frankd

You need to perform a leak down test to discover where it is leaking. It may be that those cylinders have valves that are too tight and $100 in parts and an afternoon will take care of it. MiCarl Or crud on the valves (between the valve and seat) causing them not to seal. Have you had it running? It will start on 2 good cylinders.

Keep in mind that there are other things that can cause a dead battery. You've determined that the charging system is OK, but is there a current drain? Have you added anything, or is the entire electrical system on your bike original? You didn't mention how long it takes for the battery to go dead, so how long does it take? That's important because we have to know if it's a fast drain or a slow drain to tell you how to check for it. Also, there could be nothing wrong with your bike, and a bad cell in your battery could be causing your problem. Also, please mention what year and model bike you have when you have a problem. Yes, I know it's in your profile, but that's a pain to look up after you start to reply. I did see in your profile that you have an 87. I have two 1st Gens, an 83 Standard that I bought brand new and now has 140K miles on it, and an 89 Royale that I've had for the last 6 years. Since the 83 was new, it only had 13.9 volts (taken with an accurate Fluke DVM) when measured across the battery. At first I felt I had a problem, because the manual says that it should measure 14.5V plus or minus .5 volts @ 4000 RPM with a fully charged, good, battery. As the years piled up, I didn't worry about it and it's still doing fine. The 89 had a cheap aftermarket regulator on it when I bought it, so I installed a good OEM regulator, started the bike and measured the voltage across the battery. It was 14.6 volts. Also, at a hot 1000 RPM idle, the driving lights off, and the brake lights off, the voltage stays above 14V. Not so on the 83.

When I worked in the electronics department at Reynolds Aluminum, we had a dead weight tester available. A dead weight tester uses a vertical cylinder that you put precision weights on, and then pump up the pressure in the cylinder until the cylinder starts to lift the weights. Then you spin the weights to eliminate stiction from the cylinder seals, and you have a precision pressure source. I took several brand new 100# dial pressure gauges, and found one that indicated the applied pressure very accurately. Of course, I checked it at several pressures to verify that it was linear. Now I use this gauge to check the calibration of my tire pressure gauges. I cut a valve stem for a car tire off so that it would fit into a hose, and put a male half of an air chuck on the other end of the hose, so now I could connect the valve stem to my compressor with an air hose. I connected my calibrated air gauge to the valve stem with a 'T', so I could read the air pressure in the hose accurately. My compressor has a regulator with an air gauge, so I used this to adjust the pressure. I tested a digital tire gauge that I thought was a little off by how it compared to my other tire gauges, and it read 1# low from 20 psi. to 80 psi. I have a 2nd digital gauge that I carry on the bike, and it read what the calibrated gauge did. I have several pencil gauges, and they all read within 1#. So I marked the first digital gauge with a magic marker indicating that it read 1# low, and I compensate for this when I check tires. My compressor is over 30 years old, but the built in gauge is still very accurate, but I don't use the regulated air source very much (I use full tank pressure for my air tools and filling tires). I also tested my son-in-law's digital gauge, and it read good here in Illinois. When we were at their house in Albuquerque (5500 feet elevation) I seemed to remember that his didn't agree with one I thought was accurate. I sent an accurate pencil gauge home with him and he said it agreed with his digital gauge at home also. If you check gauge calibration and you use your gauge for car tires and motorcycle tires (35-50#) you probably want to check calibration at 40-45#. My E-350 van takes up to 80# in the rear tires, so that's why I checked my digital gauge and my higher pressure pencil gauges at 80#. There are two things that affect the accuracy of air gauges---zero and span. That's why you need to test them at 5-10 different pressures to show they are linear if you use them over a wide pressure range. How important is it to be absolutely correct with air pressure? I don't know. NASCAR pit crews change pressure by .25# to adjust how the car feels, but our tires and use are way different. I'm sure that the tire manufacturers have some cushion in their maximum pressure ratings to account for air gauge accuracy. One thing I do know is the mechanical air gauges on small inexpensive air compressors are very in-accurate. They are subjected to a lot of vibration and pulses, plus they are very inexpensive gauges. The digital gauges on some small compressors seem to be a bit better. I do remember that our riding friends had a relatively new Ultra Classic and we'd been travelling for about a week. We walked out from dinner and I saw that his rear tire was down to the cords in the center. I asked him how much air he had in it, and he pulled out the gauge he uses for his tractor tires, and showed me that the tire was correctly inflated. I checked it with my pencil gauge (I knew it read 1# low) and he had his tire about 10# too high. We lowered the air pressure and rode back to our motel. When we got there, his wife was very pleased how much better the bike rode. He only had about 5,000 miles on the bike and the tire was shot.

