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Rick Butler

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  1. Rick Butler
    Steve, It's an early Bushtec. Rick
  2. Rick Butler
    Gary, I thought I had already sent you the SS paper that my friend David wrote up several years ago, but I have attached it again. He relocated the battery like you may be needing to do. Another piece of advice is to throw away those tall carb junction rubbers and use the crossover juction rubbers. You will have to mill away the chamfered end of the carb base to make the carbs fit these rubber junctions, but it will give you more frame clearance and will make it alot easier to get the carbs mounted up. Those heavy double clamped junctions are really a bear getting the carbs into. Hope this helps, Rick
  3. Rick Butler
    Gosh Crazy, Are you trying to put me out of bussiness The pillowtop is my favorite seat to rework and here is what I basically do to one: http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=27039 http://www.venturerider.org/classifieds/showproduct.php?product=1023&title=butt-butler-seat-mod&cat=25 Except that after I get the foundation reshaped, I now replace the 1" oem foam with an exact shape layer of 2" memory foam which really makes for a nice riding seat. You take an interesting approach but I'm not sure that I would consider removing and replacing the entire center section of the seat and possiblely damage the integrety of the entire foundation? But my solution only costs $40 and saves most of the mess and missery of tearing up a good seat. But I hope it works out for you, Rick
  4. Rick Butler
    No need for appologies Dennis, The GL1800 is a great bike and I almost had one after my last crash and burn on my 02 Midnight. But I decided to give her one last chance and installed my first proportioning valve and that saved her from the scrap yard. However, if you ever get a little uncomfortable on your GL seat (s), I do a bang up job on that seat. It's still one of the best oem seats on the market, but it still needs a little help, depending on the rider. So let me know if I can help, Rick
  5. Rick Butler
    Cliff, Your springs have lost all of their sag. You can help this situation out some by maxing out the air in both the front and rear, but you really need to replace both springs where Progressive still has a replacement spring for your rear shock as well as fork springs. Hope this helps, Rick
  6. Rick Butler
    Yeah Plane, I'm with Earl, except that I take it to the extreme. Even though I had a CB handle back in the 70s, I have never felt comfortable with using a handle on forums, even though I do use Uturn on a few. But on this forum, I felt I would always be amoung friends so I decided to use "Rick Butler", so I wouldn't have to tell everyone that I'm "Uturn" on the forum. In fact when I reply to a post, the first thing I do is look at your profile to see if you have a name to where I can reply to you personally....that's just the way I am. And those phone calls don't come from information on the internet, they most likely come from a mailing list they have purchased or a automatic phone dialer. Gosh, if anyone wanted to find me from a Google search, they would have to sift through a whole pile of Rick Butlers before they got to me :-) So, Plane Crazy works for me, Rick
  7. Rick Butler
    Melvin, The main reason that I like using a relay to power a circuit (extra lights, horns, etc) is for the switching element of the circuit.....especially when you have a set of handlebar switches (especially the one that mounts on the reservoir cover) like you have installed. Like any automotive accessory relay, you use the correct size wire for the accessory you are powering for posts 30 and 87 (power in and power out). Then on the coil switching posts 85 and 86, you can use smaller wire because the coil only pulls milliamps. So, this means you can run a very small wire for the switch. I usually use a dual conductor 22 guage speaker wire to switch the ground wire from post 85. This way you don't have a wire with current going to a switch and you can use one of the two wires to go from post 85 on the relay to one side of the switch and the other to go back to ground on the frame. This just makes for a much simplier and cleaner job (using a set of very small wiring), especially when you have a gang of 4 switches on a handlebar mount. Hope this helps, Rick
  8. Rick Butler
    No Ray, The RSV and RSTD normally set lower in the rear than the front. If you understand motorcycle steering geometry you know this results in the bike being very stable going in a straight line but becomes very lazy when you try to make the bike turn. The leveling links correct this deficiency and raise the rear to level the bike and thus make it more responsive to steering turn inputs. Now adding air to the rear suspension will raise the bike some but only to the extent of the free sag of the rear suspension. And the more weight you place on the rear suspension, the more air you should add to set the proper right hieght of the bike to make it handle better. But by saying "make it handle better" you understand this is a personal opinion as some riders think the bike handles just fine with the rear slammed to the ground and all of the suspension travel taken up by the weight over the rear wheel. This why my Signature line states "The best you have ever ridden is the best you will ever know". Hope this helps, Rick
  9. Rick Butler
