LilBeaver

Love the last line... I think he forgot to mention the chrome plated kanooter valve.

Weird. I'll stay tuned just to figure out what is going on! Sorry, no intelligent input here.

So a few months ago, a gal I work with (she shares an office with me) had asked about my bike (she sees my crash jacket & helmet sitting next to my desk every day) and we had a nice little chat about it. Turns out, some of her only memories of her and her father were of her riding on the back of his wing. She asked if I would mind taking her for a ride sometime, of course, I said no problem - just let me know when. Well work finally slowed down some (and classes are over for a while) so we planned it for today. I roll up to her place around 745 or so. She is out on the porch waiting for me, and pretty much set to go. I hand off the extra crash jacket I have and helmet, we chit-chat a little and take off. My mistake was thinking that she just wanted a quick ride. So I take her for a 20 minute spin around town and down one of the only decent roads within 10 miles of town here and as I start to head back to town she says 'going back so soon?'. My response of 'I'll stay out as long as you want to' was followed up with 'how about a ride up to Palo Duro canyon?' (this is about a 220 mile round-trip straight there and back) While verifying with her that she knew how far it was, she had commented on how she had been there just recently and knew, blah blah blah, but she wanted to take a 'scenic route' up and back. At this point I was about like and said "Fine by me, lets go". So, I pull a u-turn and take off. We stop at a few scenic turn outs along the way for a peek or two at the views at each place (which are few and far between here in the panhandle). I have attached a few shots. Since I've got the headsets in the helmets we chatted along the way and she was enjoying herself, which is good. We end up stopping for lunch and I pulled up to her place around 430 or so (~400 miles later) to let her off and she already wanted to know when she could go again :yikes: . Now, to be clear here, we are just friends and I have no intentions of it going any further, but dang, that about brought a tear to my eye. While we were out, at one of the scenic turn outs a small group (turned out to be a portion of the STAR riders from Amarillo) pulled up and we chatted. They had 2 or 3 RSTDs, 1 Strat, a V-star and a black royal star tour classic (I think). I also chatted with an 84 year old man that was on an 08 wing that had over 60k on it, he was one happy rider. So I get home and see that I have a few voicemails. It turns out that her boyfriend didn't know that she was going to be out all day and had her cell phone (which obviously had my number in it). I had no idea and meant no harm, but he mentioned numerous times that he was her boyfriend and wanted to know when we'd be back. Apparently he was also upset that I didn't answer my phone ( - which I'm guessing he didn't think through since we were on a bike). I guess I can't blame him, I'd be a 'little' honked too if my girlfriend took off with some guy I didn't know and was gone for most of the day. But, I don't know that I would have called his cell phone either . I'm no home wrecker, but who am I to argue with a woman (I know better than that - especially on important matters like this). Anyways, I had a TERRIFIC day, a FANTASTIC ride, and my friend was REALLY excited about the ride too and can't wait to go again. So, overall it has been a great day. I always love when I can share my joy of motorcycling with others that also appreciate and enjoy it, and that's all that happened today. :Venture: Hope everyone else had a great day too!!

Boomer - It is likely the fuel sending unit that failed. I hesitate to say this is a 'common' problem, but I do know of a handful of folks that have had theirs fail (myself included). It is a cheap replacement - but since you have an 06, there really isn't any reason that shouldn't be covered under the warranty. New they are like 50 or 60 [if I recall correctly]. I got a used one from pinwall for 20 or so (including shipping) - but my 01 has been out of warranty for some time. The fuel sending unit has two components, one that runs the fuel gauge and the other that runs the fuel light AND the F Trip meter. I would say, get one of those pygmies to get it to the dealer and have them buy you a new one. Might as well have it working properly -- that's how I feel about it anyways. Even though I have a working fuel light and F trip meter, I still like to use the on/reserve switch - to make sure I know and don't have to resort to the 'lay it over on the left side' method...

Isn't there some rule about pictures here? Just kidding - you done good.

Sure glad you are okay!!

Same as SilvrT said, but include the caliper bolts too as well as the back of the brake pads. While I agree with Ruffy that you shouldn't get any squeal with the EBC pads, I used the EBC pads and still had a nasty squeal. It was less than the stock pads, but it still was an embarrassing squeal.

I'd measure the voltage while running at idle, then rev it up a little while still measuring and see what you read. If anything over 13.8V, we could probably isolate your problem to a bad ground or a regulator/rectifier problem. It is likely that you will need a battery too, but one step at a time. If you can take that measurement and report back, we can continue to help troubleshoot. I don't know that a bad ignition switch would give the same symptoms that you have described. This is a rather comprehensive thread regarding some electrical issues I had (turned out to be a batter, ground and regulator/rectifier unit). I realize that you do not have an RSV, but the basic principles of the electrical system are still the same. Note the 'summary' of the 1st post describes the symptoms that I noticed while on the road. http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=38577

Congrats!!! I'm pretty sure my first ride on the road included an ice cream stop or two...

