CaseyJ955

What he said. It could be a longshot but a "shotgun" cleaning might work. With rust having been in the tank and it having sat up for awhile I tend to concur that carb removal and cleaning is the way to go. I have shotgunned my Vmax (same-ish engine and carbs) with compressed air after letting it sit with ethanol and had some success but thats hit/miss with the possibility of rust deposits in the bowls.

Its a great looking bike but with the market so saturated with used HDs and prices so low/dropping I'm sure your sanity guided you correctly. You can get a pretty darn decent bike for that kind of $$ still pretty cool looking!

Hey Ken, welcome! Your in the right place. Can you be more specific about what happens when it is running? Its not uncommon for the carbs to get finicky if left sitting with fuel, especially ethanol. If it idles but bogs when you blip the throttle it might need a shotgun cleaning. If you can share some history and what its doing it might be easier to help. Has it always been like this since you got it or is this a new thing? How many miles? How long sincee it has been ridden? How old is the fuel and is it full? Have you done anything else to the fuel system? Does it rev when you give it throttle? Missfire? Smoke? It will not run well unless the air box and air filter are installed so make sure that is in place and seated on the carbs. Carbs can be a pain but there are a couple other things we can check too. We should be able to start narrowing it down and hopefully help you get it sorted.

I do believe there is a 1260cc bore, the 1300cc MKII Venture motor and there is an option to poke and stroke to 1500cc ($$$$$). There are probably others but these are more well known on the Vmax side of the fence. PWC is an outfit that does it if I recall. My favorite power mod would have to be one of those supercharger kits for Vmax. Comb ebay and vendors and the Vmax forum, they come up now and then. If I see one cheap enough ill snag one. It would be eye and ear candy for a bobber!! The go to guy with tons of Vmax racing experience and many builds under his belt would be Sean at Morleys Muscle, he's a great source for parts too. Tell him what your power goals are and you will get straight answers and options. I dealt with him on my Vmax and have been delighted with the results. Keep in mind that with a simple Vmax head/cam swap, int and exh tuning you can get up in the area of 160hp at the crank at ~10,000 rpm. There is more to be had but I'm cheap! I do have an extra Vmax pumpkin also if you want to gear down a bit. Its surprising what you can get from one of these lumps with little more than tuning.

I forgot, if you do go with Vboost and dont want to manually control it, as I would not, you can use an Ignitek (and maybe other brand) aftermarket TCI. With a readily available Vmax map loaded it can control your Vboost, eliminating the stock Vmax Vboost control module which is finicky on a good day. I put an Ignitek on my Venture in anticipation of the Vmax heads later on and it does have some cool features. Aside from running resistorless COPs for a clean look and ditching the heavy bulky (and old) stock coils you can set a rev limit. It all comes down to how much you want to do, my guess is a stock Venture engine will be plenty potent but its not expensive or difficult to do Vboost and COPs. if you choose to.

On the carbs there is a minute difference in the barrels as well as jetting, off the top of my head its 34 vs 35mm, so not much but not quite the same. Not sure if it would fit into the intake boots but being rubber they just might. The V4 seems to favor lean over rich, at least in Vmax guise. Im getting my best power out of my max with slightly leaner than stock jetting and free flowing exhaust and intake. I harvested a set of Vmax heads, cams, intakes and Vboost to install on my 1300 Venture but reconsidering since I already have a stonkin' Vmax. If you care for any measurements let me know. With Vmax top end the stock limiting factor is restrictive exhaust, the Venture heads have notably smaller ports, runners and valves, not to mention less aggressive cams. I seriously doubt you will see any gains using Vmax carbs on a Venture mill. In fact maybe it will be counterproductive without careful jetting. Vboost can be added on the otherwise stock Venture but jetting needs change as after 6200 rpm each intake sucks through two carbs rather than one. Main jets should be downsized for this. When I tuned my Max I found the main jets that pulled the hardest and then tuned down from there for idle and midrange. For a bone stock Venture mill I dont believe free flowing exhaust will show any gains and if no vmax components are used yout close to stock jetting should be a great place to start. One thing you will want to take with you going forward is the fact that the stock airbox is quite restrictive, so much so that if you run the bike without it, its gonna run like ****, may not even idle. Since the stock airbox is so bulky and fugly you will probably ditch it for some sexy pod filters. Its still gonna run like **** for the same reason. The fix is a set of air correctors, cheap and easy to install little brass cogs not unlike main jets, they install in one of the small ports on top of the carbs. I sourced mine from Sean at Morleys Muscle but Danny at BRC carb shop is also excellent with these Yammy V4 engines. A few others here have gone down the Vmax top end conversions and may have more info on proper tuning for your speciific goals. My experience is tuning my own Vmax and Venture, but I have not done the Vmax heads on a Venture...yet.

