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ManWithAVision

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Everything posted by ManWithAVision

  1. ManWithAVision
    So, 4:45 hey! And I thought 8 A.M. was early. :doh:Thanks for the info.
  2. ManWithAVision
    Thanks Joe!
  3. ManWithAVision
    I installed the Road King pipes on my 06 RSTD about a month ago. Like many others, I quickly realized they didn't make much of a difference in the sound level. So I did the first modification of drilling the four holes in the forward baffle plates. That did make a bit of a difference and they do sound quite nice at idle or when I wind her up. But they still aren't quite loud enough for me. I have been debating about drilling out the rear baffle plate with the hole saw (mod # 2), but realize that if I do and my neighbours start circulating petitions up and down our street my only option will be to go back to the OEM pipes and start searching on ebay again. What can I say, I'm a considerate person. I would like to hear from anyone who has gone from the first mod to the second mod to get an idea if this makes a significant difference in the sound level while the bike is warming up at idle in your driveway, and if the noise level is high enough to become irritating on long trips before I start cutting.
  4. ManWithAVision
    Hey Joe, Did you ever get that I basket that you ordered installed? If so, has it made any significant difference in your noise levels? If you think it is worth the cost /effort, could you let me know what the part number is as well? It sounds like trying to get Yamaha to do this under warranty can be an exercise in frustration from what I have read elsewhere. Wayne
  5. ManWithAVision
    I added 7 ounces of Motorkote the night before my wife and I left for a week long bike trip. The first two days were very hot and humid. The only two days this summer that the temperature has exceeded 30 celcius in southern Ontario. On the second day out we did an 80 kilometer run from Port Dover to Port Stanley along the north shore of Lake Erie. I did realize about halfway there that my chine (I have the chirp and the whine) was not as noticable as it usually is in fourth gear at 90 kph on a hot & humid day. We logged just under 700 kilometers in four days before the weather went south on us and there was only one time during the final fifty kilometers of a 200 km day that the chine was loud enough to start bugging me. We were out again today on a mix of highway and city roads and I would have to say that the noise level is way down now from what it used to be. My next step is switching over to 10W40 Amsoil to see if that makes any further reduction in the sound or frequency of my chine.
  6. ManWithAVision
    I had a similar adventure this summer. Fortunately my wife and I left her Suzuki C50 and my RSTD back at the motel that day. My wife and I were on a bike trip in July. When we rolled into Parry Sound Ontario the forecast was for late day thunderstorms. I wanted to check out a cottage I had built thirty years ago in the area, but the darkening skys forced us to rent a Yaris and do the trip in a four wheel cage. We brought along my newly aquired Garmin motorcycle GPS to help us navigate. We found the cottage all right then decided to explore the other end of the paved highway that I had never followed in my younger years. Eventually the paved highway turned into a dirt road so we punched in a request asking our GPS to steer us back to the main road to Parry Sound. After 8.5 kilometers of roads and conditions similar to those in your pictures, using the poor little (I think I can, I think I can) Yaris as a four by four, we came to a clearing. While parked on top of a boulder stairing at a small uninhabited lake and some hydro towers, my GPS told us to hang a left and drive 12.5 kilometers on the hydro access trail. We quickly hung a 180 and headed out of there bottoming out the suspension every few seconds before the thunder storms could cut off our escape route. Fortunately the rental place was closed when we got back to town so we left the key in the late return box. I guess the guys were all hung over the next morning, because we didn't get any nasty calls and were only charged the basic daily rental charge on our next credit card statement. Later, I used Google maps to pinpoint where we turned around we realized we would have had another 25 - 30 kilometers along hydro access trails and cow paths in the dark during heavy rains to get back out to the main highway. The moral of the story is never trust a motorcycle GPS unless your riding a dirt bike!
  7. ManWithAVision
    Interesting comment. For the longest time I have noticed that my whine is much worse on hot & humid days. I thought it was just in my head but maybe not. I added the Motorkote tonight. The local sales rep delivered it to my door today and he told me that he uses it in his car, truck, dirt bike, ski boat and even in his oil injected snow mobile, and has not had any problems. He suggested that fuel consumption varies but should be somwhere between five and twelve percent better.