    So Ray, Which one did you chose? The Centech AP-1 is one of the more popular ones, but costs around $50. You need to use a 30 accessory relay to provide power to this fuse panel, but for less than $10 the one that you can buy from O'Rielly's which provides pretty much the same functionality. And both of these will attach to the surface above and behind the battery. But when you say "maintaner" do you mean battery tender? If so, these connections really need to be attached directly to the battery posts rather than flowing current through a fuse panel. Hope this helps, Rick
  10. Rick Butler
    I don't know Brian, I tried a set of E3s when they first came out and I was very surprised how much narrower their 130/90-16 appeared from that of a Metzler 880 130/90-16. It probably wasn't much narrower, but it certainly caught my attention since I'm one of the first RSV riders that chose to go with the narrower width. But at that time Dunlop had not come out with a 150/90, so if you wanted an E-3 that was the only option. But since then they now have one. I think if I were in your shoes, knowing what I know, I would probably go with the standard 150/90 16 E-3 front tire....JMHO. The only 150 that I've seen since that time that I would NEVER ride on is the oem Bridgestone. Hope this helps your decision some, Rick
  11. Rick Butler
    No Mike, They only offered these items on the 83 and 84 1200s, to block the heat coming out of the engine compartment. But when Yamaha added the adjustable vents in 86 (maybe 85) they weren't needed and were discontinued. So if you want a set, you will have to find someone to make them....probably out of polished stainless. Hope this helps, Rick
  12. Rick Butler
    Yeah Neil, I had the same thing happen to me a while back and striped out an allen socket hole. But I just happened to have another caliper in my junk drawer that I robbed a replacement from. But I had noticed from working on a friends newer RSV that Yamaha had changed these pins from an allen to a 12mm nut. So I too went an ordered a new set. But in cases like this I always pick the newest RSV to select parts for rather than my 02 Midnight, just to make sure I get the most current component. Good post, Rick
  13. Rick Butler
    Well Bruce, It's not a hardfast rule, but as a general rule of thumb....the tongue length (from the axle) should be twice the width of the trailer and it should be wider than it is tall. Rick
  14. Rick Butler
    Byron, IMHO the early Royal Stars have a few deficiencies compared to the RSV. The first is the shock that is not as adjustable for a passenger (with no replacement except OEM) followed by the smaller carbs (with less HP) and lighter front springs (more front end dive on braking). They also removed the engine counter balancer to give it a little vibration like the Harleys, whose market they were originally going after. Don't get me wrong, this bike is solid, but I'm not sure I would go for it if I had a passenger (with a deficient rear pillion). The later RS Tour Deluxe or Tour Classic would be a better choice. But if his budget is $6,000 or less, I think he could find a used 99 RSV for that amount. But, I'm sure that you will get a better response from our RS owners. Hope this helps, Rick
  15. Rick Butler
    Yeah Joe, That bit of air in the top of the reservoir sent some bubbles right up the line. You just have to make sure that you keep the reservoir higher than the slave cylinder. This is why I always suspend the handlebars from the ceiling when I take the handlebars loose. Just bleed it and you should be ok, Rick
  16. Rick Butler
    I'm going on 140k on my 02 Midnight and it's still going strong. But I have used nothing but AMSOil synthetic 10W40 and their EA103 oil filters as well as K&N air filters since it was new. But then again, if I were to sell it, it would probably go pretty cheap because of this mileage. Hope this helps, Rick
  17. Rick Butler
    Well Chris, I'm certainly in the minority on this subject where this is the first item I changed out when I got my 1st 2nd gen. First off, I ended up loving the boards on the RSV much better than I did the pegs on my 5-1st gen Ventures. This was because I found that I had alot of room to move my feet up and down the boards.....that is until my left heel inadvertenly clipped the heel shifter while starting off and shifted into nuetral. Then later I found myself in the same situation and upshifting when I didn't want to. So when I discovered that Yamaha offered a billet toe shifter, I had to have it. And since then, I shift like I always did (1 down and 4 up) and didn't have to re-train myself on how to shift. And for me it didn't feel natural to slide my foot back on the board to shift up? The big plus to the toe shifter is that when I'm riding the curves is a more aggressive manner, I can slide my feet all the way back until just my toes are on the boards and my heels on the exhaust heat shield. This allows me to get my feet under me more like I'm on a set of pegs, where I can load one foot or the other depending on the severity of the curve and the corner speed I want to carry. But at this point in time, Yamaha has sold all of these billet toe shifters so they are no longer available. So the only option is to cut the heel shifter off or find a billet toe shifter on the open used market. Hope this helps, Rick
  18. Rick Butler
