circa1968

Couple of questions: 1) Does the odometer work when you turn the ignition to on? 2) Do the blinkers and/or horn work? Here's a link to the electrical diagram: https://www.venturerider.org/wiring/99-09 Yamaha Royal Star Venture Wiring Diagram Rev B.pdf Lot's of possibilities, but coming off the ignition switch, the stereo and aux power are on their own circuit, so sorta good news there in that hopefully not a bad main switch. The odometer is fused directly off the main fuse and should be working. The blinkers and horn, based on your symptoms are most likely not working. You may have a bad main switch or a problem with the wiring coming off of it, either @ a connector or broken wire itself.

Thanks. It was a great trip! For my return route, I stayed off of interstates & rode 2-lane hiways for all but the last part to my house. What a big beautiful country we live in! So many awesome small towns and wonderful people you meet there. One of the highlights was the motorcycle museum in St. Francis, KS, a small town in the northwest corner of KS. The quality and quantity of bikes in this collection blew my mind! If you've never been and are within a reasonable ride to get there, its worth the effort! https://stfrancismotorcyclemuseum.org/

Yesterday was the end of my month-long, 5.5k mile test ride..... With some obvious subjectivity, the bike did not have the wind-induced death wobble issues as I previously experienced, or at least not nearly as bad. However, in certain wind conditions, the bike was still tossed around quite a bit. The worst case scenarios were with a strong cross-wind and trucks. The turbulence coming off a truck with little or no ambient wind was minimal and the bike was stable. But, oh boy, hit a strong cross-wind and the truck turbulence threw me around like a rag doll, just like my previous experience, but without any significant front end wobble added to it after tightening up the head bearing a bit. I do have the wide F4 windshield, which is 4" wider, on each side, than stock, so 8" overall. At this point, I'm thinking that is definitely a factor. I will be looking for a stock windshield to see if that makes a difference. I rode a pure stock '99 RSV from '99-'02, including one such trip as I just completed, and do not remember having these wind issues. Of course, age-related memory issues could be part of that too.

Just as a quick follow-up on this, I decided not to pursue making these brackets out of an abundance of caution. If you look underneath the RSV, there is an angled bracket welded to the frame. This bracket is only there for mounting a fuel vapor canister that is installed on California bikes and not for carrying any sort of load. When raising or lowering the bike on the center stand, this bracket would likely carry the weight of the bike. Once up on the stand, the rest of the frame is carrying the load. My concern would be that repeated stresses on that bracket and its minimal weld joints could cause it to fail at some point, partially dropping the stand. I looked into making the adapter bracket as all one piece and finding alternate mounting points, but the engineering and fabrication costs are hard to justify. Alternately, I did contact Rivco and they said they would do a production run with an order for 50 units. If there are at least 50 of us who want one of those, I'm happy to coordinate that effort instead.

That's a great idea and I didn't even think to look in that area since I was tapping into the factory harness in the battery area already, it just seemed to make sense at the time to fit it all in there. The module was small enough to easily fit and it was just a matter of dressing up the wire routing to not look like a bowl of spaghetti.

Check with member Eusa1, he might have one for sale. Also, a more expensive route, but there are a couple on Ebay - but you have to buy the whole trunk assembly. If you go the Ebay route, maybe we can find a member who can help either get the wing 3D scanned & 3D printed copies made, or perhaps a mold pulled off the part to cast new wings from. IMHO, the wing really complements the looks and the extra LED lighting is a great safety feature. In any case, if you manage to track down a wing and I can be of any assistance in the modifications, don't hesitate to reach out to me.

Even after two days of 100+ degree riding through NV & UT, I still don’t even want to contemplate the answer to that question. But…if she is blond & in her mid twenties, that would be almost as much fun as my Venture. 😂

Hmm, well now I’m thinking my memory fails me. Once I saw your pic, maybe mine included those too, but I did not use them if they did. I am still using the stock 90 degree valve on the rear & had one installed on the front also. They work great.

I put them on my 2nd gen RSV, using the stock rear valve stem, but I had them change the front to a right angle stem for convenience. There were no valves that came with the kit, just the cap and a back locking nut.

This is probably boring and mundane for most of the guys here, but I found it fascinating and well done. Of course having it done as a cartoon was necessary for my pea-brained self.

Ok, great! I've got some inquiries out to find a shop to make the brackets.

There are a ton of 1st gen center stands on ebay and pretty inexpensive. Since Freebird published his design for the adapter bracket, if there are others interested in getting some made, I would be happy to lead the charge to get a bunch of them fabricated as I would like to add one to my 2nd gen also.