  8. ManWithAVision
    I did some digging and have found that the Motorkote products are distributed in Canada at www.motorkote.ca by a company based in Winnipeg. They also have two distributors in the Toronto area - Lotus Distributing @ 705-434-0141 and 416-434-8145 (Tom) as well as Owol Distributing in Barrie @ 705-735-9479. The products are quite popular in the trucking industry and the lady I spoke with at Lotus says they all use it in their cars as well and saw no reason why it could not be used in motorcycles. I plan on giving it a try as my 06 RSTD has both the whine and the chirp. I will be leaving for a week long bike trip next week so I hope to add some before I go and will post the results of the trial upon my retrun.
  9. ManWithAVision
    Maybe it is all in my head but after pouring half a can of Sea Foam into the tank before we set out on a 200 KM ride yesterday the bike seemed to run a lot smoother. I noticed the idle speed was up slightly on the tach but otherwise she was running quite well without any hint of the problems I had two nights earlier. I bought the bike new in October of 08 as a non current model, so it only has 5000 Km's on it so far. I did drain the carbs for the winter lay up last fall. My wife and I just returned a couple of weeks ago from a thousand kilometer trip around norhtern Ontario (all highway driving) and my bike never missed a beat. I do recall however, when I took it into a local dealer for the first service at 1000 KM in April it was missing and popping on one cylinder on the right side on the return trip home. The dealer claimed there was nothing they did that could have caused it, but I did ask for a carb sink so I was suspicious. After a couple of good runs on the highway and performing my own carb sink it cured itself until last Friday. I suppose I will continue to add a maintenance dose of Sea Foam periodically for now and maybe once she is laid up for the winter I'll get ambitious and check out the right side carb floats. Thanks for your input. If all else fails I have my trusty SPOT satellite locator device in the saddlebag with free roadside assistance.
  10. ManWithAVision
    My wife and I decided to go for a ride downtown in Toronto last Friday night. It was a warm and muggy night. My bike had been sitting in the garage all day. I pulled out the choke and pushed the start button. It didn't want to start right away but fired up after a second push on the button. I reduced the choke as soon as it started and pushed it off entirely within a minute and a half. Off we rode. Me on my 06 RSTD and my wife on her Suzuki C50. Everything seemed fine until we got downtown near the lake and my bike started missing on one cylinder at idle (a popping sound on the right side that my wife said she could hear as she sat ten feet behind me on her bike) and baby backfires on deceleration. I was also noticing the smell of gas. We turned around and headed for home. I wound it up in first and second a couple of times as I pulled away from traffic lights and it purred like a kitten each time. After that the problem was gone. No missing, no backfiring, and no gas smell. The next morning I noticed fuel spots down the length of my driveway and a larger spot where I had stopped briefly before we headed out onto the street. I hopped in my truck and headed to NAPA to pick up a can of Sea Foam. I poured about half a can of Sea Foam into the nearly full fuel tank and have put a couple of hundred more kilometers under the wheels during the last two days with no further signs of trouble. I pulled the right rear spark plug and it appeared to be clean and dry. Didn't feel like pulling the fuel tank to check the front one! Has anybody else experienced this problem? I don't want to find myself in this position during our upcoming bike holiday.
  11. ManWithAVision
    Those of you who have installed the Yamaha passing lamps may want to inspect the OEM glass fuse holder that is part of the wiring harness that comes with the lamps. I installed these lamps on my 06 RSTD this spring. I just completed a thousand kilometer vacation trip last week and had no problems, but last Sunday on a day trip I noticed my passing lamps were no longer working. The fused power lead was connected to the wiring harness inside the headlight housing so that is the first placed I checked. I discovered that the nylon OEM glass fuse holder had melted where the bottom of the glass fuse makes contact with the lower contact point. Fortunately the nylon fuse holder was tough enough to restrict the damage to the fuse holder housing itself and none of the other wires around it were damaged, but I had to use Channellock pliers to get it apart. I have since replaced the glass fuse holder with an automotive ATO fuse holder c/w weatherproof rubber cap. I also noted that the OEM glass fuse is rated at 10 amps whichs seems a bit high for the two lights that it powers. The red power lead looks a little thin for 10 amps. I have reduced the rating of the new ATO fuse to 5 amps and everything works just fine.
  12. ManWithAVision
    So I decided to be patriotic and order a flag pole mount and a Canadian flag to mount on my RSTD. The good news is Canada Post actually delivered it to the right address this time and with twelve hours to spare. So I got to do my Canada Day ride with my little Canadian flag fluttering behind my tour pack. The bad news is I had to order it from American Motorcycle Accessories in Huntington Beach California. So much for buying Canadian eh!