    Guys, All springs must have some preload (pressure) to keep the spring from flopping up and down in the forks. As a general rule of thumb, fork springs need around 1" (26mm) of preload. So, with the springs in the fork tube and fully extended, you need to first measure down from the top of the tube to the top of the spring. Most of our Venture fork caps are roughly 1" thick, so in an ideal situation if the springs came exactly to the top of the tube, you will not need a preload spacer. This is mostly true for Progressive springs as well as the oem springs in our 2nd gen Ventures. So in this case, when you screwed the cap into the fork tube all the way in, you would end up with that 1" of preload. But, if the springs don't come all the way to the top (fully extended), then you will need a spacer to make up this missing distance. I remember with Progressives in our 1st gens (which had an oem metal preload spacer) I always used that 1" internal cap that sat on top of the spacers as the new preload spacer. Now most everyone except Race Tech has you use a piece of grey shedule 40 PVC (a diameter that is close to the id of your fork tube) as this spacer, with a large washer on both ends of the pipe which sits on to of the spring. And don't worry about the PVC, fork tuners have been using it for years because it's cheap and easy to cut to length. So, if the spring does not come to the top of the tube (fully extended) the procedure is: 1. Place 2 large washers on top of the springs and then insert the length of PVC pipe on top of the springs and mark the pipe at the top of the tube. 2. So, if the cap thickness is say 1.5" and if you cut the pipe to the top of the tube (fully extended) and put a washer on both ends of the PVC and screwed the cap in fully, you would have 1.5" of preload (which is too much). So in order to get 1" of preload, you need to shorten the spacer by 1/2". Do does anyone not understand what I'm saying, Rick
  19. Rick Butler
    No, This dealership has been around since the mid 70s where I bought my 750 Special there in 78. I haven't been over there in a while and I'm sure the ownership has changed several times like many of us have seen in the past few years, but I think this is serious. Maybe they are making a consious effort to take advantage of the internet market like MR Cycles and others like them have been doing over the most recent years. If their overhead is low and they can make orders like this with no manpower with something like drop shipment from Yamaha, then maybe they can give us a 40% discount? Would any of you like me to ride over there and talk with them? Hope this helps, Rick
  20. Rick Butler
    You are right Glenn, If you want a plush ride then 1.0 springs are certainly a step better that the wimpy springs that come with our RS Ventures. But, if you want to stiffen the dampening, I would suggest that you go with a heavier fork oil like a 10 or 15wt ( I run a synthetic 10wt in mine). But I'm not sure that a plush ride is what our Ventures deliver for us. Yeah it may be plush going down a smooth road, but what does it feel like on some of our interstates like I-10 across Louisiana? Would you take your bike across a rough set of rail road tracks at 40 or 50mph? Yeah, you would really hammer both your front and rear suspensions. The following is what Race Tech has to say about our Ventures: The Venture suffers from being soft and spongy it's a result of having too soft a fork spring and having low tech damping rods. The cure for this fork is the Race Tech Cartridge Emulator and HP Fork Springs. This will cure the mush problem by turning the forks into a firm riding suspension that is very compliant on the small choppy stuff and can handle the varying demands of the Venture rider. And here is a video showing both a poor and a proper tuned suspension: [ame= ] [/ame] And if you want some intense reading to understand your dampening forks, the following are several pages from their "Motorcycle Suspension Bible" (which you can print out: http://www.racetech.com/HTML_FILES/DampingRodForks.HTML And you are right that more information needs to be presented to help everyone understand our suspension better. And I'm going to do a post pretty soon describing the importance of suspension sag and how to measure it. Hope this helps, Rick
  21. Rick Butler
    You know guys, Even though Yamaha calls this a collar, I have always considered it an inner race (that just happens to have a collar to keep it in place). And Art, if the needle bearings fall out when you remove this collar, "IT IS TIME" to replace them. They reside in a housing where they are very tightly bound together exactly like the 2nd Gen suspension linkage bearings and will not come out. So you are right to want to grease these bearing....which need it after a period of time. I have seen these bearings to a point that they were so dry that they were making a terrible grinding noise. And when my friend pulled the axle, they all fell out. He spent over an hour with a pot of heavy bearing grease gently placing/packing all of these needle bearings back into the housing so he could get home. Hope this helps, Rick
  22. Rick Butler
