CaseyJ955

Just like the R3, I suspect within about 2 model years they will start popping up on CL, and another 1-2 years they will be popping up with aftermarket exhaust and other extras for ~30-40% MSRP, especially after there is a 2nd gen. I recall when the Venture Gen3 TC was new and MSRP was like 27k! Wasn't that long ago either. It was not long before they were closer to 22k brand new for a TC as some dealers were trying to liquidate them towards the end of the model year. I did a random search outside my area and found this example of Gen3 Venture with very low mileage and the TC package for a lick over 50% MSRP, and thats from a dealership for a machine only two model years old and a current gen. I'm sure buyers can start lining up for some very serious discounts on essentially like-new examples from private sellers. https://inlandempire.craigslist.org/mcd/d/escondido-2018-yamaha-star-venture/7103617716.html For this BMW R18 on the high side it's 20k MSRP, but get a few on the floor close to the end of the model year and watch the price drop a bit. I figure it wont be long at all before someone could get one for a deep discount, especially in the current and foreseeable economy. It's not even out and I've already got plans to get one almost free haha. In my experience MSRP means very little after a short time. We saw it with the new Venture and about every other high dollar scoot around. Remember when HDs were the holy grail of motorcycles, now they value like used dental floss. What I learned in my HD days is that MSRP and book are meaningless, it's ONLY worth what the next guy is willing to pay. That goes for brand new machines as well, and is becoming more true with every passing day. I'm optimistic not only that this R18 is super close to being a very cool bike, but also that there is really nothing like it on the market now, but also that the price will self-correct within a year or two. It should be within the reach of most working folk. I'm actually excited about this bike now that I've been thinking about it for a minute or two.

It's awkward as it sits, but nobody can make a twin quite like BMW, I have high hopes for the power plant and fit/finish. Just as with the inline six being a gem, I'll bet this is going to really please boxer fans all over, and probably hatch a buttload of new ones coming off narrow angle twins. Look how punchy the 1250 is, I'll bet this thing is going to be able to square off a rear tire in a short weekend. I'm optimistic that in spite of it's 1st gen aesthetics it's going to be a very successful recipe. I dont own stock in BMW but I would seriously consider owning this bike over other currently available big twins. With HD starting to circle the drain it is conceivable that those not ready to get onboard with the Japanese bikes but still want big twins are going to take a serious look at something like this. BMW has a rich history of pulling folks off the domestic big twins, this goes back decades before HD had much to worry about. Just as happened with the Triumph R3, huge engine, subjective aesthetics and life-changing torque, but now in their second gen they got awful damn sexy too. I'm sure when BMW gets feedback on appearance they will polish it up. I predict this as a huge win for BMW and other current V twin owners looking for something better. I am biased slightly toward retro styling. The Indian, maybe retro to the point of novelty, but they are distinguishable from HD, which with every passing day is turning into a bigger win for Polaris. As previously discussed, Polaris is finally getting serious about making a proper V twin to exist in todays world of folks that like a little more performance/longevity/reliability and a little less Heritage/Tradition. Boxers already have a good reputation for going MANY extra miles. I'm going to go on record as being very fond of the looks of this big beemer, where as I found their first boxer cruiser butt-ugly. With the painfully obvious exception of the entire exhaust system I think this thing is about 90% where it needs to be. It wont be a moment before some quality aftermarket exhaust systems show up and make this one damn sexy cruiser. We are getting more choices for large caliber twins, there is no way I can slice this thing to be a bad thing. I think it's badass - the exhaust. I like it, a lot. Two thumbs up from me.

