never been boring.. That all REALLY happened back in the early 90's.. Fast forward to last year... My other daughter was home for the summer from Medical School (Manhatten/Cornell) and she chose to do a 3 weeker out to Sturgis and then Montana on the bike instead of flying to Europe.. It had been several days of hard prairie riding on two tracks, and we ran into a couple of Lakota Indian women at a Farm fueling station out in the middle of nowwhere.. They had a little boy with them about 6 years old that couldnt take his eyes off us.. I walked over to him, wiped some of the dirt off my face and smacked my pants so the dust flew off and you could see blue jeans again.. He was well trained and didnt answer me when I asked where he was from.. His mom smiled at me and told me they had a farm about 20 miles away that they raised miniture horses on.. She then says "so where you two cowboys from".. My daughter told her and the ensuiing discussion lasted over 2 hours.. In the end we got invited to thier farm for dinner and offered a barn to sleep in ANYTIME we wanted to stop!!! I do agree with JT about the real Cowboy issue.. Years ago I did a 2 month journey up into Nova Scotia then down the coast,,, coming up out of Texas and across Nebraska shortcutting to Washington State to visit a family friend I did some real digging into finding the ol Chisom Trail... If you dig around a little you can still find monuments that have been placed that show the actual route that REAL Cowboys did their thing... If you do as I do and spend some time sleeping on the earth in those areas you will be SHOCKED at how difficult those guys had it.. The "trail" runs across our country on the east side of the Rockies - do you know what that means??? Muggy - so muggy at night you cant breath , sticky, bug laden, heat and then dont forget those cattle drives were HUGE so STINKY they did!! There is a spot on the red river that Cowboys used to push those grass eaters across and while the cows were crossing the cowboys used to walk across the river on the cows backs - NO SMALL UNDERTAKING for sure.... Anyway,,, even though real cowboying is gone forever I still lean more toward that philosophy way more then the whole "biker" ideal and always have,,, guess its just a flaw in my charector.. Cowpuc

Dont know if you r riding your scoot or not but if you are be realllllly careful in those mountains at this time of year.. My daughter and I did a late season trip to the North Rim a few years ago and hit an ice storm coming through the Grand Mesa and had accumulating snow on the roads near the Canyon.. Still wayyy fun camping and touring as long as you dress warm.. Have fun!!!!! 'Puc

I grew on the early Harescramble courses and MX tracks of the 60s and 70s.. Even the bikes that I personally modified to compete on lacked HUGELY in suspention so standing up was mandatory.. It was easy for me to take the skills of standing and riding and transfer this to the street.. In my, ummmmmm, older years here I still use those skills all the time and they have saved me on my occasions.. I ride thousands of miles every year on the street now and a lot of those miles are while standing.. I have ridden with groups of people and always shocked at how few of riders are accustomed to doing this, it has also amazed me that the bike manufactures have chosen to produce bikes without foot pegs mounted in a postion to accomadate this..

In my experience its pretty uncommon for a battery to just fail. Usually they will get weak and let you know that they are dying.. I have tried to explain to people MANY times that when this happens (battery starts getting weak) it is extremely important to replace it as low voltage is the main cause of electric motor failure - lots of starters are toasted because of it.. Sadly not many people listen to this counsel and I end up replacing a few starters every year because of it.. Pull your battery, toss a charge on it with a battery charger. Clean your battery connectors while apart - clean the contacts on the main fuse. Its been awhile since I have done the following so you might want to start a new thread about the following to check my accuracy but: coming out of the cover on the left side of the engine behind where your shift lever is are three white wires that lead to your stator - on the Venture I believe they exit the stator cover and are routed under the cover that your clutch slave is under.. Anyway, because of its need of high output Yamaha uses a 3 phase system for charging. Follow those wires up to a connector - as I recall its located under the plastic side cover that would be under your left leg while sitting on the bike. Unplug that terminal from the harness. There us a resistance check that you do that checks the stator windings - I cant remember what the resistance is across the stator windings but it should be easy to find out if you want to do this correctly.. More importantly thought is to just shoot a resistance check across the winding and make sure they are all pretty much the same in resistance - just hook your ohm meter up on one lead and test it across the other white leads. Now check each white lead to ground by touching one lead of your meter to the frame and the other to each white lead. If it reads continuity the stators gone or if you get a variance between windings its shot.. The Early XVZs had stator problems because they were not cooled properly.. Yamaha had an upgrade for the system that amounted to getting more oil on the stator. A small splash plate was installed in the stator cover and a sqirt hole in the nut on the end of the crank did the squirting.. Your bike may or may not have this upgrade (your sig line didnt have year of your bike so I am assuming its an early model). I say all this because it is VERY common for a stator to just fail (not like a battery).. When this happens your bike will be running on the battery, the battery doesnt get charged and it can give the rider the impressioin that its bad.. I have bought bike batteries from Auto Zone for wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy less then 150 bucks, take care of them and they last just fine!!!! Oh yea, another possibility is a funked voltage regulator - actually less common then the stator but still a possibility.. FIX IT CAUSE AINT FUN 'Puc

How frugal on fuel is the 1100??

Do my eyes decieve me or are those some aftermarket pipes on that 83???? Maybe had the originals rot out.. Wonder what they sound like..

Now wait a minute here,,,, its ok for a nurse/doctor/anestesiologist to inject dye directly into my blood stream or into my spinal fluid for testing purposes but getting it on the my skin is cause for them to squak??? This sounds like another one of those ignorant insurance company mandates that doctors have to live by...

Back in the early days I was completely wearing out one brand new MX bike a year - literally every nut bolt and washer was destroyed at the end of the year... Unfortunatly the DT Yamahas that I converted to race had the speedos removed and when Honda came out with the Elsinore CR250M it was the REAL DEAL --- its front end never touched the ground anyway... I did purchase several new bikes other then my dirt scoots back then but none of them made the 100000 mark before I swapped them out.. THEN I won a 1978 Harley Low Rider in a Raffle.. IT WAS GORGEOUS and probably my favorite street bike.. I rode it until my first child was born in 1981 - sold it to build on to our home.. I had put 138,000 miles on it in 3 years - made MANY cross country trips on it and spent TONS of hours touring the desert.. Picked up my 84 VR in 84 and retired it at just under 200000 miles.. It was/is just as wore out as my MX bikes used to get - way to much two-tracking out west with the kids on the back I guess.. I am currently using lots of parts off it on the 83 Venture Standard I am riding now - by the way I just got from a 7000 miler on the old gal - did great - NO problems at all!! What would I buy if I could afford it and just ride all the time and add up miles????If I were concerned with MPG - a new Beemer... If not,,,,,, I would build a new V-Twin Chopper to MY specs.... Puc