RSTDdog

I would not use RTV silicone gasket maker in that location. I would use Yamabond 4. Excellent sealant and the excess levels and clings to surrounding metal and doesn't ball up and break off like RTV silicone. They use Yamabond 4 to seal crankcase halves on two stroke motors for this reason. (hondabond 4 is the same product, I do not know the manufacturer generic name for this product.). The OEM yamaha gaskets that have gray sealant preapplied to them, that is Yamabond. If the gasket has pre-applied sealant, you don't need to add more except for where your crack is. Make sure everything is clean when reassembling.

Before ripping anything apart confirm the following: Spark on all four, Fueling on all four, Running on all four (Cold start spit on finger touch the header pipes or use a non-contact IR thermometer if you own one), after confirmed sparking, fueling and running on all four, check and perform carb sync. Then check the clutch and stator work done previously to see if something loosened up there. These motors do not have a reputation for coming apart on their own,so look for noises anywhere a human has worked on it previously. Also,there is a service bulletin/recall on the 2007 models for the head gasket bolts not being torqued properly. Having Zero Luck turning up the service bulletin for this on Google. Has this been checked on your bike? You may have just enough of a leak that you are ingesting some water. A very clean spark plug would be an indication. Dealer would be able to tell if your bikes VIN is affected.

I did not have to go 15 feet for my kitchen project ( in your case 34 feet, 15+15+2+2). I did put a rectangular clear plastic storage container over the circular saw with a port for a shop vac using a HEPA filter and a hole for my hand to work the saw. This worked well to control the dust. Rental equipment is probably better suited for the amount of cutting you need to do. Don't think I would want to jack hammer all that. If you make roughly equal cross cuts you could end up with 6-7 ~2x2 pavers to use out side somewhere.

My condolences to the OP for his loss. Most police officers have no formal training in accident reconstruction. No ability to interpret skid marks, yaw, rear crossing over front, etc. or Interpreting transfer marks on vehicles, directional patterns, etc. Accident reconstruction involving motorcycles is a science unto itself. Saddlebum did what is often done professionally, superimpose all the available pavement marks and information (Skid, peg gouges, vehicle points of rest, etc) to scale on an aerial of the accident area. That typically will clarify a number of things including when driver(s) or eyewitness accounts are mistaken or inconsistent with the physical evidence. In the OPs friend's circumstances, if the unknown car that caused the accident can't be found (No plate number, insufficient information to ID it ), it becomes difficult. It is also a lot shorter report and a lot less work for the officer to not document all the witness statements and consider them when rendering the case opinion. The family may have to do this themselves and bring them to the attention of the officer in charge if nothing more than to set the record straight. See if any of the local "News on your side" or "in your corner" reporters, most stations have one, will take up all the facts and report on it.

Not sure what size or shape hole you need, but if the slab is only 2 inches thick, Get a concrete blade for your circular saw. $15.00-$35.00 depending on brand. That will get you down almost 3 1/2 inches. (most concrete circular saw blades are only 7 inches so probably closer to 3" depth of cut) I think I bought the cheap Husky brand diamond blade from Home Depot. I used it to make a trench for conduit to move a kitchen island and the electric. For that trench (not going through the slab) made multiple parallel cuts and easily knocked out the thin ribs with hammer and chisel. I have also use it to cut patio stones and other stuff. 4 cuts gets you a square hole in your 2 inch concrete floor. Multiple parallel cuts and bust out the ribs gets you a rectangle.

We went in 2007 on Holland America. We did the cruise and land tour combo with the train. If you are going to do the inside passage cruise, I would recommend a balcony if its in your budget. Nice to be able to go and sit out side and have your coffee and watch the scenery go by. You may also have a choice of which direction to go. My vote would be start out south in Seattle or Vancouver on the inside passage cruise and go north. Form a scenery perspective south to north journey things keep getting better and better. The other option is go North to south, starting with the train and land tours in Alaska and finishing your trip with the inside passage cruise. Some view the cruise at the end to be a good way to wind down. Either way you won't be disappointed.

The new springs in front will probably settle downward after a while. Drive it a month or two and see if settles in and down. Other option is your new springs and shocks in front were probably enough to level it relative to your rear springs with 22 years and 91,000 miles on them. I have a Ford Van with the Twin I beam suspension soI am not familiar with the 97 F150 front end or what you have to do to replace front springs and shocks. Some vehicles if you tighten everything with the suspension in full droop (wheels hanging down when its supported by the frame on the lift), Any pivot points with rubber bushings that get tightened in this condition can act like a spring of sorts and add some lift. For pressed-in rubber bushings on an A-arm it can over rotate the bushing when you put the weight back on the suspension. Some vehicles you assemble everything but final torque with the weight on the suspension so everything is in a neutral loaded position when it gets tightened. Obviously helps to have drive on lift for this.