I just passed up a 540I Sport with the 6 speed manual. Sort of regretting it but not in the budget. An M5 of the same era would also be acceptable. Have a gander at the 335 and 335d too, those are pretty sweet. I've always been partial to MB and BMW. I have a slightly doctored A4 now as I needed the AWD, but I'm missing the BMW. Of course being a German thingy they are finicky but dayum, it's hard to go back to other makes. Their inline 6 is a magical creature, even NA as they are very receptive to turboing and take it well. I've been less fond of their automatic trans and definitely enjoy a clutch, YMMV. I'm thinking for my next one a 335ix Ragtop 6 speed manual. I'm just done with 4 doors I think, kids are grown, no need. Once I find one in the right color and get through the medical issues I'm going to off the Audi and get back into a BMW. Not sneezing at a diesel Benz either. A sedan is hardly a midlife-crisis appropriate car though haha. Noteworthy is the 7s and S classe are maintenance whores, I had an 02 S600 and the cost of ownership was staggering. It would handily put a whooping on just about anything else on the road though in spite of it's 5500lb girth. The Biturbo V12 is a freakin' beast with a few little adjustments. Best have deep pockets for a flagship from either mfr. Still a sucker for a 750 though, really.

I went to a COPs and Ignitek setup, Cruise still works but I still have the original pumpkin. I was not aware of any speed sensor or anything back there. Doesnt the cruise read through the speedo on these? I've read that worn lever handle pins can cause cruise to fail by activating the cancel switches.

Glad to recall this, I think I goofed it up once many years ago and never needed to try it again. Anything I'm prompted to get or have a need for, if it wears an MS badge I look for something else, almost always find it. I remember MS Office giving me nag screens and prompts for payment and upgrades. Open Office sits quietly until I need it, then sits quietly again. Lovely alternative indeed. Good! Glad it worked out and you were able to get out from under S mode.

I rarely use USPS anymore, but when I do I know it's not private. I am quite disturbed by it which is why I try and use other carriers instead. Not that there is any guarantee of privacy with any of them, but USPS and Amazon is pretty bad. Just because we don't have anything to hide doesn't mean we have anything we want to share with our gov or corps/businesses, or anyone. Sharing any information with anyone is rarely in our own best interest. As it turns out it is very much in the interest of those who snoop and pry, quite often to our own detriment. I'm with ya brother! When enough of us are sick of it we'll do something about it. Until then we have to be aware of every facet of life that has the potential to infringe. I can assure you that anyone gathering info on us is not doing so for our good.

So true, but it's not really that bad. I'm barely Jr. level of savvy, and only that because I felt strongly enough about it to spend a little time reading and trying some stuff out. It does take a little reading and in my case, a small piece of hardware for my network. Having ones privacy invaded is not an inevitability, there are others out there that have outlined steps that most folks can do with a little guidance found online. I've gone through this with both my Android phone and computers. I have not seen a single targeted advert for as long as I can remember. It's really not that tricky now in the age of plug-n-play stuff. A little research can go a long ways to ridding ones self of all the clutter and privacy invasions. Win10 (or any MS products) is not a good start but it can be worked around with a little effort.

