CaseyJ955

Hmmmmm I'll letcha know by the end of this riding season how good the UK diaphragms are. I'll install them tonight onto the slides and probably into the carbs. They feel like they are pretty nicely made. I rejuvenated the jet block plugs, both shocked and delighted that the 1:3 ratio of wintergreen oil:91% rubbing alcohol seems to have worked wonders, where they were sliding out with very little/no resistance now they are a tight fit after a 36 hour bath. PO tried to use sealant and even drove a screw into one of them, presumably to expand it to stay put. I'm glad the screw didn't go through. Wow! I hope it's a lasting fix.

Those must be aftermarket, brand was NCS or something. If they were OEM, or even made anywhere other than China it would be proudly boasted in the description. I could not find country of manufacture and that usually means only one thing. I picked these up after others here vouched for their quality, they are nice and the seller seemed straight up, they arrived surprisingly fast from the UK where he makes them. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Set-of-4-Pcs-Carburetor-Diaphragm-Yamaha-XVZ13-XVZ1300-Venture-Royal-1986-1993-/281761118300?hash=item419a45785c:g:3c4AAOSwrklVXmxv&vxp=mtr&autorefresh=true ] I'm not sure where SCI are made either but I suspect the same. I have never handled one so I'm not sure what their quality is. Experience has given me a very healthy apprehension of Chinese aftermarket.

I got the same ones VanRiver got further up in this thread, the ebay ones from the UK. Is there supposed to be some sort of modification to install? I dont recall the seller mentioning anything about that.

Slides and diaphragms, quite a bit easier to work with as a whole assembly. When I priced the assembly I think it was considerably more expensive than that. Sounds like you found a sweet deal.

So I didnt really give the diaphragm fix a chance. I decided instead to just replace them with the UK made set, for $100 shipped it seems better than chancing failure in BFE. So now that I have these replacement diaphragms I'm coming up short on how to install them on the slides. The Youtube methods I have looked up include griding off the metal lip on the distal diameter of the slide, then gluing the washers back on. Not fond of that one. The other one involves the slide into a length of PVC and tapping with a screwdriver handle. I'm not wanting to break the slides and have seen plenty to suggest that this might be the actual result. So how to get this done? If I do have to grind and glue, what is the best glue/sealant to use that is impervious to fuel/petrol. I searched the site and internet and didnt come up with much else. Thanks!!

It's amazing how much of an upgrade to life a divorce can be. I just picked up the Shell Rotella T4 15-40. Doesnt say diesel oil on the front but if you read the back it's there. JACO MA/2 and it's ~$13/us gal. I always pick up enough for the Vmax, Venture and all the small engines. It is really tough to beat for the price and it works great.

It should work fine for that, I'll use it for that or the line trimmer fuel line I have. Just sayin' that I'm not sure I would leave it exposed to the fuel on a permanent basis.

02 tubing is primarily vinyl, might not play nice with petrol for the long haul but you should be able to find some clear line suitable for fuel, probably not very expensive either.

Dingy was kind enough to share with me some plans for battery relocation, pretty slick setup he has with a horizontally mounted battery box. Battery relocation is probably the best way to allocate space for everything. Those coils and OEM TCI sure take up some real estate.

It looks like a perfect place to mount it. I also use heat shrink tubing, solder and I whore out the dialectric grease too. I have a pair of aftermarket electric horns, Hellas or something like that. I'll see if those are loud enough. If I need more loud I'll snag some air horns. Once the TCI and coils are gone that space is easier to access. I think a cylindrical compressor would be a snap to mount there, a couple hose clamps and a couple pieces of rubber and I'll bet it would lay right in there between the coil mounting provisions where I wanted to put my TCI, before you came along and totally ruined it for me, thanks for that haha.

I'm comfortable mounting a compressor there but I'm not taking any chances on the Ignitek. Thought about a weather tight condom or sealed box but easier to just mount it high. I'll have to see if these electric horns are loud enough and if I have an extra air horn laying around. I have one going on the Vmax but I think thats it for air.

Wow, I was just thinking "is this guy some sort of pushy know it all?" I see that it's not sealed up very well, you make a great point. I thought about on top of the air box as I've seen pics of it there. But... after I put the Vmax top end on I'm going to use air correctors and make a K&N filter lid for the Venture air box rather than using the Vmax air box, so putting anything above it would be temporary. I'm glad you mentioned this, I do find myself riding in nasty weather sometimes. All the Harley guys hiding in rest areas and under overpasses might be onto something, I just keep on going and let the bike (and myself) get soaked. I guess I better find a high and dry place to locate this thing. I'll have to get the carbs and air box back on to see if there is room on the side of the air box.

I pulled out the battery box and coil/TCI rack yesterday to ditch the coils and harvest the pigtails for the COP harness. Once the coils are out the TCI fits quite beautifully between the coil mounting towers. I think there may even be room in there for a pneumatic horn compressor.

Man, thats a great looking bike! I see the engine slides out just like the Vmax engine, I'm always fascinated by the carb projects too.

I know a lot of the guys on the Vmax board use Rotella diesel oil. One explanation I read is that it's high in zinc which the bike transmissions love but cat converters not so much. I use Rotella 15-40 and it works great.

