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To charge the front/rear with air you will need a hand pump or your home compressor regulated way down.
5th gear is way tall and most folks don't shift into 5th till after 50-55mph. These V4's love to rev. If you really want to blow somebody's door off when passing, 4th gear is good for 100mph and 3rd gear is good up to 80mph.
It uses regular gas depending on where you are from and here that means 87 octane.
Venture is standard bike and Venture S is more chrome and chrome fork legs.
I have a 2012 Venture S and it does not seem to whine. For the loudest whine you will ever hear youtube a Honda CTX1300. They are so whiny you can hear them clearly whine, even at idle on all the videos. The worst Venture ever will not sound as bad as a Honda CTX1300. Whine in the Venture comes from the straight cut gears from crank to clutch. Think of it as a dump-truck transmission and just as bullet proof.
Mine gets so-so gas mileage as I live in Texas and I am doing 75mph just backing out of my driveway. I can bury the speedometer easily and pass everything but a gas station. Decent range for me is 170 miles per tank before I start worrying about refueling.
Slow speed handling can be improved by going to a 130/90 front tire.
Carb balance is easy if you have a set of gauges, which you should get a set of.
Valve adjustment is the only major pain in the a$$ every 26,000 miles as you pretty much have to take everything off the bike to get to the valves. Most folks have found after taking everything apart that no valves require Adjustment. One high mileage rider here @PUC does not even bother checking the valves and he is wearing out his 5th Venture now averaging 250,000 plus miles per bike.
There is not much to NOT like about the bike. In comparison to other bikes it is pretty much maintenance free and bullet proof.
Problems:
Clutch:
1. I would not call this a problem but just the nature of the beast. The clutch slave is direct mounted to the hot engine and as a result the clutch fluid gets hot. On my bike, usually once a year and sometimes twice, I have to change out the clutch fluid to regain silky smooth shifting and the ability to find neutral without 10 seconds of futzing around. This is about a 20 minute job and only requires new DOT4 fluid, an empty bottle, a length of hose, and a wrench. Total cost about $5.00 or so.
2. Just go ahead and get a stiffer clutch spring from @Skydoc and you will be glad you did.
Radio:
The sound systems on these bikes are iffy and usually require splitting the fairing, cleaning the contacts, applying dielectric grease and replugging in. I have my connectors zip-tied together for maximum vibration resistance.