Yes, the fuel pump should have voltage applied to it whenever the bike is running.

If you're wondering about the kill switch causing problems, turn you cruise control switch and look at the left light next time it sputters. If the light is on @ normal brightness, your kill switch is fine. You tach going to zero kind of points to the ignition module or the pickup coil going bad. Also the connector for the pickup coil is just above the back of the engine on the left side and Dingy says he's seen some of them causing problems because they're dirty. To clean my connectors, I use contact cleaner (available from an electronics parts place--Radio Shack used to carry it, but don't know if they still do), and then blow them out with air and coat the contacts with di-electric grease. Some have removed their ignition modules and dried them out in the oven. Frank

Well, I haven't taken it for a test ride yet, because the cool front has come through and it's raining, but......I did install them and turned the key and cruise on, and all 3 came on. The are slightly darker, but only a little. Now I believe in LEDs but seeing as Jeff knew about these replacements and these lamps only draw 1.4W each, and because you have 2 on when your on cruise or the resume light is on, so that's 2.8W. These bulbs are only consuming .2Amps. Now as for the dash lights, I usually leave mine turned all the way down, so bulb life is extended. If any ever burn out, maybe I'll put LEDs in, but then when I rebuilt 2nd gear on the 83 @ 82,000 miles I changed the bulbs in the dash to some genuine U.S. bulbs that were slightly dimmer. The 83 doesn't have the rheostat to dim the bulbs so they are on full whenever the key is ON. All of them are still working and the bike has 140K on it. Now if they get an LED that'll install in the headlight and provide better light than the Sylvania SilverStar I'll install that. I've got LED driving lights on mine and they are great. 9 Watts each and the light is so welcome that I leave them on all the time.

Thanks for the info Jeff!! I picked up 4 this morning (they come in packages of 2 so I had to buy an extra). The base is slighty wider than the originals, but they did go into the sockets with a firm push. Kevin, Yes, they are only 1.4W and the originals were 3 watts, but there is only a slight amount of difference in the brightness. I haven't installed the light assembly on the bike yet because I had to Plastex around the screws, and I'm letting the Pastex dry all the way, but I did leave one of the old lamps in and installed one of the 74LLs and powered them up on the workbench with a power supply. I could only see a slight difference. Being a little dimmer might help though, because at night these lights (especially the yellow 'resume' light) are just too bright. I looked at the LED replacements you asked about. They should plug into the sockets fine because the originals were about .183" wide, and 3/16"=.1875". As far as brightness goes, you'll just have to try them and see. I'd look around for a white one though. Also, you'll have to install them so that the positive terminal on the LED is connected to the positive lead in the socket. One lead of each socket is connected to the red wire w/blue stripe which is the positive lead, but the sockets themselves only have blue and black wires on them and there is a spice in the light assembly. Use an ohmeter or a test light and find the positive side of the socket and mark it with white ink. Frank

Now you need to check it against a known accurate gauge. Gauges like this can have the needle installed slightly off zero, and also the span could be slightly off. The good thing about a gauge like this is that unless you drop it, it'll stay the same for a long time. Verify how accurate it is and mark you results on the gauge so you won't forget. You said that it was zero loss. That isn't quite true. You may not loose any air at the connection, but the air hose and gauge itself will have some of the tire's air in them and that will be lost when you disconnect the gauge.

If you're going through a full quart in 800 miles that's a lot of oil. If you're burning it, riders behind you should see some blue smoke. You should also be able to see it on one or more spark plugs. If you're leaking anti-freeze and it's getting into the combustion cylinders, the spark plug for that cylinder will be very clean. Pull the plugs and see what you find. Frank

While on our recent trip, the Cruise Control 'SET' light burnt out. On the bulb itself is printed 12V 3W, and the bulb is about .010" smaller than a T 2 1/4, and it's a wedge based lamp. They are no longer available from Yamaha, and online I haven't found a suitable replacement yet. Anybody found a replacement for these bulbs? I know I could replace them with an LED and a resistor, but it'd be so much easier to just plug in new bulbs.

On mine, the spring was in the boot opening that the actuator pin pushes through. That's why the diameter is important. I had to reach into the boot opening with a pair of small needle nosed pliers to pull the collapsed spring out.

