BigLenny

There are a number of words that come to my mind when I think of the V4, anemic certainly isn't one of those words. In my mind, the V4 on the Venture/RSTD perfectly blends the smooth with the rough. I like a smooth running motor. The potato potato potato thing that comes with most VTwins is not greatly appealing to me. It kinda intrigues me, but not to the point of a smoothly balanced 4 or 6 cylinder. The Yammy V4 balances both of those worlds. It has a lope at idle and slow speeds that's pretty cool, but becomes smooth and revy as you work your way up through the power band. I love that characteristic of the motor. Some people (such as the idiot you ran across on that forum) don't/can't understand how to ride the V4 and put it in the correct power band range so as to get the most performance out of it. These people are low torque junkies, that think the whole world of motorcycling revolves around big twin low torque powerplants. They are usually the folks you get stuck behind on a great motorcycle road, while they putt putt putt at a nice easy pace around curves that you would love to be able to stretch the legs out on your V4. Drives me crazy!

Statussymbol, Wait wait wait!! You are the first of our clan to test ride this machine. Giving us 3 1/2 lines of tidbits is not acceptable. LOL. You gotta bring it Bro. We need elaboration! Serious elaboration. LOL. Big Lenny

Here's another.

Here's another ride review. Motorcyclist magazine. Some strong statements here. http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/2018-yamaha-star-venture-first-ride-review?src=SOC&dom=tw#page-2

Yes I did. It's gonna be interesting to see if the heat issue is talked about when other magazines start doing their ride reports. If it becomes a common theme, that could be a sales issue for Yammy. But then again, if Yamaha's strategy is to draw Victory riders, then it might not be that big of a deal.

I was thinking the same thing. Lol.

Haven't seen if anyone has posted this yet. Cycle World's ride review of the new bike. Interesting stuff. http://www.cycleworld.com/2018-yamaha-star-venture-luxury-touring-motorcycle-review Big Lenny

BMW, The ironic thing is; how I found out about Partzilla is, my cousin uses them to buy all of his parts for his BMW R1200RT, and he told me about them. Must be a thing for all you BMW folks to gravitate to Partzilla. LOL. BL

Bongo, Last September (about 5000 miles ago), I had the carbs synced, spark plugs replaced (NGK), and the valves adjusted. Man that things has ran beautiful since that work was done on it! I replaced the fuel pump with a brand new OEM one this past Saturday. Come to think of it, I haven't looked at the air filters in quite a while. I have never used Seafoam on it. I've never felt like it ran poorly enough to need a dose of Seafoam. BUt, I guess I should've been giving it a treatment every now and again. As I said though, I really couldn't tell if it was missing or not. I just felt like a few times during the ride, it needed a tad more throttle, and it kinda sounded like it had a slight miss, and even had a slight vibration like it wasn't hitting on all cylinders. But then, I wouldn't notice it for a long while. I don't know, maybe I'm getting senile in my old age. BL

You know how sometimes when you're riding, you kinda get a feeling your bike is doing something when you aren't sure if it really is or not? Well, I had one of those feelings yesterday. My wife and I went on a 300 mile ride yesterday up in the north part of our state (Arkansas), in the beautiful Ozark mountains. We're really blessed to live this close to some of the best motorcycle roads in the mid section of America. Anywho, a few times during our ride, I could've sworn I felt Red (my RSTD) slightly misfiring. But, I could've been just imagining things. To tell you the truth, I've never experienced what it feels like when it's misfiring. The question I have is; when one of the 4 cylinders on these bikes is misfiring, is it greatly noticeable? I know it would be if it was a 2 cylinder bike, but with 4 cylinders, I'm not sure how well it would run on 3. Would it be so under powered that I would notice it with a 2up load on it? Maybe I was being too imaginative. Big Lenny

I ordered a fuel pump for my RSTD last week. Was delivered to my house in a few days, and I installed it this past Saturday. I'll use them again.

Rick, Exactly how I feel. My fuel pump went out last weekend on my 2007 RSTD. While I know that I can fiddle and jerry rig and mess with this and mess with that, I decided my time and effort are better spent doing something else. Plus, I need the peace of mind of knowing I should get another 10 years out of the OEM, without having to wonder if my jerry rig is gonna keep working. I ordered the OEM from Partzilla for $217.00, it delivered yesterday, and I'll install it tomorrow. Big Lenny

Yes....But you bought something that obviously did not have the things you wanted. Hmmmmm, the salesman won.