I still have Windows 7 on my remote gaming machine upstairs, used for LAN gaming. Win 7 is fine, if I could roll back this desktop to 7 from 10 I would do so in a quick second. The first time I heard Cortana chime my blood boiled. It's like having a Google Assistant or Alexa in your computer. There are some great tutorials as mentioned on how to neuter Cortana and many of the snooping and monetizing features. You will never have the level of autonomy of older versions of Windows. If given the choice I would stay with 7 in a heartbeat, but I am always very concerned about my privacy and loathe advertisement on devices and software that I OWN. I have a special place in my heart for MS, the VERY darkest part of it. My pulse races and I can feel it in my ears every time I find a feature or area that MS has assumed control and taken it away from me. If you are not concerned with privacy or not having much control over the OS then it might be livable if you follow the tutorials on closing up some of the holes. There are a lot of privacy and security threats you can close up just in the settings and selective startup you can nullify a few things there too. Other startup items you have to go deep in and "take permission" to gain access in several places of the registry. Depends on how concerned you are. I'm quite concerned so I did things that were a little above my pay grade following steps to try and take control of this machine. It's much better BUT once I got to peek at the network traffic in real time I could see it was still a mess of MS making decisions that should be mine, and taking some liberties I'm not comfortable with. IE, you dont choose updates, you can delay them, but you WILL take them sooner or later, not optional. Some of those updates make you have to go back and turn their **** off again and there are plenty of steps. Make a pot of coffee and pull up a chair. There is a lot of reading and doing to try and lock this dumpster fire down. the ONLY reason I'm still with Windows at all is because there is no way to play my favorite games on Linux. I just touched on this on another thread here. It's like an unrooted Android phone, there are things you can disable, sort of, but just cant uninstall. Tons of bloatware, and I mean tons, just like Android. See, crap like that drives me nuts, if your like me than I'm going to recommend sticking with 7. I'm going to highly recommend a Pi-Hole regardless of which path you take. To start, look at walkthroughs on settings and startup items, you CAN go deeper if you want. You will have to jump through flaming hoops to really get it reigned in, even partially. It infuriates me that on software or hardware/devices that I OWN, I cannot take full control. I'm not sure why anyone tolerates it, in fact many dont. If I were not a gamer I would have Linux in a quick second, I would dump Windows immediately. One great way to chop MS off at the knees is a DNS level ad/tracker/domain blocker. I installed a PI-hole, about $60 out of pocket and some time learning Linux and setting it up, really done in one evening and tweaking black and blocklists has been ongoing but it's awesome to have some control. It's just a Raspberry pi computer with Rasbian Linux on an SD card, about the size of a pack of cigarettes and just plugs right into the LAN, with a few settings you have a great deal of control back. Lemme tell ya, it's sobering to see what your devices are doing on the net nice and quiet like. Some reading on Pi-hole, which I cant recommend enough to everyone. https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/ https://pi-hole.net Mine sits quietly next to my modem and runs 24/7. It protects all devices on the network, not just comps. You can also install a VPN in the Pi-hole. It's really quite brilliant. Wait until you see the crap your phone and smart TV are up to in real time! I knew they were terrible offenders but I was still appalled to actually see everything, and elated that I could now selectively block it all out. I've installed some pre-made filters and have virtually EVERYTHING windows or MS wildcard blocked. Also virtually everything Amazon, Google, Samsung and FB. There are many others depending on what your doing and what hardware you have. A quick and necessary move is to get a proper browser, not Edge, and install some tracker/advert/malware protection. Also in your browser settings you can take Google away as your search engine and add DuckDuckGo. I swear by this change, it's my search engine on everything now. My favored browser is Firefox, and Epic Browser for the rare occasions where Firefox breaks a site. I use Ghostery, Umatrix and Ublock Origin and it's very solid at blocking out stuff and allowing customization according to your taste. I know this is long winded but so is trying to secure win10. If you dont care about privacy or monetization, then win10 might be fine with some simple settings and tweaks. If you ARE concerned about those things then I would stick firmly with 7 unless there is some significant reason to go to 10. I, like many others, did sure not find it to be an upgrade. There are some pros with 10 but the cons vastly outweigh them IMHO. I ran an outdated win7 OS and had no viruses or malware issues for years. A lot of that is using browser extensions and some aftermarket virus and malware protection. Keeping things simple has its rewards, Win10 is not simple. It's complex in the favor of MS and very much not leaving the consumer in control of much. There is quite a lot of reading on win10 and I encourage you to spend an evening or two reading what folks that know more than I have written about it. Your priorities should dictate your next move. Just my .06c (you cant have all this for only .02 haha). Either way best of luck, I hope whatever you choose meets your needs.