Bobby, No, the the spring is only for the lever free play. When the master cylinder plunger gets to the full released position, the spring I replaced pushes the clutch lever all the way out to the stop, holding the cruise and cranking switch fully depressed. Lever effort is the same, it's just the lever has some free play when you start to pull it in. PGun, This is 1st Gen only, it sounds like 2nd Gens are different Neil, You can't see this spring unless you pull the clutch lever, and then this spring goes on the rod that pushes the master cylinder. The spring I replaced is only available (from Yammie) if you buy the clutch rebuild kit, which I did when I first started fighting with this problem. The spring that collapsed is the new Yamaha one. It looks like the brake lever has a similiar spring (P/N 90501-10510-00) that probably holds the brake lever all the way out. Frank

It sounds like your starter drive has bit the dust, but the drive is attached to the engine, not the starter. You'll have to remove the middle gear cover (left rear cover, about 5"x5", the stator cover (the large cover on the left side) and then if the small gears are not broken you have a bad stater drive, so you'll have to pull the alternator/ignition magnet to get to the starter drive. The magnet is usually a bear to remove, and you will need a strong puller. I used one from AutoZone after I broke one I had. You can use stock components to rebuild the drive, but some of us have installed drives made by Dano (on this site) which were originally built for bored V-Max motors---these drives are bullet proof. Invest $12 and join this site. You will get more than $12 just fixing this item. Good Luck, Frank D.

Since I've owned my 89 (5 years) I've been putting up with the clutch lever not returning all the way, so I've had to manually push it all the way out to get the cruise control to work. Then I had to hold it out with my finger to keep the cruise control working when I hit a bump (and in Illinois there are a lot of bumps!) I'd replaced the brass insert, but that only helped slightly. Then I noticed that there was a small spring that was supposed to push the lever out after the clutch cylinder got to the full released position, but that the spring was pretty well collapsed. I stretched it back out, and that helped a little bit, but only for a little while. I pulled the spring again, and it was completely collapsed again. I was leaving on a trip, so I didn't have time to order the correct Yamaha spring. I went up to the local ACE hardware, and started looking through their spring cabinets. Of course since they were on the bottom shelve, I had to kneel on the floor to get to them. I found that their '90XA' spring looked like a good canidate. It was the same diameter (verified with a micrometer) and although it appeared to be twice as long as the original spring (remember, the original was collapsed) but when I installed it, it worked perfectly. We just got home from a 1500 mile trip and it works great.

I've got a K&N air filter in my 89, and it's been installed for about 5 years. Just like the K&N I used to have in my 83, the gasket on the bottom of the element has come loose from the filter element, and appears to have gotten longer so it really won't fit in the groove any more. I've been just doing my best to get the element installed with the gasket in the groove, but now it's grown so much that this is impossible. In a couple of spots, the gasket hangs out. The gasket is pretty wide, so it's still sealing OK, but I was wondering how others have cured this.

My bike idled great before I installed new diaphrams, but after I did it was way out of sync and sounded like it was going to self-destruct at idle. I checked the synchronization and it was way out. I synced it and it idled great again. The reason it sounded so bad is because on the strong cylinders, it would speed up, and on the weak ones it'd slow down, so all the play in everything was hammering back and forth. Sync it before you get too carried away. Frank D.

No, the 89 doesn't have them unless they were installed by a previous owner.

Please don't get upset, but is there any possibility that you're shifting the bike too lazy? When you shift too slowly (time duration of shift, not bike speed), the engine slows down too much and when you let the clutch out and then crank on the throttle, all that play you see is quickly taken up and the gears jam together making a 'clunk'. How I shift is about 1/10 second before I pull the clutch in and close the throttle, I pull up on the gear shift lever. What this does is to move into the next gear much quicker and cleaner. Then about 1/10 of a second before I start to release the clutch, I roll on the throttle slightly. THen I gradually let the clutch out and then the slop is slowly taken up and everything is quiet. Another thing....what oil are you using? When my 83 was brand new (and remember that 1st and 2nd gens engines/transmissions are about 98% identical inside) I complained to the dealer's mechanic that it shifted like a truck. I wasn't a new rider, and this sounded way worse than my XS-750 Yamaha did. He asked me what oil I was using and I told him that I was using 10W-40 Valvoline car oil. He asked me to use Yamalube next time I changed the oil, and if the clunking persisted he'd look into it. I was sure it wouldn't shift any different, but I used the Yamalube next oil change. Within 100 miles, the bike shifted great and quiet. Now I use Valvoline Motorcycle oil, and the 83 & 89 both shift quiet. It's normal for the geartrain play to be a lot less in 5th gear than 1st. 5th gear has a straighter path in the transmission and the gears are designed a bit different so there is less play in 5th. 1st has the most play, and each gear change gets a little better, until 5th, which gets a lot better. I wouldn't worry about anything inside the engine, if you have something ready to fall apart it'll be the u-joint, the front yoke bolt, or the rear yoke bolt, all of which give you play in the driveshaft. Put the shaft unit and drive shaft back in, and have somebody rock the clutch basket back and forth and hold the rear brake on. Then you look into the rubber boot and see if everything looks tight there. Good Luck, Frank D.