I wonder if the Vmax faux tank would not be to wide and sparse around the sides where the contours meet the scoops. My guess is your right on with just about any retro tank with a little constructive surgery and a sprung tractor style seat. If your lucky you might find one with a nice authentic patina depending on what direction you take it. So many cool possibilities. Any ideas on exhaust? I wish someone made a 4-2-1 to fit the Venture, its flat out musical on the Vmax. I definitely prefer it to the 4-2 system sound, but maybe Marks still does a collector for Ventures that you can incorporate somehow.

Some time spent with a schematic, multimeter and soldering iron should be able.to get the harness down to the bare nothing. Im a fan of the kickstand kill switch but you should be able to retain or eliminate any/all of the features not needed. Aside from ignition and lights you probably need very little. I have a speedo and tons of stuff from a gen1 Vmax par-out if any of it might be useful give me a shout. I really love these projects and look forward to seeing it unfold. One thing that occurred to me as possibly cool is to leave the OEM fuel tank where it is and use a dummy bobber tank as a place to store tools, filter pods like in the stage 7 kit take up so little space. Darn I love bobbers. Good luck with the build, keep us updated!

Now that I blow up the picture I can see something I didn't see before. It's an image of a 1st gen transposed over that of a Street Hydra Glide Heritage Electra Road Classic King Ultra FXRLBEFIXB-EIEIO, cant believe you guys didnt notice that!

I slapped R6 calipers on my 89 MKII. They bolted right up but the OEM brake lines were at an odd angle. I could force the lines to bolt up but IIRC there was an unnatural twist and bend so I used the aftermarket SS lines that came on the calipers I got off ebay. I also used a Vmax splitter to remove the linked brakes at the same time. I took the liberty of cleaning out the calipers and tossing on some new EBC HH pads at the same time. She stops like she means it now. Well worth it. To swap the calipers directly you may find the OEM hose angle is pretty awkward. I wasn't comfortable with it but YMMV.

I would go Toyota first with the F150 as a very close second. Both awesome trucks. If you need to be seen with a new truck r/t your job it's understandable but there is no reason your current F150 shouldn't last for a VERY long time to come and give you a return on your investment through use, and more use, and even more use after that.

It sure deserves the risk vs benefit consideration that should be given to essentially every decision. I'm not seeing how this information can be misused but if there is any sinister way to use DNA info I'm sure the US gov is the right entity to turn that around on us. My sis also did some legwork and traced us back to Scotland on one side and a couple other European components from the other.

Adjustment of the bars was easy on mine. It's a MKII but I think it's the same. I scribed the position before I changed it. I moved the bars back one spline and it was perfect. That should take maybe 10-15 minutes if you have the socket sizes. If your adjusting the steering head bearings, Dingy sells (if he still does) a wrench for that. I cant recall what I paid for one but it's a very nice tool, I think it was in the neighborhood of $25 but dont quote me on that, it was a fair bit cheaper than the one the local motorsports shop had. Well worth it. My bike being an 89 and with over 70k on the clock I opted to replace the head bearings and races. At the least they should be inspected, cleaned, re greased and adjusted. That is a bit of a PITA job whereas adjustment is quite simple. I've read that some folks have loosened them up enough to work some grease in without actual disassembly. A relay like that sounds like an issue, betting enough folks here have parts bikes that a replacement should be easy to find. It's possible that a relay that is zip tied together could be responsible for a host of electrical gremlins. I would knock that out before getting butthole deep in trying to iron out the other odd electrical problems. I would not be shocked if some/all of that traces back to a relay like the one you describe. The frustration and expense should pay off when the snow melts, It's a pretty great bike to be sure.

A 20 amp fuse in the place of a 15 amp fuse is flawed in the absence of any aftermarket equipment. It's masking a problem, as you have found out. There may be a short or a component protected by the fuse has become faulty. Electrical is something I know just enough about to start car fires so I hope someone else can chime in on the specifics of this issue. On the carbs, if they failed to use Japanese (Like Yamaha OEM or J&L) parts and cheaped out with Chinese parts it will be an ongoing hassle until they use the correct parts, which I would expect them to do. I would be tactful but very firm, screaming at them might degrade the situation to a new low. Your not unreasonable to expect them to stand behind the work they have done. Can you see where the leak is coming from? Sometimes the little O rings on the float bowl drains leak and those are a quick cheap fix. I would inquire about what parts they used to rebuild those carbs.