If you're still looking for one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133798047178?fits=Model%3ARoyal+Star|Make%3AYamaha&epid=1423751850&hash=item1f26fc2dca%3Ag%3AnQoAAOSwkvpg1LEi&LH_ItemCondition=4

My last sentence was incorrect, its in parallel to the brake switches, not inline (wasn't fully caffeinated when I looked @ the spaghetti diagram). Looks like you have two options. Easy option is to isolate that entire circuit from the switch, which would then allow all functions (i.e. brake lights, blinkers, etc) on the circuit to work without the switch being in the on position. Just rewire the power side of the signal fuse to the battery directly. 2nd option, a bit more complex, would be to isolate the hazard/flasher relay power from the rest of the circuit and wire it straight to the battery via a fused line.

Looking @ the electrical diagram, yes that is the way its wired, to only work with the key in on position. The hazard switch appears to just provides the ground path for energizing the hazard relay. Best case, you could simply hardwire the hazard & flasher relays directly to fused power, straight from the battery, rather than switched power. But need to spend some time looking at the other circuitry involved & how that would impact other functions. The hazard & flasher relays are on the same power circuit (switched/fused) as the brakes & turn signals, so would need to make sure those two relays can have their power isolated without messing up any other functions. Power to the relays actually comes through the normally closed brake switches.

I take off this coming Friday for a 5k mile test ride! Might have to squeeze a shorter one in before that.

Hope I don't have to do that any time soon, but I did the strap from the garage ceiling thing when I lowered the front end, so sounds like its manageable.

I have a set of nearly new, early 2000’s, Harley RK pipes that fit the Venture if anyone wants them. Need clamps. I tried them out, didn’t notice much difference, so removed the rear baffle plate. A little louder, but not much. Someone here suggested also removing the front baffle, but I decided to just put the stock pipes back on. I paid $50 for them & that’s all I will ask, plus shipping costs which would likely be another $35-50 within the US.

Got the bike up on the stand today & tightened the head bearings. Two videos attached show before & after. I was giving it light one-finger flicks from center position to the left to see where it let go, which was ~ 1/2 way point. I gave the bearing nut a couple taps, ~1/16", locked it down, retested and ended up doing another 1/16". There was no notchy or sticking feeling from full left-right swing and I could use one finger with light pressure to go full swing. It will now stay exactly where I put it. IMG_1755.MOV IMG_1759.MOV

I have a used OEM pump I keep on the bike as a spare. I got it from ebay for $30, I think it was from one of the cycle salvage places, came off a low-mileage bike and was super clean. Hit it with 12v & confirmed it works. It doesn't take up much space in the side bags & if my pump ever goes out on a long road trip, I can swap it in and then when I return, replace the points on the old one (sounds like that's the typical failure point) and then it becomes my ride-along spare.

Hmm, my F4 windshield is also 2" wider than stock on each side. In any case, the bike is going on the lift tomorrow and I will be checking the head bearings. If they are good and I experience any more instability, I might have to reconsider that choice. It is nice on the cold mornings to keep the wind off my hands though. Alternately, hot days wanted more wind.

My 07 w/ ~27k miles has it, but its only occasionally loud enough for me to hear it or be slightly annoyed by it, so I haven't even paid attention to what speed/rpm that it occurs. I wear a full-face helmet, which does mute it compared to the 1/2 helmet I started with, and I also have the music blasting almost all the time. But, I also wonder how much it has to do with each of our individual frequency sensitivities. I'm hypersensitive to very low frequency noise. I can hear a very low hum from my neighbor's AC compressor when it runs @ night and it prevents me from sleeping. My wife can't even hear it at all. I just had someone recently tell me that she can sometimes here a hum from overhead electrical lines if the conditions are right. On the other hand, higher frequency noises while can be annoying, are more tolerable to me.

Whoa! That's freaking awesome!!!!

I noticed that too. I'm still relatively new here & new to working on motorcycles. Those two guys motivated, encouraged, prodded and taught me as I was dealing with an excessive heat issue on my bike when I first bought it. I was getting depressed that I couldn't enjoy getting out and riding my new toy and they, along with others helped me get through it. The knowledge they possess and their patience with a dork like me was priceless. Whatever new chapter in life they are on to and the people who are a part of that chapter are blessed to have them. I will always be grateful to them for not only helping me, but the legacy of historical postings they've left behind here, which I often encounter when looking for various bits of info. Godspeed to you Cowpuc and Patch! Godspeed, my brothers!

I too had this problem last year when I purchased my 2007 with 21k miles. I could not ride for more than 15-20 minutes without getting unbelievably hot. PO had put a chrome cover over the radiator, took that off - no help. Changed the coolant - no help. Changed the thermostat (major PITA) - no help. In the end, it was gunked up carbs causing a lean running condition, which caused it to run hot. When I bought the bike, it had the freer flowing K&N air filters, which probably added to the lean running condition a bit too. I had the carbs rebuilt by member eusa1and replaced the air filters with stock. If you have access to a shop that has an exhaust gas analyzer, they could tell you if you are running lean. There is a port on each exhaust pipe for this purpose. I was thinking about having that done, but once I took the carbs off and saw how gunked up the float bowls were, it just made sense to have them rebuilt, which solved my heat problem.