I dumped MS Office many years ago and been using Open Office ODT, it has docs and spreadsheets, and the ability to add other features. I'ts free and fantastic. The only drawback is that if you prepare a document and send it off to someone who is still using MS Office it will loose it's format. I'm sure there is a workaround but I have not needed it yet. My dad turned me onto Open Office way back when, been really happy with it and no MS nonsense. I've had it with MS, seriously. If someone could make a Linux platform to run all the PC games then that goes on my wish list right above world peace. I just added a metric ton of Microsoft and Windows filters to my Pi-hole blacklist. Got plenty of Google and Samsung blocked out too, it makes me giddy to see it all being fired off into cyberspace instead of downloaded through my network. Give Open Office a try, It's never failed me in so many years and never ever shown me any nag screens or popups.

It's uncommon for engine failures, these things are pretty bulletproof, and also pretty darn heavy if you have to swap one out. Also depending on your comfort level it might make more sense to swap out a head than a whole engine if it comes to that. I like the borescope idea, a squirt of oil bringing up the compression suggest some possible ring/cyl wear which should be visible if it lacks compression that much. I'll assume that 10k is probably 110k mi depending on how other wear items on the bike look. 110k is a lot of miles on a bike that may not have been looked after properly. I hope you get it sorted, luckily parts are readily available and the wrenching is fairly straight forward. Mine has 75k and runs like a champ. We see a lot of Vmax and Venture with over 100k and still going strong. Welcome!!

I know others are more qualified to answer this than I, but I generally stay away from anything Google. Much like Amazon, Microsoft and FB, they just cant be trusted. I'm setting up my laptop with Linux now that I've had some exposure to it (Raspberry Pi/Pi-hole), and the ONLY reason my desktop still has Windows is because Linux is not very handy at running my favorite games. I would sure vote NO to anything that's going to let Google and MS further into your business. I've even de-Googled my Android phone with a rooting, light Slim6 OS and a few apps/SU firewall over the issues with Google. From what little I know about S mode is it locks you into using ONLY aps from the MS Play Store and ONLY browse with Edge, which is a frightening concept knowing how piss poor MS and Google are with privacy and monetization so annoying it's life-changing. If your not at all concerned about privacy and this laptop will not be on the internet maybe, but it looks like it removes a whole lot of ability to control your data and privacy. Browsing in Edge.... that is brave my friend! For browsing I recommend using Firefox browser with Ghostery, Ublock Matrix and Ublock Origin, and a good Cookie manager. There is a little learning curve with Matrix but once you have it you will never want to live without it. Try this and then try Edge before you make your decision on going down that road. Take me with a gran of salt, I'm very concerned with privacy and I HATE advertisments, especially targeted ads, which tell me that someone is in my bum up to at least the 2nd knuckle. Not good with that so I have taken steps. It just sounds like Smode might be a huge step in the wrong direction for many folks. What I'm not clear on is the advantage of going into Smode. If your after faster startups you can do a selective startup and let it run only services you want. That made my machine quite a bit faster and I was able to disable a buttload of junk and metrics inflicted by MS.

I really like GooGone, stuff is badass. I just got a bike that had more than a couple squid stickers and that sorted things right on out. Heating it up with a hair dryer as mentioned should help too.

I'm pretty sure that once you ignite a filling station it is hard to put that **** back in the dog haha. Maybe the stun gun manufacturer would be completely responsible, at least by all the precedents of firearm manufacturers being responsible for people misusing the tools they make. If I ever have to shank anyone with a screwdriver for trespassing I'll be sure to sick my lawyer on Snap-on for their blistering negligence in making a damn fine driver with an almost indestructible point haha. My smileys and likes don't show up anymore, but I'm snickering like an idiot right now. My less funny point is how crazy it is that a manufacture of a mundane item or tool like a firearm or taser, or automobile can be held liable for someones poor judgement or negative intent.

I'm glad you added that, I never realized how it effected low voltage systems. That and safe for plastic suggest it would be useful to me for applications other than automotive. I'm going to snag some. Thank you.

I've not seen this since I was a sapling. I've been using dialectric grease on electrical connections and anti-seize on most threaded fasteners, but I'm goign to keep my eyes open for this stuff.