FWIW, here's what's new with the E-350. The P1000 error never came back the second time, but the O2 heater and sensor tests never completed. I did some more research online, and found a few people that had the identical problem with Ford Super Duty trucks. What they'd found out is that when the GVW is over 8800#, the vehicles don't need to comply with the complete OBD2 tests and they don't use the same PCM modules. Ford uses simpler computers. These people also had the same uncompleted tests showing on theirs, and they passed the emission tests. My van is rated @ 9300# and although they do plug into the OBD port, they still sniff the exhaust at idle. Then I decided that since the PCM wasn't testing the O2 sensors and I was getting poor gas mileage, that I needed to test the 02 sensors with my DVM. Both sensors were bad (they only had about .15V output and it was steady). I ordered a pair of Bosch sensors from Rock Auto and installed them. I put about 200 miles on the van over the weekend, and by Sunday it was getting about 17 MPG as estimated from the gas gauge movement. This was on mostly state highways with a speed of 55-60 MPH. There was a small amount of interstate 68-70 MPH driving. Before changing the O2 sensors I'd estimate that it was getting about 10 MPG or less. The right 02 sensor was a bit of a pain to change. You change it from the doghouse opening, but it points straight up from the exhaust pipe. You can get the 02 sensor socket to go on, but there isn't room for a ratchet. You can't get a wrench on the socket hex straight enough to work. I ended up using a 7/8" crows foot wrench, but the sensor was real tight and took quite a bit of torque to loosen. After it was done, I looked online and saw they have what appears to be a box wrench/crow foot that goes completely around the sensor hex and that'd be a lot better than the open end crows foot. The left sensor had room for the socket and ratchet and was accessed from below and wasn't very tight. I have no idea why the 02 sensors went bad--I'm not going through any anti-freeze and my van only has 70K miles on it. Other than spark plugs and one ignition coil about 7 years ago, no work has been done. I did use anti-seeze on the plugs, but I always do that and haven't had problems before. The gas mileage hasn't been normal for a couple of years, but I don't drive it much so it wasn't important to check into. It won't have an emission test until next summer, but I'm glad it's fixed now. Thanks for all your help!!

Bobby, I used to use my compressor to fill the forks on my 83 before I changed to Progressive springs. I used to set the regulator to adjust the pressure to where I wanted the front forks (14#). Then I just pushed the air hose onto the Schraeder valve and hold it there about 15 seconds, and my forks had the correct pressure in them. Of course I agree with your suggestion not to use full pressure to fill it though. It's been a long time since I manually filled the forks though.....I changed to Progressive springs and now use zero air pressure in the '83. On the 89, I use the built in system. Frank

Barb and I went down for that auction. What a place. They had a Mk II First Gen. there, but after looking it over, I decided that I really didn't want it. They had a lot of interesting bikes for sale.

I'd suspect that your carb floats are set real high. Not much you can do now, but when you get back home, I'd check the fuel level in the carbs. Something you can do to make things a bit better would be to not use high throttle opening. On grades go down a gear or two to keep from having to crank the throttle open so much. Of course, on downgrades go back to 5th gear (unless you need engine braking).

Electrically, yes it will replace the OEM Yammie unit. Physically, it's different though. Some have mounted it in the fairing, but there's not much ventilation there. Others have mounted it underneath the travel trunk. I bought one a while back but never found a place I liked to mount it, so I'm still on the OEM type regulator.

Thanks guys...... Ray, I got a message from Louis already, and he said that he doesn't think my PCM is bad. He wants me to disconnect a sensor and see if the Check Engine Light comes on and I'll do that. Neil, maybe I haven't put enough miles on it yet. Before I reset it the last time I didn't have 40 highway miles on it. Now I've only got about 25 mostly highway miles, and virtually no city mileage. I also have only started it 3X since resetting. Time will tell I guess. I did have another thought. My brother does have the same van & engine, but a year newer. I'd like to see if his shows the PIDs (engine sensors) or not. Frank

Brian, Yes, I put a message on that Forum on the 15th. So far it's been read 70 times and no responses. http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1325416-2001-e-350-w-6-8l-v10-wont-show-engine-sensor-outputs-on-scanner.html Ray, I'll send him a message and see what he has to say. Thanks for the suggestion. Frank