    Well Jeff, The one best thing you can do for your front suspension if you only made one change is to replace the front springs. Now Progressive springs are better than oem, but like I have said previously, all of the suspension experts reccomend constant rate springs that are rated for the weight of the bike plus the driver which for our bike are 1.2s. The weight of the passenger has no effect on the front. Now Glenn, I'm not sure I'd opt for 1.0 springs with the weight of the RSV just by itself. 1.0s are what I just put in my Honda CBR600 track bike. But Jeff, to install emulators you will need to be comfortable with disassembling the forks and you will need a drill press to drill extra compression holes in the dampening rod to flow the fluid for the emulator. And you should also have a good bench vise, impact wrench and a fair amount of other standard metric tools. But if you are not a rider that wants everything you can get out of a front suspension that will stick in the turns and react quickly to fork compression and rebound, then there is not a compelling reason to install emulators. The emulators just allow a dampening fork design to react like the cartridge forks that all of the super sport bikes have, which means the compression dampening is adjustable. Otherwise the only adjustment we have with a dampening fork is the weight of the oil and the oil level which solves one issue but creates a compound issue with the other side of fork dampening. One other item with emulators is that you CANNOT use the oem springs....you will bottom out big time. You really need at least a set of Progressives. Hope this helps, Rick
  23. Rick Butler
    You know guys, Many of you are going through the same trauma, indecision, etc that many of us went through in 1993 before we knew for sure there would not be a 1994 Venture. Frankly prior to then there was some speculation that Yamaha was coming out with a newly designed compeditor to the GL1500. You can imagine what we felt when we learned there would not be a 1994 model? Many of my friends bought the GL1500 just because they wanted a new bike. It was interesting that within a few months every 93 that was still on a showroom floor was immediately sold. But others like me stuck with our Ventures and I bought a low mileage 93 as soon as I could. But I created a new model by moving all my black 91 plastic to the 93 and created a blue 91....two one-of-a-kind bikes. I don't know for sure, but in hindsight I think Yamaha had a plan for changing their marketing focus to the cruiser. In fact when I came back from Sturgis in 1991, I had this crazy idea of droping a Venture drive line into a Harley frame. Frankly what I had envisioned was the 1996 Royal Star? Not a bike I would trade my 93 for but I knew it was only a matter of time before they gave us our Venture, which came in 99. But you know what they kept during all of those years.....yeah the V-Max which still continues today in a newly designed bike and drive line. In fact when it was announced that a new V-Max was being designed and they came out with that prototype mockup, I was talking with a long time V-Max owner. And his immediate take on the bike was that once the V-Max was out, they would take the changes they made to this driveline and put it into a new touring model....something that would really compete with all of the other touring models. This is pretty much what they did with the 85 V-Max where they took the improvements from this driveline to create the 86 1300 Venture. Have any of you noticed the long wheelbase of the new V-Max? I frankly had not, even though a close friend of mine bought one. It was not until I was working a corner at a track day and was watching a new V-Max running in the beginner class, that I realized this bike doesn't handle corners like I thought it should. Then I noticed how long this new V-Max was compared to it's older brothers. That's when I decided to check the specs and found that the new V-Max was only a few mm shorter than our RSV. So here we have some well calculated speculation that we will not know for certain until Yamaha announces it after the dealer's show in August. I really thought it would happen this year as a 2011 model, but I suspect because of the economy they may have decided that this year was bad timing. From what history has shown us, Yamaha will be closed lipped about this big of a change until they can really hit the market with something that no one has. And I don't beleive for a moment that they will take one of their big twins and turn it into a grand touring bike.....where everyone has already done this. So...this means we all will just have to wait. And if you still want a new Venture, buy one of the current models where they are still the best buy in the market and available. Frankly in my area, they sell as soon as they hit the showroom. My 02 Midnight now has 130k on it and it's still going pretty strong even though I had to replace the stator this past year. And I'm keeping it as long as it will hold together....or they come out with a new Venture? I still feel Yamaha has a plan to give us a new V-4 touring bike? There you have my insight, Rick
  24. Rick Butler
    Gosh, If he owns a BMW then expense should be the last consideration. In other words, if he wants cheap, then he has no business owning a K1200 LT. For the money, the J&M 2003 CB is about the cleanest set up on the market and I've installed a bunch of them on my friends FJR & ST1300s and they work great. http://www.jmcorp.com/SeeProducts.asp?PF=40 Hope this helps, Rick
  25. Rick Butler
    Chuck, These bearings get neglected by most of us even with maintenance schedules and the best of intentions. I finally got around to checking and repacking mine at over 70k and the bearings and races were just fine and only needed repacked. The best time to do this is when you change a rear tire and have the mufflers off. The biggest hassle is that you need to pull the rear exhaust to get to the bearings under that large chrome cap. Just repack the bearings and put her back together per the specs I pointed out in that other post. Hope this helps, Rick
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