One thing I gotta give mother Yammy kudos for is, at the very least, she truly backed up the statement of "All New". In today's world of shady advertising, time and time again, manufacturers do little tweeks here and there on their products and then go all crazy with advertising naming the product as "All New". They do this because they are very aware of just how gullible we Americans are, and they know we'll bite hook line and sinker. I remember when Honda did that last update of their Goldwing. They touted it as "All New", and made statements that the wholw bike had been tweeked or completely redesigned.......errr, NOT! Car companies are especially bad about using this tactic. They'll tweek the headlights and tail lights, and change the dash a bit, and its, "ALL NEW!".......Not. They have also been cutting here and cutting there for years now, and trying to convince us its the same as before. Case in point: A Chevrolet Impala is a nice sized car by today's standards, and it is classified as a "full sized car". BUt, wait, go back and check out the size of the Impala's when the vast majority of us were kids. It doesn't even compare. Those were called full sized cars back then, and you could cram 8 people in them! LOL. So much is a downright fabrication in advertising today. Food company's have used the same tactics, and nobody seems to care. There is no way a Burger King Whopper is the same size today as it was back then. Those suckers were huge! Anyway, I digressed. The original point is: Yamaha had the stones to at the very least, bring to the market a truly "all new" Venture that is completely different from the ground up of the previous one. Whether thats good or not remains to be seen, but at least they weren't using smoke and mirrors and trying to convince us that its an all new bike when we knew it really wasn't too much all new. That's the sucky feeling the Goldwing owners had during the last update. Big Lenny

About a week ago my brother bought a very clean Stratoliner. He called me and told me about it. He did'n't really know what he was purchasing, he just liked the looks of the bike. Actually, the reason he called me was first to tell me bought it, but his second question was to ask me, since I'm a Yamaha owner, would i have any idea where the choke button or lever might be on it? He didn't even know it was fuel injected. Lol. Anywho, After talking with him, I made an immediate plan to get out to his place and ride it. My reason being, of course, is because the new Venture is as we all know, supposed to have a motor that is designed from that 1900 that is in the Stratoliner. I wanted to see how the dang thing ran and throttled. Well, I rode it last night, and lemme say this; if the Venture's motor is like the Stratoliner motor, there ain't gonna be an issue with needing power! Wow!. That dang thing has teeth pulling torque! It was markedly stronger than my RSTD. I repeat; there will not be an issue with loading it down to the max and having plenty of power. It was extremely quick taking off and working through the gears, and I was at 100 in a snap! And, it was very smooth. Apparently the Venture is supposed to be even smoother. Having said that, the heat, and longevity issues that everybody is talking about, I do not have an opinion on. I prefer water cooled, but, who knows how this new bike will do. I will say this, for what it's worth: When I rode the bike yesterday it was 94 degrees, and I didn't experience any noticeable heat coming from the engine. But, I was only on the bike for about 45 minutes. Big Lenny

DO NOT leave the area without riding Iron Mountain Rd. (16A) south to north from Playhouse Rd. up to 244. It's only 10 miles, but it'll take ya 30 minutes because its crooked as a snake, and a blast. The dang thing has 3 separate 360 degree turn arounds that corkscrew and overlap each other.

Okay, First of all, I wanna give all honor and praise to Your Highness the Pucster. Thanks so much our Brother, for taking one for the team to head out and be our eyes on the ground for the unveiling. Mostly, I'm extremely happy that you and Tip got to experience a road trip again, after all of the health battles you've been dealing with. I'm hoping this is the beginning of us getting to be treated with fabulous ride reports from grand trips you will be taking in the near future. Secondly, I completely understand the opinion of "a true touring bike has more than 2 cyclinders, and shaft drive." But, even though I prefer my bikes to be more than 2 cylinders, and shaft drive, I have to completely disagree with this opinion. I've said this in other posts, but I feel compelled to say it again, when we are travelling across this great nation on vacation, by far, the vast majority of touring riders we see are on loaded to the gills Harley Davidsons. I don't think that anybody here will dispute that. They are the majority, period. While we all boast that true touring machines must have shaft drive, and such, Harley has persistently went about the business of proving that that notion is simply not true anymore. I have a cousin who, her and her husband over the past 30 years have went through 3 Honda Goldwings. They were crazy Goldwing fanatics. Travelling all 50 states. Going to all the Wing Ding rallys. Crazy fanatics about Honda in general. Well, 4 years ago, they shocked our world, and while they were on a western two week trip, stopped into a Harley Dealer just to gander, and wound up trading their Goldwing for a Road Glide Ultra. They have now toured that thing all over the nation with absolutely raving reviews! They said they would've never thought they would be as happy with a Harley as they are. They actually have now traded for a new bike with the Milwaukee engine and all the new tech stuff Harley offers, and will be leaving next week for a two week trip up through the middle of the country through the UP and into Canada. Folks, These people, and hundreds of thousand of them just like them are "TOURING" across this nation on air cooled, VTwin, belt driven, loaded to the gills bikes. Yamaha recognized it, and has decided to join the fray to sell more bikes than the traditional way they have tried to go about it. I highly respect them for it, even though, I wish it was a fo cylindah. LOL. BL