  13. ManWithAVision
    Ditto on the thanks Dave. I'll pull the seat this weekend and have a look for that accessory lead. I don't anticipate anymore electrical loads so that should do the trick for my Garmin Zumo 660. It has a quick detach arrangement, so once it is detached from the base and stored for safe keeping so is the electrical load. Therefore it doesn't even matter if the lead is always powered or off with the key. I already have the passing lamps, a 12 volt outlet, a tack, and the LED turn signal conversions, so unless they invent motorcycle air conditioners or I decide to turn the bike into a rolling LED billboard I should be fine.
  14. ManWithAVision
    I have read in past postings about connecting new toys to the "accessory lead". Where would I find this wire on my 06 RSTD? Headlight housing? Fuse panel? I just purchased a Garmin Zumo 660 GPS and will be hooking it up this weekend. I already have a couple of other leads connected directly to the positive post on the battery so it is getting a little crowded at that location. If someone can point me in the right direction and perhaps let me know what the colour coding is for this wire that would help speed up the installation project for this weekend!
  15. ManWithAVision
    Sorry, no pics, but the part I found to be bent is a metal plate that screws onto the end of the lock cylinder. There is an arm that comes out from this plate with a ninety degree bend in it. This arm is what pushes on the paddle bar assembly when the lock is unlocked and it is depressed. When the lock is locked this arm rotates ninety degrees away from the point of contact on the paddle arm assembly, so the lock button still pushes down but there is nothing in its path. If you remove the plastic cover plate from the lid you will have access to the inner workings of the whole assembly. The lock mechanism slides into a plastic housing, which also holds the paddle plate assembly. This whole assembly can be removed by undoing two nuts from the threaded studs that protrude down from the lid. Remove the two circlips that hold the paddle assembly pins in place along with the two flat washers. Be careful that they don't take flight in the process like one of mine did. Then you can pull out the two pins that hold the paddle plate in place. There is also a return spring at one end of this assembly. Note how it attaches before you pull everything apart. Now you need to unscrew the single Phillips head screw on the retaining arm that holds the lock cylinder in place. The other end of the arm slides into a slot in the plastic housing. There is a spring under this arm as well so hold onto the spring as you remove the arm. Now you should be able to slide the lock cylinder out and examine the actuation plate on the end of it. If the arm coming off this plate is not at right angles to the base you will need to remove the two screws that attach this plate to the lock cylinder. Be careful not to turn the lock cylinder over or the lock tumblers might fall out. Once I had the plate off I used a vise and a pair of pliers to bend the tab back to the ninety degree position. This may sound like a lengthy process in writing but it took me less than thirty minutes to disassemble the lock, fix the actuation plate angle, reassembly the lock, and reinstall it on the saddlebag. Everything worked fine after that. Good Luck!
  16. ManWithAVision
    See my thread in the Watering Hole today. This just happened to me yesterday morning. Try to pry the back corner of the lid up and slide a piece of wood between it and the base. Then go fishing with your fingers, a coat hanger, or a long screw driver and try to relocate or remove the object that is jamming the hinge release lever. I believe the roll pins go into a dead end hole rather than straight through. If you damage the shaft they are in while trying to drill them out, the replacements may not be as tight a fit. Five different mechanical moves have to occur when you push down on that button before the lid levers release the lid. I would like to meet the engineer that designed this system and tell him / her what I think of their design and the lack of a back-up release option in case something goes wrong (see Murphy's Law).