Well, from what I see - all that was changed is there is a page of icons to get to the privacy settings instead of a page of tabs. But they take you to the same place. But, I suppose if people find it easier to realize what they are doing, then cool.

:yikes: I forgot about that little detail....

Sadly this lady is a little bit mis-informed. Disabling many of these things has been a part of the facebook privacy controls for a long time. Yes, they have been growing the number of options one had where you could almost individually choose which aspects of the stuff that you wanted to share or not. BUT, what IS true is that they started setting the default as 'share with everyone' so the user had to manually go in and disable the stuff that they did not want. When it started there were 2 options. "Share with only friends", "Share within network". Also, she alluded to having to 'look at code' to determine your settings. I think that the options are pretty straight forward, it is a bunch of drop down menus... But, whatever. I guess this is what the 'public' was pushing for, and I have no complaints about them making it easier to not share my [limited] information. Thanks for the update Brian

You've obviously never met him... :witch_brew: To Rick -->

For 24 bucks, I'd replace it. It is handy to be able to ACTUALLY turn off the fuel for various reasons. And I agree, 10 years is probably past due to change out the filter anyways. If you are quick you might be able to pull of the hose from the petcock to the carbs and stick another hose on (that goes to a gas can) if you put your finger (or someone's finger) over the vent hose on the top of the tank, and of course, leave the fuel cap on. That would allow you to drain most of the fuel out before even removing the tank from the bike. Although your idea with a cap on the end of it would probably work just fine. Now that I am thinking about it, if you are going to replace it anyways, you could just crimp the end of the petcock itself... It comes off pretty easily, you could always pull it out and see if you can fix it.

Good to know. Thanks for the update. I had overheard someone mention something about this the other day but hadn't taken the time to peruse the news myself to figure out what the deal was.

Boy, it is too bad Yamaha didn't design these in such a way to make it difficult to put the cap on anyway but the correct way... Oh. Wait a minute, they did. I sure hope that your dealer takes care of you on this. This sounds pretty ridiculous...

Not looking to stir things up, but, we don't know the whole story. Yes what was happening could have had some horrendous results. For all we know the guy could have been suicidal, high on something, drunk off his rumpus, or maybe he is mentally ill/handicapped and confused. Lots of unknowns. I do not think you over-reacted at all. I probably would have done the same thing, except for making comments to the LEO (some experience in that field as well as knowing that I may have been a little ticked off too - I hope that I would be smart enough to keep my mouth shut at that time). All in all, I'm glad no one was hurt and that you cared enough to do the right thing and call 911. Regardless of the individual's mental capacities in general or at the moment, he obviously needed help.

I had a similar thought, and not a dumb question at all. The computer at my house gives the option in the BIOS to boot from CD regardless of the functionality of the CD-ROM drive itself. Even if you just borrow a CD-ROM drive from another machine to do the install, that would be at least a temporary fix. Also, depending on the age of the machine it self, if you have the option to boot from a USB device, you could use a different machine to rip the ISO of your current CD (this is legal since it would be considered a 'personal backup copy' and you are not distributing it) then, dump the ISO onto the flash drive with the appropriate bootloader scripts (there is freeware software available to make this process very easy, if you want I can send you some info on some that I have had success with) then boot from the flash drive itself (or whatever USB device you use) and you don't need to use the CD-ROM at all.

Yikes!! Glad you are okay. And like both you and SilvrT mentioned, I do the same thing. As soon as I detect something that is abnormal (besides the driver) I probably look like a squirrel trying to find his... acorns.

Sometimes I get too wordy...