I vote yes, ethanol draws moisture. I know some folks dont mind it but I hate it and avoid it at all costs. Not only does it draw moisture but has less energy than pure gasoline, I notice a slight drop in power and MPG with ethanol. My Car and Samurai are both EFI engines so they can deal with it ok but the bikes dont like it, especially if one has to sit while I work or am OOT. If your thinking of putting ethanol tainted fuel in a mower, line trimmer or saw let me just save you the expense now. DONT DO IT! Ethanol is the wrong answer to the right question.

I know Sean Morley has done some Venture stuff so when I priced out the jet block plugs I asked about Venture float adjustment. He said he sets Venture floats using identical measurement and procedure as Vmax so I'll give that a shot. When I did the Vmax I painstakingly set them all at 1.125" per that site and the cutout did land perfectly on that stamping on each carb, they were all identical. I think after I get them together I'll follow the procedure to check wet levels. I want to keep it on the leanest side of acceptable as I can, both for MPG and because my elevation is ~3400' and much of my riding goes up considerably from there. Thanks all for the responses. I'll be giving this a go and check back in with the results.

I had to go look at it, I was thinking it backwards for some reason. I'll go with 1" as lean should work just fine. I'm really thinking that the MPG issue may have been that the carbs were not fully seated into the intakes and the jet block plugs could stand to be more snug so I'll get some of those, dry set the floats and see what happens. Theres been quite a break in the weather so I'm hoping I can get the carbs back on and the Ignitek and COPs done before the snow returns. EDIT, I'm looking at it again, on the FP site it shows the measurement being taken from the top of the bowl to the corner of the float with the float resting on the needle. I think 1" would be richer if measured from the top as they show, but leaner measured from the bottom. As soon as I get some jet block plugs I'll be ready to put it all together.

With the airbox off you should have a clear view of the bowl vent tubing. The fuel supply comes from the rear of the bike into the carb rack, and over the top you will see the bigger tubes that are bowl vent, hopefully never overflow but under these circumstances, yea. If you get it down to that point and snap pic we should be able to see it. On mine the bowl vents exit the rack forward.

IIRC I set the max to 1.125 or something. 1" would be a tad richer but I realize it's a pretty different state of tune. I take a measurement in the morning and see where it is currently. If I dont get my MPG back or it runs poorly I'll go into wet levels but I'm going to be doing this all again next year when I rejet everything for the hi-flow heads and cams.

X2 on that, stellar idea and would be conclusive. Also a quick pic of the top of the carbs when the airbox is off would show us exactly what goes where. I cant find that part in my manual, elusive little bastad! I wonder if 85 back and 86 forward have the routing different r/t presence or absence of YICS? I missed what year the OPs bike is. Of course it will run like crap w/o the air box installed, but it will run.

Mine has the same thing in the pic there and it's an 89. I thought that 86+ bikes were no longer equipped with YICS but some fact checking would be a solid idea. I'm still new too the Venture thing so dont quote me on that. I yanked my carb rack yesterday and the 4 vent hoses that leave the top of each carb merge over the rack into a plastic manifold which Ts into another hose that goes to that part with the open port (dunno what it's called) which would make sense if there is a float/needle sticking than not only would one carb flood the others through the vent hoses but also flood the hose going to that funky part with the open port. I'm going to see if I can find my manual and see what that part is called and what it does.

I have mine apart right now so I went and took a look, if that pic is what I'm seeing on my 1300 one end of that goes to the bowl vent hose network and looks like the other end ties into the charcoal canister. Maybe you have a needle valve stuck open allowing the vent tubes to flood. Also the port that is open to atmosphere on yours is the same on mine.

The bike shop was closed this morning when I went to town, and as always I go well out of my way to minimize my time in town so I headed to Tractor Supply and picked up some Liquid Wrench Chain and Cable Lube. I'll give that a shot since I cant seem too locate what I had before. Just gotta get in there and figure out how to expose the inner cables by the grip without tearing off the switchgear. Got the carbs apart and found that someone had definitely been into these before. They were quite clean, jets as per OEM according to the excellent write-up I found here http://www.venturers.org/Tech_Library/?action=article&cat_id=001010&id=366 so nobody tried to get creative there. The needles look great, with my reading glasses and plenty of light I can barely see where they seat, and almost not even really. The rubber plugs are reasonably snug but there are trace amounts of some fine sediment between the rubber peg and the bore. What it doesnt cover is dry setting float levels. When I did my Vmax I used this page. http://www.factorypro.com/Prod_Pages/prody11.html Would this page also be applicable for the Venture carbs? I was thinking so but would love to hear it from someone with some Venture experience. I will get into wet levels and such when I do the Vmaxization next year and have more space and stuff to do it. Setting the dry float levels made a profound difference in both performance and MPG on the Vmax and they were adjusted exactly as in the first pic so I adjusted them with a caliper and they looked just like the 2nd pic when I was done. As always, input welcome. Thanks!!

It looks pretty good. I'm not sure too much foam needs to be added or removed, at most I would be interested in removing some foam and replacing it with better quality foam that is not 30 years old, at least along the contact patch. For me the seating position is good but there are some pressure spots that might need to be massaged out. My seat cover is in good shape but I would really really really like to go to camel instead of black. I'll be watching to see how it fits and what your opinion is of the finished product.