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Reupholstered the seat & backrest! Also got a hold of new muffler gaskets and will be installing those this weekend. We also got a functioning tape deck off of eBay and got that installed, so the audio system now functions as it should. Couldn't get the CLASS computer working so that's been removed and we'll be converting it to manual. Right side of the dash has the glovebox now - finding one with a good hinge was a bitch. And we replaced all the cracked reflectors and turn signal lenses and replaced the broken saddlebag release on the right side. Converted the headlight to LED for good measure, too. Seems like a good spot to stop and take stock of what's left to actually do on this thing. It's still running kind of hot in city traffic and gets right up to the top of the green area on the temperature gauge when idling for long periods of time. The water pump's been rebuilt with new seals and a metal impeller, so we're not sure if there's much else that can be done - maybe the radiator needs to be cleaned out? It's perfectly fine and sits right in the middle of the range on the temp gauge at highway speeds, at least. Speaking of the temperature gauge, it stops reading steadily and the needle swings back and forth, randomly dropping to the bottom when going over 70mph or so. Might just be dodgy connectors on the sensor? Still need to remove the air compressor and install schraeder valves on the lines so the suspension can be manually adjusted. Replace the leaky muffler gaskets. The windshield is really scratched up and foggy, so we're going to try and polish / wax it. The front right inner fairing is cracked to pieces and really needs to be replaced. Probably a good idea to go through the maintenance checklist and do anything that we haven't already done, including adjusting the valves and replacing the rear end fluid. The speedometer is still wayyyy off but the odometer reads true, don't know if that's something that can be repaired. There's a bit of a shimmy at around 85mph that feels like it's maybe the front wheel needing to be balanced. The left mirror is cracked and ought to be replaced. That's everything we can think of! Feels like we're closing in on the finish line

Definitely planning on it! We've been wanting to head down towards Ouray and ride the million dollar highway one of these days...

Finally done with all the painting! It came out really well, and definitely gets a lot of attention now! We added a bunch of shiny butterfly stickers to really capture the "9 year old with a barbie jeep" vibes it's got going on lol:

Previous owner already installed the delinking kit! So that's already taken care of, at least. Don't know about the MC, though. We'll give that a try1 Can't hurt anyway.

Still need to do the saddlebags and trunk, but the bike bodywork is finally done!

More painting done! Allowing for curing times and when we have time to work on it, we ought to be finished about a week from Friday

We've been epoxying stuff together that wouldn't zip tie well - that lower fairing was in three pieces - and we're pretty familiar with fiberglassing - we built a boat a few years ago and learned how to do it for that project. Mostly this is just an artistic / philosophical decision; we want it to show its scars rather than erase the history, if that makes sense? That's why we're using pretty, colorful zip ties for the repairs. Some of the mounting brackets and pins and stuff we will be recreating since zip ties won't necessarily work right in those locations. They're mostly going to be for the random cracks here and there.

Hooked up the anti-dive units as @Vickersguy suggested and that got it working! Also finished painting one side of the lower front fairing: Once we finish the other side we'll have to start taking things off

We finally got around to ordering a carb synchronizing tool and got the carbs all tuned up and the oil & oil filter changed. She's running really smooth now and accelerates like a bat out of hell. Ran into another weird problem - the temperature gauges starts dropping to zero once we accelerate over 90mph (indicated - so ~75mph actual). Might just be a loose connector or something but it's odd how consistent it is. As soon as we slow down below that threshold it immediately start working correctly again. We're gonna try and hook up the anti-dive units this week; gonna guess it doesn't have progressive springs based on how severely it's diving on the front brakes. Might try and change the shock oil while we're at it - we did check the steering and wheel bearings while we had it on the center stand but there's no play there. After that we're just going to try and work our way through all the scheduled maintenance stuff so we can get a good baseline to go off of in the future. Test painted one of the fairing bits that's not currently on the bike! Primer, four coats of gloss candy pink, wet sanding down to 1000 grit, and three layers of matte clear coat makes for a very lovely satin pink finish 😁 There's several spots on the fairing where mounting tabs are snapped off and long gone. The plan for anything we can't repair is to drill holes and use contrasting cyan zip-ties for a kinda drift-stitched, kintsugi look.

We're going to try to mess with the air computer module a bit further but it's not looking promising, we'll PM you We noticed that the brakes looked off - they're definitely very powerful and stop it quickly. Hmmm, hadn't though of that but given everything else that's been modified on the front end there's a good chance that's not the original drive unit. If it's an easy enough swap we'll see if we can hunt an earlier one down. Got the water pump rebuilt and installed yesterday and rode it up to work this morning. Our commute involves driving through downtown Denver traffic and then climbing 2500' up the mountains at highway speeds so it's a pretty good stress test - we frequently see manufacturer test mules dressed in dazzle camo on our commute route during the summer lol. It's definitely running cooler, though not by a lot. Enough to keep it from bumping against the redline on the temp gauge constantly at least.