Mike: Thanks for the kind words. I'm no expert on these things, I just have played the electrical game once or twice with my bike... If I am interpreting your latest post correctly, you left the battery in the bike (presumably in an unheated garage or outside) not on a maintainer for the winter? If that is the case then your battery is probably not real happy with you. NOTE: The following text does not directly relate to the issue at hand but only to the question referenced in the following quote With respect to your question about how I feel about the 'stick it on a tender in the garage' as a 'solution', I don't want to get into anything with anyone on here but I will offer my opinion, since you asked. And if anyone disagrees with me, that is fine - I have no problem furthering discussion about it but do understand that I certainly am not trying to stir anything up or offend anyone or whatever here, just answering the question with an explanation of my method of thought. While sticking the battery on a tender while it sits in the garage is not a bad thing and if you do a lot of around town type riding where you are at low revs and on it for a short time, then putting the bike on a tender when you get home certainly is not a bad idea at all. If you do all of the tests and determine that there is not a problem other than you aren't on the bike long enough to properly charge up the battery (while riding) then I think we all would agree that plugging it in routinely is the solution. I think that using the 'plug it in and forget it' approach (as a solution) is not necessarily all that wise, right now, because you have sufficient reason to believe that there is, in fact, a problem. Plugging it in when you get home may treat the symptom(s) but may not address the actual problem. Under normal circumstances, one should not have the problem that you describe. I ride my bike daily, and on many occasions start it up multiple times a day. I also travel a lot for work purposes. Sometimes I am gone for 2 to 4 weeks at a time. I do not usually put the battery on a tender while I am gone, nor do I take the battery out of the bike (at least, since I have been living in Texas). When I lived in Michigan and Illinois, I would take the batteries out of all of my bikes and keep them in the house (if I didn't park the bike in the house) for the winter times that I was not riding. My train of thought it that if the bike has a hard start, cranks hard, or whatever I would rather fix the problem than simply treat the symptoms. Nothing says 'good time' like taking a rest break somewhere in the middle of nowhere and finding yourself on the side of the road in 100+ degree heat trying to push start the 900 lb beast. Point being: I'd rather be sure that I address the actual problem opposed to just treating the symptoms. If the solution is that say the bike isn't running long enough to fully recharge the battery, then the solution is put it on a battery tender as necessary. I have often been told that I go a little (or a lot) overboard when I troubleshoot problems with almost anything. Last summer when I asked for help with my bike on here, I seem to have ticked a few people off, being as thorough as I was as well as posting information that I found as I went along - I think that some misinterpreted my posting additional information as 'questioning' or 'doubting' their suggestions (where some offered things to do with no explanation as to why) when, in some instances, I was just putting up information about what I had done so that if someone else had a similar problem they would have a reasonable write up to go off of to help troubleshoot their own problems (too often I find on here when I search for some particular issues or whatever, I find a lot of threads that start but don't conclude). Also, they weren't the ones that were going to have to trust my bike to get them somewhere (not to mention fork up the money for the parts). At the time I was gearing up for a 3 week (5k mile trip) and wanted to be darn sure I had the problem figured out. It also gave me an opportunity to satisfy some of my curiosity about the electrical system of our RSVs. I have always been interested in how things work and way things do what they do, etc (hence my being a Physicist). So my 'troubleshooting' sometimes turns into a big question and answer session for me as I work on whatever it is I am working on. I especially enjoy analyzing something that failed and figure out why it failed. So. There is my long winded answer to your question. I hope that my time in putting the explanations on to my statements help folks understand the 'why' and motivation behind statements and suggestions that I make from time to time and maybe help someone learn something too. After all, we all learn from each other, experiences and asking questions.

One major point (in my opinion) that really ought to be noted is that facebook only 'requires' a name and valid e-mail address to sign up. When they first started they required a full name and a valid e-mail address that was affiliated with a major university. That is, in setting up your facebook account, they validated the domain of the e-mail address with the appropriate university. Unfortunately, now they have it setup so all you need is a valid e-mail address. Thanks to that, any and everyone can sign up as whatever they feel like calling themselves. Back to the point, the people that put in their phone numbers, home addresses and additional personal information, need to accept the consequences to their actions. That is, there is an aspect of responsibility involved that I think is all too often overlooked. Now, do I agree with names, e-mail addresses and other personal information being shared after the privacy agreement explicitly indicates that they will not, of course not. That is something that the company ought to be held accountable for. Like Joe said, if someone really wants to figure out where I live or whatever, it can be done. As for releasing personal information on this board, I have taken precautions to never post my address in a public place, or any other 'personal information', etc etc. Now, I have purchased things from various members on here and I have PMed them my address and whatever, but I was willing to accept the risk in that transaction and trusted the person on the other end of the deal to respect my privacy. I also have my browser set to prompt me for when I want to store cookies in addition to clearing any saved cookies and temporary files every time I exit the browser. I will reiterate, that for the folks on facebook (or any other social networking site, forum, web page, etc) that choose to not take advantage of the privacy options and still post their personal information all over the place - that is their own fault and, in my opinion, is a very irresponsible and stupid thing to do. IF the company or admins of the said site are the ones responsible for releasing information that was privilege to them due to the registration process or whatever, then that is a different story. Just a few thoughts.

