Flyinfool

Woo Hoo Glad you are back to this story. I was missing getting to read it.

I am still guessing a bad ground. While there are only 2 frame connections at the engine and at the frame ground, there are many black ground wires that are spliced together all over the bike. If any one of those splices has been damaged, or corroded then you will get all kinds of weird and seemingly unrelated interactions. Electricity will always try to find a path back to the battery. It can go through many weird places to find that path. Whenever you have a bunch of circuits suddenly interacting it is almost always a ground issue. Finding it can be a PITA. The biggest clue is that the right turn signal flashes when the left is on. the power is going thru the other bulb to find a way to ground, all of the circuits on that ground leg are needing more power than the indicator bulb so the bulb lights, but the resistance of the bulb is to high to allow all of those other circuits to fully function and that is why the speedo and other things stop working when the turn signal is on. With the bike off. Set your meter to ohms. Connect the black lead to the battery negative terminal. Using the red lead start pulling connectors that have a black wire in them and checking the resistance of the ground circuit, it should be close to zero ohms. The other way to run a similar test. Set meter to volts, or use a test light. With the bike on but not running. (it can be running but stays cool when not running) Connect the black to the negative battery terminal. Check all of the ground wires in all of the connectors you can get to easily. If you find one ground that shows voltage or lights the test light, your bad ground connection is in between that point and the battery. All you can do is keep narrowing it down till you find the bad one.

Sitting you battery should read 12.6V. Sure sounds like a bad ground, A bad ground could also cause the battery to not charge properly.

Contact @Freebird

I bet that @cowpuc could help you pick out an appropriate sticker.

So does that mean that you will need to take your first husband out behind the woodshed with your whip?

So is that more of a burn on your arm than road rash?

The reason for NOT blipping the throttle with a liquid filled balancer is that as the engine revs and then you close the throttle the vacuum goes very high, on some liquid filled tools you can suck the fluid out of the tool and into the engine. The reason for blipping the throttle is to settle the linkages in the state that they will naturally fall with normal use. Adjusting the screws can introduce slight stresses into the links, blipping relieves any tension.

When you changed the oil, did you drain it on the center stand the side stand or a lift? Did you drain the transmission? Most of us do not drain the trans unless you are flushing out a problem like water or gas in the oil, but the oil left in the transmission will require less oil for the refill. Mine always takes a bit less than 3.5 quarts.

Morgan Carb Tune. http://www.carbtune.com/

I check mine once a year, have not had to touch them since I set them 5 years ago.

If you have not messed with anything then it is not likely that the sync would change in just 3 months. But it no big deal to check it at any time.

The guy that explained all of this to you, DO NOT EVER LET HIM TOUCH YOUR BIKE! Might not want to even let him look at it.

6 Months is not so bad. Up here in the land of the SNOW machine it is normal for a bike to sit for 6 months at a a time. When I went thru my heart issues the bike got put up early in October, Never had a chance to do any PM on it for storage and was not able to ride it again until September of the following year. It sat for 11 months with a half tank of crap gas and no treatments in it. It ran a bit ratty for the first couple tanks of gas but it did run and the Seafoam did clean it out. 2 Months later I had to put it to bed for the winter again. Get a battery and some Seafoam in there and crank it up.

There is a whole bunch of them dragging trailers big and small all over the country with no issues.

A battery ttender and a battery charger are two different things. A tender is only to maintain the charge of an already fully charged battery. There are some tenders that also have a charger built in and can do both functions. I would not rely on an single light on any charger or tender or anything else to tell me if there are issues with the charging system. Your best is to install a digital voltmeter to monitor the system. As long as it stays over 13.5 while riding (it may drop lower while stopped at idle) all is good with the charging system. If it drops to less than 13.5 while riding, you either have to much stuff turned on to where the charging system can not keep up with demand, or there is a problem with the charging system. Either way you know that you are not charging and can take proper action before you are left stranded.

The oil level is measured with the springs out and the fork tube fully compressed. You are correct that the more oil you put in effectively increases the spring rate because of the air being compressed. That is why oil level is part of the tuning process. The oil level is adjusting the strength of the front springs. Hydro locking the front forks would not be fun......................