The price for failure is one I'm not willing to pay, put me on that list of no way. Good watch though! The title made me think of Bob Dylan.

You only used words when she placed your life (and everyone else's) at risk, had she come at you with it, or without it, you would have been justified striking her in defense of yourself. If you were wrong her disrespectful verbal response might be warranted, but this was not the case. I would not put it past someone that disrespectful to use violence in response to words. Besides most filling stations have CCTV cams all over. I dont want to strike anyone, but if someone strikes me I will no longer consider gender as I strike back with all I got. Our society has made it abundantly clear that discrimination will no longer be tolerated in any form. Equal rights = equal responsibility/accountability. We no longer have to take the crap we once did simply because someone is young or the opposite gender.

Common sense and common courtesy, both ironically named in todays society. It's been handily replaced by a blinding overabundance of political correctness and entitlement. If I were her dad I would have her standing before you apologizing for back chatting. At least they didn't have a gun haha.

I suspect they would move production to China if they could. I think the blow-back from their remaining customers would be too much. Europe is less of a leap then having them become "rice burners". I think if they ever produce anything anywhere in Asia and then ship them here they will have some difficulties selling. I think we've long past the best-if-used-by date on HD flavored Kool-Aid, hell, I think we might be approaching the dusk of mainstream motorcycling altogether.

Happy Thanksgiving all!!

It's on an elec fuel pump, it should not have gravity fed any notable amount of fuel into the engine just sitting with the choke pulled and the key off. I've had badly flooded engines on older bikes by forgetting to turn the valve off (gravity feed) but never had or heard of one actually hydrolocking this way. Choke on/engine and key off should have no real effect while it sits. If it were dumping enough fuel to hydrolock then it should have been barely ridable, if at all. DO NOT keep trying start it if you suspect a hydrolock condition, get the plugs out (kill ign and fuel circuits, and push her outside where nothing can ignite the faw fuel spraying out) and give it a few spins to clear the cyls. Hopefuly this will give you an opportunity to see where the extra fuel is coming from. If you try hard enough to start a hydrolocked engine you can start bending rods. Flooding and rich running is not unusual for an older machine with decades old CV carbs. When you first turn on the key, before starting, you should hear the fuel pump for a couple seconds then it should stop, is that what you hear? Do you ever smell raw fuel when it sits? When riding? Battery fully charged? What symptom were you diagnosing with the choke?

great vid!! Great story!! Oh buddy, we're definitely going to dance a time or two! Of that you can be sure! I'm told they pull viciously to the 14K redline in any gear, even stock. I know where the roads are where I can tap into her a little bit without risk of arrest or traffic. I somehow doubt I'll be hitting the rev limiter in 6th, those are go-to-jail speeds. I think this is one of those things I'm going to enjoy for a bit then move her along to some other insane person before I get my license revoked. In any event it will be a blast to experience it, even while using restraint. Ya ever got a ticket on that thing?

Thanks man, this bike gives me a measure of respect just standing next to it. I got 7" of fresh powder yesterday so I wont even get to touch it for a while now. I've turned away a couple compelling trades so far because I want to ride it and experience it before I decide what comes next. I've put out a couple feelers on trading for a Busa. I do have this fear of not wanting to move it along when it's time. I dont have to sell or trade it off. I've read that this particular liter bike has fantastic road manners so if I can stay in the saddle for ~3-4 hours a day then it may be a keeper. It feels like sitting on a CBR600 or something smaller. I threw a leg over a Gen2 Busa and I liked that, A LOT! Do you get many miles on your R1, you maniac haha?

Congrats!!! Nothing like the smell of a new bike... I forget the rest of the quote. The blacked out pipes look pretty sweet, the tasteful conservative use of chrome bits really distinguishes it.

I suspect it might be the same for me, it's clearly not made for the long haul. I'll see if I can stand it for an afternoon. I see they have the cruising range of a Vmax that runs to rich.