Although I have not had the pleasure of meeting you I'm sending you some positive energy now, I will ask my wife and daughters to send prayers also. EVERYTHING within the human body and mind are connected, positive thought and energy DO make a difference. Reflecting on the good and feeling gratitude for the things we have been and are blessed with, our attitudes, moods and displacement absolutely effect our bodys ability to deal with ailment. I am a strictly science based healthcare professional but I can tell you beyond any shadow of doubt that those with faith, positive energy, loved ones and folks pulling for them seem to generally fare a good bit better than those without. I cant explain that beyond the psychosomatic link but it's real and seemingly deeper than that. I suppose it lays outside my own scope of understanding but I know that every bit of positive energy generated by you and others WILL land on the right side of the scale. "Laughter is the best medicine" is much more than just a cliche, after years delivering long term care I know it to be absolute truth.

I'm going to +1 for the F150 ecoboost. I have a acquaintance that pulls a fairly sizable boat with one that is almost stock and it has plenty of stomp, I mean plenty. 0 trouble accelerating with it in tow and really impressive performance empty. With engine design/manufacture and elaborate engine management we can get a whole lot more from a smaller mill than before and they will last quite a while. Forced induction is something the Europeans saw value in long before we did, but we're catching on to just how darn impressive a properly tuned small engine can be with a huffer. The Ecoboost is a very capable truck, a turbo V6 of today will pretty easily decimate most V8s of yore while using maybe half the fuel and lasting probably twice as long. My car has a 2.0 direct injection turbo 4 cyl and it stomps, and I get 35 on the highway with a heavy-ish AWD sedan. A feat the 4 bangers I grew up with had absolutely no prayer of achieving. Moving away from carbs and points towards EFI and forced induction has really changed the game. I'm a huge fan of the oldschool Ford FE engines, they can make massive torque for minimal investment, but you could go broke fueling one as a daily driver. The claim in this video is that they will get more than 4x the MPG of my last 460 shorty. I think this new boxer design is slick and intuitive. With the torque he was talking about it should be one of the best light trucks ever, if it does as they claim. Maybe we should look down the road for the F250/350 to have a higher displacement version of the same thing. I'm really excited to see where it goes. If fuel were free I would have a 460, but fuel is pretty darn far from free anymore and MPG counts. I say to my bretherin that love the V8s as I do, have a fresh look at whats going on with smaller turbo charged engines. It sure surprised me!

It sure has seen better days, on the other hand it has obviously seen some awesome glorious days, and remains to fight another yet another. I'm going to go 2 thumbs up on this one.

I have the Ignitek in mine, I played with it some and tried a couple different maps, even a Vmax map. I'm going on memory here but I can set the base advance and set spark curve, which was a little above my pay grade. I would be much more comfortable with that if I could access a dyno before fudging around with curve. I did take some wisdom from Dingy on settings and it turned out pretty well. I got a map I have not yet tried from another Vmax nut, so I'll probably give that one a try when it's not -12 deg.

It's a great place to be. I'm self-employed here, doing some 1099 work in healthcare. If I moved anywhere else I could make considerably more money. Unfortunately I'm planning a move in the area of N. CO or S. WY but I dont think we'll ever give up our little patch in the hills. I'll never be more than a short days ride from the BH. I picked up a couple friends at the airport last year and all I heard all the way back to town is "how is the sky so blue?! Look at that, is this what air is supposed to taste like? OH, stop stop stop, I wanna take a pic!" I was asked how I can stand to go back to the west coast from here. The answer is I cant, and I dont. Pretty simple! Oh yea, NEVER do Needles during the rally, a gathering of riders that cant corner on a good day on a road composed of hairpins, switchbacks and poor pavement quality. Sorry you had to endure that! Next time your here HMU, you can camp out here and grab a shower if need be. It's pretty much an open offer for members here.

There are few things as cool as frost covered trees. Here by my place there is a valley filled with Birch with the white bark, when they are frosty and the ground is snow covered it looks eerie. I think those are awesome pics. I love snow but by spring I'm ready for it to be gone. I'm all good until it hits -18f, which it did over the holidays. Thanks for sharing, love it!

I have been critical of the new Venture, at least as much as I could be w/o riding it, mostly because it is not at all what I was expecting. Great ride report, thrilled it's doing the job so well and comparing favorably to HD in most regards. I have to admit it's looking pretty darn fine on the pics. Thanks for taking the time to write this up, I have been quite curious how our members would receive it once folks start taking delivery. Happy trails!