Yamaha's "Pre-Order System" is nothing new. This was the only way you could get an FJR1300 when they first came out. They did this with the FJR because of what happened with the GTS1000 in 1993. For me the SVTC is too large. I felt the same way about the Kawasaki Concours 13. I am 6' 2" so not too large for me to handle, just stylistically too large. Its a good looking bike and well executed and no doubt will be reliable. I think Yamaha mis-read the market for it though. Unlikely you will get many Goldwing riders to switch from liquid cooled, shaft drive, 6 cylinder to Air cooled V-twin belt drive. Similarly, I believe the majority of Harley sales are because it is a Harley, not because the specifications of the bike are better. I think an old acquaintance who was the GSM of the Harley Dealer for a number of years phrased it best. I came in one day asked him "So how have motorcycle sales been?" His reply to me- "We don't sell motorcycles here.....We sell lifestyle...." Next time you are at an outdoor event, block party, concert, etc. See how many Yamaha or Star t-shirts/clothing jackets you see relative to HD. Actually look for all brands combined vs. HD. This is what you are competing against with HD. So that leaves the small V-twin market void created with Victory leaving the market. Assuming all Victory owners are V twin Loyalists, this market gets split between Harley, Indian, Yamaha, and Kawasaki for V-twin cruiser style touring bikes. Will be interesting to see what happens moving forward.

Ducati Making Mechanics out of Riders since 1946.......

My condolences for the loss of your brother. While tough to do if you don't have a computer (you can always head down to the library), one way to get an idea on the cars is take information from 20 of them , 10 Franklin, 10 Danbury and do a search of Completed listings on ebay. This is generally a good marker for what you could expect selling them individually. I can tell you that my brother has paid too much money on ebay buying toys from his youth, if people are going to over pay for something they really want it will be on an auction site. Auctioning them yourself on ebay or a dedicated die cast site will bring you the most money but will obviously be a lot of work. Someone buying them as a bundle will want to pay less, particularly if their intent is resale. Googling will also yield information and discussion sites like the one Puc posted. Would be a good idea to do a little research on your own in any regard. On Edit: I would STRONGLY encourage you to do a search of sold listings on ebay and educate yourself on the value of the individual cars he has . I did a generic search using Franklin Mint Diecast and Sold values are all over the place depending on what they are. $10.00 to $300 with one corvette selling for over $1000.00 If he has some true "Limited" runs, less than 300 cars, it would be worth your time to research and sell yourself. Also figure that people who want a Model of an actual car they own in their garage will pay more than what the model is worth in auction just to have it. What years do the baseball cards cover? That is a lot of cards. I sold a box stored (i.e not mint, not perfect corners) 1969 Topps Mickey Mantle (his last year) for $75.00 in 1989 to a dealer with a store front, so he clearly expected to make money on it at that price he paid me. Had 68 and 67 Mickey Mantle with creases in them, still received $5.00 for those. Don't know much about what cards are worth these days. Still have 4000 or so under the bed late 60's to 70', but collector picked out everything he wanted in 1989 anyway. At one time the George Brett 1974 Topps Rookie card was worth thousands in the `mid 1990's but I didn't have one of those. Not sure what it is worth today. Rookie year cards for guys who got famous later were a big deal at one point. Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente should all be valuable cards if the collection includes original cards from that era. If they are stored individually in sleeves they are worth more than box stored assuming temperature control and plastic sleeves are not stuck to the card. Good luck with your research and sale!

Nice Bike. Another vote for Pillow tops. I put pillow top seats on my RSTD. When swapping levers over be sure to remove clean and grease all the pivot points on the lever, including the brass barrels, and on the perch side. Makes a world of difference. The lever pivots points are frequently neglected and get dried out and sticky. If you had to push lever out with your hand to disengage the brake or clutch switch, its time for lever pivot maintenance.

You are not the only one.........https://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?139127-I-want-one-of-these-when-they-are-available

Congratulations. Thread needs better pictures!

If you look at the head pipes on the RSV (and RSTD, the early Ventures, Royales, Vmax, etc) they all have threaded access ports (10mm head). Back when I worked for a Yamaha dealer, we had the Yamaha Exhaust gas analyzer, analog gauges, and set up with 4 sensors, so you could set the CO value exactly the same on all 4 carbs with the mixture screws. Yamaha had published specs for setting CO with EGA. Absent an EGA, you can set them by ear, or set them using a good tachometer and your sync gauges. Lean Drop method is the typical where you adjust the mixture lean for maximum RPM and then richen to drop RPM by 50 ( you need a good tach). You can see changes in the mixture at idle in the sync gauges as well. Adjusting mixture for highest vacuum reading on that cylinder is equivalent to leanest (before miss sets in) mixture setting on that cylinder. And as all of that is a bit fiddly and will drive the OCD among us crazy, 2-2.5 turns out is usually good on clean and properly functioning carbs.

You may want to try searching craigslist nationwide. One way to to do this is in Google is Search term,item, product followed by site:craigslist.org Keep in mind that the google search algorithm puts advertisers first followed by most frequently clicked (sort of) so you may have to look several pages in. A number of the accessories for the RSTD were discontinued even before the production stopped in 2009. Found a lot of things this way. Everyone I contacted was willing to ship. Search Tempest is another way to search craigslist nationwide. There may be others. Also vary your search terms, be general, search Royal Star Parts, etc. Also search using google, you may find one for sale on another motorcycle forum. Delphi Forums for Yamaha often have parts for sale (or at least they did). Again you may need to go several pages in.