Wow! Winds of change, they are a blowin......

I wonder if this same type banter happened among the Kawi Voyager lotalists whenever they unveiled the all new VTwin Voyager? One big difference though, they got a water cooled VTwin. P.S. But that mofo is one hot running VTwin. And I don't mean speed.

One of the first places i went to last night after the announcement was the Victory owners site theVOG.net. These are people who ride belt drive, air cooled v-twins all over the nation, and don't think twice about it. As stated on the post above, these folks are crazy excited on what they saw from Yamaha yesterday. They will buy it and not think twice about it not being a V4, or water cooled. This is the market Yamaha wants/needs to pull buyers from to stay in the full dresser market. If they had went the other way (V4, shaft drive, water cooled), they would be trying to pull buyers from Goldwing, BMW K1600GTL, and other assorted sport tour bikes. They simply aren't going to pull very many of those folks. And, the market isn't very large with those bikes. When I go on vacation, and I went on one again this past March to Key West, the ratio, and I'm not over estimating this at all, of v-twin, air cooled, belt drive full dresser touring bikes on the road is easily over 80% of the bikes I see. And, I think really the percentage is higher. And, the vast majority of those are Harleys. Then the remaining 20% is made up of Goldwings, and other non v-twin bikes. It appears Yamaha believes, and I think I agree with them, that they must tap into the huge V-Twin market to stay alive in the full dresser touring market. So, what Yamaha has created is a beautiful bike that has a honkin, high quality, torque filled V-Twin to appeal to the vast V-Twin market, but they also designed the bike to look a tad more futuristic, which might just draw a few folks from the Wing, and the K1600GTL. We'll see. Having said all of that, I too wish it was a V4, water cooled, shaft drive beast. But, I'm beginning to start to understand why they did it.

One of the first places i went to last night after the announcement was the Victory owners site theVOG.net. These are people who ride belt drive, air cooled v-twins all over the nation, and don't think twice about it. As stated on the post above, these folks are crazy excited on what they saw from Yamaha yesterday. They will buy it and not think twice about it not being a V4, or water cooled. This is the market Yamaha wants/needs to pull buyers from to stay in the full dresser market. If they had went the other way (V4, shaft drive, water cooled), they would be trying to pull buyers from Goldwing, BMW K1600GTL, and other assorted sport tour bikes. They simply aren't going to pull very many of those folks. And, the market isn't very large with those bikes. When I go on vacation, and I went on one again this past March to Key West, the ratio, and I'm not over estimating this at all, of v-twin, air cooled, belt drive full dresser touring bikes on the road is easily over 80% of the bikes I see. And, I think really the percentage is higher. And, the vast majority of those are Harleys. Then the remaining 20% is made up of Goldwings, and other non v-twin bikes. It appears Yamaha believes, and I think I agree with them, that they must tap into the huge V-Twin market to stay alive in the full dresser touring market. So, what Yamaha has created is a beautiful bike that has a honkin, high quality, torque filled V-Twin to appeal to the vast V-Twin market, but they also designed the bike to look a tad more futuristic, which might just draw a few folks from the Wing, and the K1600GTL. We'll see. Having said all of that, I too wish it was a V4, water cooled, shaft drive beast. But, I'm beginning to start to understand why they did it.

It sure is fun reading what the Victory owners are saying about this bike on theVOG.net. You guys oughta check it out. BL

​YAY!!!!!!! We get to keep the name of our site!!!!

2hrs 13 min.........

Dude!!!! That's incredible! Somebody has way more time on their hands than I do. LOL.