Done! The existing pipe had a notch already dented in it from the guard, so it's bent back out of the way and we ordered a new pipe with all the water pump stuff. Can't get the Venture ones new anymore, but it turns out the equivalent part on the V-MAX 1200 is identical aside from being black, and it's still in production. Thank you! It's a 1967 Puch 250 SG/S - the only split-single bike ever sold in the US. It still needs a little work done - the shocks are shot, the carb's pretty worn out, and we need to replace the front brake lever with the correct Magura lever - but it's overall very solid. We rode it up to the top of Mount Blue Sky, the highest paved road in North America at 14,130', this summer and back home to Aurora and it didn't miss a beat! Ok, that makes the front end start to make a little more sense. The anti-dive units aren't hooked up - the wires are just hanging disconnected - and we're gonna guess that the wiring harness on the bike lacks anywhere to plug them in, then. Any known way to get that functional, or are we going to be flying blind with the schematics to sort out how to get it working? If worse comes to worse we do have the whole original front end from the seller, but we'd rather get the second gen one hooked up and fully operational if possible. We tried resoldering the wiring harness connector pins like we did for the CMS and no change. Any particular pins we should look at or would it just be best to reflow everything on both boards inside the unit? Reflowing the solder on the CMS connector got the headlight working correctly at least. Turns out the instrument cluster was missing a couple of the little rubber shock absorbers, too, so those have been replaced as well. The water pump parts arrived yesterday, so this evening after work we're going to try and get the pump rebuilt and reinstalled. And change the oil & filter while we're at it - the stuff in there is very black and looks done for. We've got a 100+ mile group ride coming up this weekend, assuming we get the water pump dealt with we're planning on taking the Venture for a little trip through the mountains

We got her up on the center stand, though we did need some help seeing as how we're a fairly small woman and don't weigh enough to lever it up there lol. But the frame looks good at least - from what we can see there's not any noticeable rot or rust. Definitely nothing broken. And she definitely runs smooth as all hell, that was honestly the reason we overlooked everything else at first; our first test ride put such a big smile on our face that we couldn't resist. @Marcarl: Followed your suggestion on problem #6 and that's sorted now! She's no longer throwing any errors so we can finally peel off the piece of electrical tape the previous owner stuck over the warning light lol. We also managed to find the missing dash chunks down in the fairing and glued them back together so the right side of the dash is at least reassembled, even if it's not in the best shape. As for #4, the screen does light up when the key's on acc, but all the buttons are unresponsive. We'll reflow the solder on the board and see if that helps. Don't get too attached - we're planning on stripping off the plastics, fixing them up and repainting as a winter project. Definitely not going to keep it gold - we're leaning towards a matte pastel pink at this point.

So we've been riding since we were a kid - oh gods it's been 25 years - and in all that time we've never owned anything bigger than a 250. But then our daughter discovered the existence of touring bikes and shoved her iPhone in our face with a picture of a Goldwing on it, demanding to know why she "has to hang on for dear life" on our Puch when she could have been comfy and luxuriating in a world of armrests and cupholders. But like hell we're going to end up on a Goldwing, and we prefer vintage bikes so after a bit of looking we decided on a Venture. Then, as is our usual MO, we did not do sufficient research and bought the first one we liked. Which was this particular '83: After a week of riding it around and poking and prodding at things reality started to set in and we realized that setting this beast straight is going to take a lot of work. In no particular order we've already identified the following issues: The water pump is weak, leaks coolant through the weep hole, and it runs very hot, particularly when sitting in traffic. The plastic bodywork is not in great shape - there's several pieces missing, cracks & broken off tabs all over the place, and it's partially held together with zip ties. The anti-dive system on the front brakes is disconnected. The air suspension system is non-functional. The headlight is very dim. The CMS is throwing a battery warning despite the battery / alternator appearing to be fine. The speedometer reads about 15% faster than actual speed per GPS. The left side of the dash is shattered and the previous owner just screwed a solid plate of ABS over it, rendering the coolant overflow canister inaccessible. The lock over the gas cap is broken and opens with a screwdriver. Second gear currently works fine, but it's got 40k miles on it and there's no evidence that the faulty split-washer's been replaced. So that's looming. The cassette player's missing and has been bypassed. The left rear turn signal is held together with duct tape. The forks make a clunking sound when going over bumps. #1 appears to be the plastic impeller issue, and we've already ordered the parts to deal with that. We're going to reflow the solder on the CMS to hopefully deal with #5 and #6. From what we can tell on #10 it may be more economical to just swap in a 1300 from the 2nd gen when and if it starts popping out of gear. #13 is apparently normal on 83's? The previous owner threw in a set of 2nd gen shocks so it might be worth it to try and swap those in if they're interchangeable. Don't think there's much we can do about #7 since it's cable-driven. Most of the rest are just a matter of hunting down replacement parts, but we're going to need help with #3 and #4 - we don't know how much of those systems are missing and what's broken or how to set it straight. So yeah, we appear to have landed ourself yet another Project 😅. At least we're wrapping up things on the Puch. Wouldn't want to get bored, after all. Bonus pics of the two next to each other. The Venture sure makes the Puch feel tiny as all hell!