Jump to content

Snaggletooth

Supporting Member
  • Posts

    4,545
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Snaggletooth

  1. Wish my father in law would have had that. Would have saved me a 3:00 am phone call from his wife asking me to come over and help find his thumb. Not the perfect wake up call.
  2. Now that is thinking so far out of the box that there is no box left. Bonus points for creative ability! You living the dream Zag! Cool street fighter bike and a pretty lady to keep ya company. Snaggletooth
  3. I installed the Progressive about 14,000 miles ago and had the same impression. I did cut the PVC spacer in half and used SS washers to adjust the preload to my liking. After riding on the stock springs the Progressives felt harsh and I kept adjusting the preload trying to soften it up. No real luck with that. But after a couple of thousand miles on the new springs they did seem to lose some of the harshness. I don't think I just got used to the feeling but believe the springs actually relaxed a bit after some use. I used the 10 wt oil in mine also. Give it some time and see if you feel a difference. I'm into my third season on them and it feels fine to me now. I run no pressure on the front unless I'm running two up with a lot of gear packed and then add a couple of pounds. I'm 285 lbs so the bike is loaded most the time. LOL! Mike
  4. Whooo there my friend! I don't know what you been reading but YES! There is a easier way! Remove side panels, false tank cover, air box, battery box and you will see the mounting points for the coil mounting plate. Remove the bolts and you can work the entire plate out of the bike through the top. I would say that would be the easiest way as the bolts that hold the coils are are not going to be easy to remove. Cutting the frame? Remove motor? Stop listening to the voices! They will make you crazy! But then again......you will fit right in with this group. Mike
  5. You didn't mention if your snorkel was damaged Jeff. Mike
  6. Yep.......
  7. On the 2nd gear issue, only on '83, '84 and about halfway through '85 before they got it right. After that, no problem. It's a thrust washer on the second gear (too soft material) that wears and allows the bike to jump out of second under acceleration. Best test is to run the bike through first gear under load and shift into second and run up again under load. On a hard pull, if it's bad it will probably jump out. If not ......it hasn't gone bad yet ......or has been repaired. These bikes are so well powered that many just skip second gear and go to third directly. The common identifier is supposed to be a set of marks stamped into the engine case by the shop when repaired. I forget the location but someone will pop in with that. They tend to fail around the 60,000 to 70,000 mile mark. Some don't. I suppose it depends on how it was riden by the previous owners. I bought an '84 three years ago. No regrets. But keep in mind it is great to be mechanically inclined. These bikes are 26 years old, shops don't want to work on them and a lot of parts are available but ya gotta look for them sometimes. Mike
  8. Now that is nice! A lot of Nomads around here but .....they are lacking compared to yours. Mike
  9. Well Jeff ya know one of things we always say is we are waiting for the first good rain to get all the salt and gravel off the roads so we can get to riding again. I think we are in the clear now. I checked the weather this morning at 4:00 am as I planned on riding to work today. Looked good. Clear and sunny all day. Yep....sure.....grabbed the helmet and gloves and opened the front door and couldn't see across the street it was raining so hard. Kinda damp out.
  10. The one on mine had a crack in it so I used some ABS sheeting and made a piece to go over the top and and used ABS epoxy to bond them. Beefed up real well. No worry about the crack letting go now. On my first test ride after I bought the bike I did not know the retaining screw was missing and the dang thing jumped up a bit on me. Got a hand on it before it came completely off. I won't want to fist fight that thing at highway speeds. Mike
  11. I'm just going to mention this because I've seen something like this twice. Once on my own bike (my own mistake) and on one other. Try swapping the #3 & #4 plug wires. I got mine crossed up after an extended time away from working on it and it was was nuts. Popped like crazy, backfire ALL the time and just enough power to get down the road but but nowhere near what it should have been. Went back over what I had done on the bike and figured it out. Now, you would think, maybe.....the shortest plug wire from the coils would go to the closest spark plug...right? Not on mine. Swapped the wires and it was back to what it should have been. D'oh! I was at a local bike shop one day and there was another '84 there and the owner was talking to the guys about the popping, and low power problem the bike had. He had just bought it and was fighting the electronics trying to find the issue. We talked a bit and I asked him to fire it up. Sounded just like mine had. I asked if he could pull the side covers and let me try something and he argreed. Swapped his #3 & #4 wires and it took right off. He ran it around the block and came back with one of those grins. Happy as could be. He only paid like $500.00 for the the bike because of the way it was running. He came out out on that deal. I think there was another member here that got his wires crossed a while back to and had similar problems for a bit. Just sayin......ya know....it's possible. Worth a try. The jumper wire may have been an attempt to get fire on the plugs to get it running. Mike