Volumetric efficiency is not usually calculated unless you have some really fancy software. It is normally measured. It is easy to calculate the theoretical flow at 100% efficiency. Displacement in cubic feet X RPM ÷ 2. You will only ever hit 100% flow if you have some kind of forced induction like a turbo or super charger. Yes it is possible to get better than 100% flow naturally aspirated with some highly tuned systems but we don't have those. A realistic Volumetric efficiency for a V-Max is probably close to 90% and closer to 80% on a Venture, these are purely guesses on my part.

Dirty connections is also a common culprit. Check both ground and positive sides, both ends of each cable. You can narrow it down pretty quickly with a voltmeter.

And as for the oil weight and amount to add, that is part of the tuning the front suspension to your preferences and riding style. That is what I am going thru now. Tweaking to get it to feel the way I want it to feel. Since I never rode a new bike I do not know what it is "supposed" to feel like, Others ride much more aggressively than I do so they may want a slightly different setup, same as others that ride less aggressively than me will also want a different setup. It also matters what kind of roads you have. Wisconsin has the 2nd worst roads in the country. Connecticut is the worst. What I call smooth roads is what others call off roading. In fact there are dirt logging roads that are better than some of our highways. So I do not think there is any one right answer as to how to set up the front end.

The special tool for getting pins out is nothing more than a piece of tubing, that slides over the pin to depress the locking tab, mounted in a pretty, and easy to hold handle. I have often used a very tiny jewelers screwdriver to reach in and depress the locking tab to remove the pin. It is not nearly as fast or elegant as the tool, especially in tight places, but then I am not taking pins out for a living where time matters. You have to look closely at the pin and socket to figure out how they are held in, once you see and understand the system it is simple to release it. Ahhh, Dielectric Grease. This subject is closely related to oil, tires, politics and religion when it comes to discussions. But I will toss in my 2¢ anyhow. Dielectric grease is supposed to be an insulator, It is an insulator at both low and high voltages, That much we can agree on, that is also why it works in connectors. It was invented and made to be put into connectors to keep water and air out. Dielectric grease does not add anything to a connection, but then it also does not degrade anything from that same connection either. What it does do is keep air and water away from the connection so that corrosion can not get started. It does nothing to help an already corroded or otherwise bad connection. The use of dielectric grease in a connector requires that the connector is already capable of making a good connection. IF the application of dielectric grease does degrade the connection then there were already other issues with that connection. Dielectric grease is very thin and a good connection will push it out of the way and still be an equally good connection but now sealed against air and water intrusion. I doubt anyone on this site can show me a case where they can even measure an increased voltage drop or increased resistance from using Dielectric grease on one of our bike connectors that is already clean and making a good connection. Now come back in 5 years of being out in the weather and road dirt and salt spray if you got close to the ocean, and make that same measurement and see which connector held up better. Of course there are applications where dielectric grease is not the appropriate thing to use and would be very bad to use. Our multi pin connectors are one of the places dielectric grease should be used. The only places it should not be used on our bikes is on the switch contacts of high power switches like the inside of relays and inside of the solenoid were arcing during make or break is likely, but those are generally sealed and you can not put it there anyhow. There are "conductive greases" available, actually the grease is still an insulator, but they add powdered metals to add some conductivity, You do NOT want to use conductive grease in your multi pin connectors since it just takes a smear or fingerprint of it in the wrong place to short things out and if it is not the correct type for the specific connection it can make things worse than using nothing at all. If dielectric grease was so bad in a connector, why is it used in aircraft connectors, Why is it used by every auto maker, Why is it used in marine connectors? Surely that many engineers cant all be wrong, or can they? Here is some good reading on dielectric grease myths.

If you can not find the 4 way, there are a few ways to fix it. 1. It looks like it is either plated brass or steel. If so you could sleeve it inside with a piece of thin wall brass tube and solder/braze it all back together. 2. Find or make/modify a fitting to fit into the carb body and add tubing and Tees to make it all work. 3. If you wanted to get fancy, you could solder/braze/weld up a new 4 way out of 3 fittings.

Man that is scary. Glad you 2 are both pretty much OK after you both spilled. Bikes are a lot easier to fix than bodies. So are you going to buy her a really good helmet for this day forward?

Nice work Gary. It is obvious that you need to keep all the pizza and beer to yourself so that she does not backfire anymore.................

Some things to check on the trailer you are looking at. Tire wear, be sure that the wear pattern is even across the thread. towin or towout will wear the tires quickly. Tire date code. Tires more than 7 years old are in need of replacement. Make sure all of the lights work.