  17. ManWithAVision
    I had a unique opportunity yesterday morning. I took my 06 RSTD to work and upon my arrival I removed my riding boots and mesh jacket and stuffed them into the left (port) side saddlebag. I also had a sweatshirt in there which I laid on top of my jacket. I closed the lid then realized I left my pager in my jacket pocket so I pushed the lock / button to open the lid again. No luck. The button would not allow me to depress it. I checked the lock with my key to make sure the lock was okay and the key turned freely but there was no way it was going to allow me to depress it and release the lid latches inside. One of my employees was nearby so the two of us pushed and pulled on the lid and the lock / release button to try and get it aligned better in case something was jammed. Still no luck and the button still wouldn't budge. I pryed off the plastic trim plate that surrounds the lock cylinder but that didn't give me access to anything. I had visions of getting the sawzall out of my employees truck and cutting the lid off. As one last attempt before resorting to such drastic measures, I got my assistant to pull up on the rear corner of the lid as hard as he could without breaking it to allow me to get a couple of fingers inside. I managed to grasp the edge of my sweatshirt and pull it out through the crack. The button then worked and the lid was open. We took everything out and tried shutting the lid again and all worked fine, but when I tried locking the lock I had a dickens of a time to get the lock to unlock. Last night I dismantled the whole works and found that when we pushed the lock button down so hard we managed to bend the actuating arm that acts to lock the bag as well as actuating a paddle plate, which in turn pulls on a long rod that then actuates the latches. What a complex assembly for such a simple task! All is straight and true and working properly now, but I would advise all RSTD and second gen riders to be very careful about what they put in those bags and make sure that nothing gets too close to those lid release levers. I also wonder if any of you have run into this problem on your bike before?
  18. ManWithAVision
    Hey, at least I'm not the only biker / sailor on this forum. My wife and I took a ride today to check on our other mode of summer transportation, our Aura 8.7 sailboat. She is moored here in Toronto on Lake Ontario. Great day here as well.
  19. ManWithAVision
    Ditto on Radio World. Bought my Cardo Q2 communications system from them and they had the best price anywhere. They are a huge operation when it comes to electronic gadgetry so their sales volume = good prices.They also have a special section dedicated to motorcycle electronics and mounts, so if you can make the trip to the store you can touch before you buy.
  20. ManWithAVision
    Guess you'll just have to put pontoons and a paddlewheel on that bike (the sidecar should float okay) and ride on over next time you need parts!
  21. ManWithAVision
    I assume you mean the drain bolt at the bottom of the oil pan, and it sounds like the bolt is seized rather than stripped. Two suggestions. A good old pair of good quality Vice Grips, brute strength to clamp them onto the head of the bolt as tight as possible, and a long piece of rigid pipe (at least three feet) with a sufficient diameter to slide over the handle of the Vice Grips (the one with the adjustable screw protruding from the end of it). Second choice would be if you sheer the head off the bolt, go to Canadian Tire or some industrial supply place and purchase a set of screw extractors. You then attach the extractor to your drill (you'll have to lean the bike over or jack it up really high) and use the drilling end to drill the insertion hole. Then you turn the extractor bit around and thread in the left hand thread into the hole with a wrench and it will turn out the shank of the broken bolt without damaging the threaded hole in the casing.
  22. ManWithAVision
    Actually with NAFTA import duties are pretty much a thing of the past, but customs tends to make sure they tack on the provincial sales tax and goods and services tax at the border, which adds 13%. The taxes are also calculated on the Canadain dollar value so we are taxed on about 20% more than the stated U.S. dollar value. This being said I recently received a some LED license plate frames for my bike and my wife's bike with no extra charges from Customs. I guess that one got through when they were'nt looking.
  23. ManWithAVision
    The first time I ordered some OEM accessories for my 06 RSTD I checked the local suppliers in the Toronto area and found their prices to be outrageous. So I starting searching web sites south of the border. I found one that had the best price on the items I was after, but after placing the order and heading for the checkout I discovered they wouldn't ship outside the U.S.A. Then I stumbled upon www.boats.net. Although they specialize in boat parts, if you type in and search the OEM part number their database will quote a price (and if it is in stock at Yamaha) they usually received it and ship it out within a week. They had the second lowest prices I found and they shipped via USPS at a reasonable rate. I was ready to order the saddlebag trim rails this week and remembered reading a thread recently on this forum about www.motorsportssupercentre.com having even lower prices than boats.net. I checked them out and sure enough they were twenty dollars less on the rails at $159.00 compared to boats.net at $179.00. I placed the order and headed for the checkout but was shocked to find they would only ship them via UPS International at a whopping cost of $99.50 to Toronto. I even called them on the phone and asked if USPS was an option but was told UPS was the only option for international shipments. I ended up spending twenty bucks more for my parts at boats.net but ended up saving over fifty dollars U.S. by having them shipped via USPS at a cost of twenty-eight and change. Canadian buyers beware!
  24. ManWithAVision
    I see by your mess you are a sailor like me. I thought I was the only one insane enough to own two bikes and a sailboat. So, is the bike parked in there somewhere as well?
  25. ManWithAVision
    A lot less than a fractured rib! Must have been a pretty good sized rock to dent the chrome.
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