I dumped facebook completely and honestly instead of missing it it was great. It was really a time suck with no real tangible benifet, even quit WoW a few years back for the same reason. Never did stop the motorcycle forums but I dont spend a great deal of time here. Sometimes it goes in waves. Its part of my ritual, I grab my coffee, check the forums and read the news, which I do because I'm, like, really smart! We'll see how long it lasts...

Im watching with great interest stil, I dig turbos! If I'm not mistaken the compression ratio of a Vmax 1200 is 10.5:1, as is the XVZ12/13 and at some point on Gen2 was dropped to 10:1. What I dont know is if this was achieved with head design, deck height, piston design or some combination thereof. If you use Vmax heads will your compression return to 10.5:1? Are you planning to drop the compression to compensate for boost, if so may I ask how? I would imagine the stock slugs and rods would handle 8 lbs, but I really dont know. What is being done to the engine other than Vmax top end? 91/93 oct pump gas? I know a Vmax is safe to about a 10krpm redline, and mine pulls to that redline with great speed and ease, I've read that this is about the point of diminishing returns for these engines, is this about where you will set the rev limiter? I assumed the lower redline on the Ventures was limited because of CFM limitations of head and cam design rather than the threat of engine damage. Theoretically a Venture low end is safe to rev to Vmax levels, are you going there? Sorry about all the questions, I know your still in the early stages of development but this is the coolest thing ever. I wont deny wondering (often) what a VMX supercharger kit would be like on a Vmax-headed Venture and what that would take, but at heart I'm a turbo guy. Thanks for journaling this build! Tony

I use an 18v DeWalt if im going somewhere, not the cheapest but well worth it if your going to use it a bit, probably the last one you will ever buy. My parents are both carpenters in various stages of retirement and its what they use/ed. I really dont use mine often, hassling with chargers and batteries is a nuisance when I use it 90% of the time within 20' of an outlet here in my "shop" space. I mostly use a small corded reversable drill I picked up at a garage sale for $1. I think its a cheap-o Ryobi, its easy to modulate power/speed and always works 100%. I leave it plugged in with a bit chuck in it. I personally find the cord to be less awkward than the bulk and weight of the cordless for mech work. The cordless gets really nice if I'm moving around a lot though, I use it for drywall and framing but for standing over my scoot, or car, running screws in and out the corded is ideal. Besides you can get a sweet corded drill plenty cheaper than a sweet cordless. I also have a corded dewalt drill (to big for mech work)recip saw and 1/2" angle grinder and its all fantastic stuff. IMHO Dewalt is a brand you can feel comfortable buying regardless of what style you deem suitable for your needs.

Puc-meister is right. It has morphed, not just the rally but the whole culture has really lost something. I live ~30 minutes away from Sturgis and during the rally I park the bikes and hide in my quiet little valley in the hills west of Rapid. That or I head out of the area where I can get a break from it. Its noteworthy to mention we have huge amounts of tourism along with the rally. Passing RVs and HDs on the rare occasions its safe, rolling roadblocks taken to a brand new low. Every year the myriad of injury and fatality accidents, I just tapped the **** out. The reward is just not worth the risk and incredible frustration IMHO. Im far less tolerant of congestion and crowds than the average Joe, so take me with a grain of Na here. You may have a good time, it really depends on what your expectations and wishes are. There is a happy flipside. The hills are amazing, scenic, outstanding motorcycling roads and some cool little towns. Im probably spoiled by having the hills to myself for much of the year, living here as a motorcyclist is bliss. If your looking for a more pure riding experience on fantastic, relatively empty roads then timing outside tourist season is a must to get the absolute most out of your visit. One other thing I would like to leave you with is to be vigilant of the wildlife. Deer (hooved rats) are fast and stupid. The numbers are higher now than I have ever seen. After dusk its worse. Anyone doing the speed limit in the hills after dark is asking for trouble. Let the show offs pass you, no biggie. Anywhere near Custer you may also have bison, they love to chill on the road, sometimes around blind corners. This is a bad place to ride beyond your line of sight. If you hit one of those guys your really ****ed! They are super fast, have 0 sense of humor and are more than alright with goring folks that get to close, or smack em with a bike, or ride close by. I often ride on shoulder or wrong side of the road to use cars as shields when herds are on the blacktop and things move slow, local cagers understand this move. As long as you ride smart and keep your eyes open you should be safe and have a great time but its really advantageous to know whats out there. Every year folks get hurt not understanding these things about wildlife here. They are beautiful but must be respected.