Well, definitely something that should be covered/fixed under the warranty. I would say that next time you see it come on, pull over when you can safely do so, turn the bike off, then turn the key to the on position and write down the flash patter of the light it self. Then go back to the dealer and let them know what you saw. That will help them with the diagnosis. If you would like, the service manual does give a number of readouts for it you could go to the dealer with what the service manual says with respect to what the light tells you. Unfortunately though, on these bikes, I am pretty sure the light is just a light that shows up when the bike detects the problem and does not store any information about it (ie the 'on board diagnostic' system [OBD] is quite simple). I hope you get it taken care of soon and that you don't get stranded somewhere because of it.

Good luck with this!! I know that I have read where some folks on here have lucked out and get taken care of by Yamaha/their dealer, when slightly out of the warranty period. Even if you end up having to split the cost with them, that is better than buying a new shock and putting it on yourself.

First and foremost, if you are doing simple around town type riding, there is a good chance (especially if it is cooler out) that your battery is simply not charging back up while you ride (do to not having a long enough sustained higher revs to charge the battery while driving like it is supposed to). A common misconception is that if the bike is running (or any vehicle for that matter) the battery is being charged. On motorcycles (especially on ours when it is cooler and the carb heaters are on, headlights, radio, heated gear - whatever) when the bike idles the stator does not generate enough power to charge the battery and run the bike, so the bike runs somewhat off of the battery. So if you have a bunch of 'around town' short trips, especially if it is cooler out (ie carb heaters on), it is possible that you have simply sufficeintly depleated enough charge from the battery that you don't have enough juice left to start it. BUT, I would still check the system, to make sure. First I would check the battery, then the charging system, then I would check to see if there is some parasitic drain somewhere in the system. 1) Check the battery: A) If it is not an AGM type battery, check the fluid levels of the battery itself B) Take a terminal voltage reading with the battery hooked to the bike (like normal) but with everything off (should be somewhere above say 12.5 Volts or so) C) Turn the key to the on position (with your voltmeter still connected to the battery) and note the new reading. If a this point the reading drops well below 11.8V or so then you likely have an issue with the battery, if not then go to the next step. D) Push the starter button and see what happens. If the reading drops well below that 11V mark, then you probably have an issue with the battery. ALTERNATIVE BATTERY TEST: E) You could just take your battery to a place that sells batteries (in my experience, most auto parts stores offer some sort of free battery test). These battery tests are not perfect, but they simply do a load test without it connected to the bike. If you have an acid battery you could test the electrolyte and look at each plate in the battery to make a decision as to the condition of the battery, but we'll come back to that if you need to. 2) Check the charging system: A) Start the bike (with the voltmeter connected) and rev the motor up (service manual says to take it up to 5k RPM, but you don't have to go that high). When revved up, you should get a reading of at least 13.5V or so. If it is significantly less than that, you have a problem with the charging system. B) For completeness, I would check the resistance of the stator (should be between 0.279 and 0.371 ohms) -- To do this you can do it from above the rectifier or you can do it with the harness that comes directly out of the stator. The harness is located below the fuel filter. It is white, however, it is most likely covered in road grime and crap. It is a little bit of a bear to get to, but it is there. C) Check the harness that the regulator/rectifier unit plugs into. look for any sign of burnt pins, etc. There is not a conclusive bench test for the regulator/rectifier unit, but if you get a voltage reading (with the motor revved) of anything above 14V, you probably need to replace your rectifier. D) You could also start the bike and do an AC voltage measurement at this connector, but that is really not necessary if you have the 13.8V at a high RPM and the resistance checks out. 3) Check for parasitic drain while the bike is in the 'off' position. The easiest way to do this is to take an ammeter (multi-meter on the DC current setting) and pull each fuse one by one and measure the current through the bike. If you want to make it easy on your self, start with the main fuse (with the key in the OFF position) and write down that measurement. It will NOT be 0, but it will be on the order of milli-amps. Then, in the fuse box (right next to where the main fuse is) pull out the fuse that says 'back-up'. (Don't worry, this will not mess with the reverse system on the bike ) Measure the current through this fuse (by removing the fuse and touching both leads of your meter to the contacts that the fuse plug into). If your reading is identical to what you read of off the main fuse than you either 1) do not have any electrical drain issues) or 2) Have an intermittent drain issue. So while this test has the potential to be inconclusive, if you find that there is a significant difference between the reading from the main fuse and the back-up fuse, then proceed through the fuse boxes until you find the circuit that is drawing current with the bike off, and then we can go from there. 4) Check all of the grounds on the bike for clean and good contact. There are several. A) On engine block just behind stock horn B) Under plastic piece on the right side of the bike just in front of the fuel tank - you need to remove the tank to get to this puppy -- This is connected to the electrical junk inside the fairing by a a braided wire to a tab on the mount that the radio amplifier is connected to. C) Someone reported that there is one under the trunk too - I think for the CB, but I have not verified that one or exactly where it is. Hope this helps!!