  12. Never thought much about the stator working loose and making noise other than the bolts hitting inside. I suppose with all three bolts a little loose the magnetic pull of the rotor spinning around a loose stator could set up a heck of a vibration.
  13. Yep on the revs...... I've had a couple of friends that ride V-twins tell me I'm going to blow my bike up. I'm riding next to them at 4,000 rpm. You should see the looks on their faces when I take it up to 6,500 and shift. The V Four is a different animal altogether.
  14. Hey Kelly, Dan covered the stuff pretty well so I'll just add this. I have an '84 VR. It did not have a lower chin when I got it. The MKI's had the metal ones, but I couldn't find on I liked the condition of. But while I was looking for a chin I installed the Rivco spin-on oil filter adaptor on the bike. Great improvement to look at down the road for ya. Now with that done I wanted to make sure the filter had some protection. The chin was the way to do it. I found one off an '86 and hooked it up. I like the looks of it and keeps the road debris from beating on the filter. I've ran in all kinds of temps and I can see no real change in the engine temps even when it's in the high 90's. So be being you around. Mike
  15. Well ......dang. Ok, I checked all my system again and I do have everything current through sp3. I recently blew the hard drive and reinstalled the entire operating system and reinstalled all my programs fresh onto the new drive so there is nothing on here that shouldn't be. I sweep constantly for virus and bugs and it is a clean as a whistle. The one program that I use a lot that has been showing warnings that they will no longer support IE7 is the weather channel. Seems to be an up and up operation. LOL! They do have a button on their site to update to IE8 or Firefox. That was the one I used to download the upgrade software for IE8. That was the BOIE8 MSCOM_XP. EXE file. I just Googled that file and it showed a few odd listings but no Microsoft site. Hummm. There were two other sites that had the same warning and I'm going to check and see what file they set me up with later. Googled the WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe file and that went right to the site. So that must be the right one. Thanks for the Firefox and Maxthon suggestions. I'm going to be looking at both those shortly. Any thing that offers improvements and more security is a possiblity. Thanks for the feedback guys. STRIKE ANY KEY TO CONTINUE...........ok......where'd I leave my hammer? Mike
  16. Ok....been getting the warnings lately that some programs will no longer be supported with Internet Explorer 7 so it's time to jump to IE8. No biggie right? I download the upgrade file for my Windows XP and go to install it. Dang...... I have the file BOIE8_MSCOM_XP.EXE as the upgrade but when I go to install it I get the message "BOIE8_MSCOM_XP.EXE is not a valid Win32 application" I spent some time on the Windows site and checked that I have all the needed updates installed on my system and it looks like I have everything I need. I can get around a computer pretty well if I know where I'm going but I'm a bit stumped on this one. Any suggestions? Mike
  17. Hi JC. Ok, you are still in the first gen class with an '89. The fuel selector is on the right hand side of the bike at the very bottom of the side panel right by the passeger foot or peg. It will be black plastic T-handle that can be turned to OFF, ON or RES. Most guys just leave them in the RES position as with the fuel pump you don't have any concerns about flooding the bike by leaving the petcock on. Most seem to be stuck there anyway since they don't get moved much. The tank is about 5.3 gallons so if everything is working reasonably well your should be at least 140 miles into the tank before the display warning comes on. That would be about 3 or 3.5 gals down. Ok that's one question........next.......hey! We know you got more...... Welcome to the site and hang around. Ride safe Mike
  18. Check here. http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?threadid=49878
  19. This should be the one you're looking for. A pdf file in post #12. http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?t=49729 My daughter got a copy of that. And she went pale when I showed her the You Tube vid just after that. I think she picked up on my point.
  20. Starter engage clutch shouldn't make any racket like that after the bike is running. I've had two fail on my '84 and man they sound like they are beating the motor to death when they split while cranking the motor over. Once the bike is running you would never know there was a problem. Not a sound. The staked bolts you are reading about......are they the ones that attach the engage clutch to the rotor? If ever replaced they should be new and staked in. Don't remember if you ever did an engage clutch......just the upgrade stator right? If the engage/rotor bolts work loose that will cause a rattling noise and slipping when cranking. Now if the stator is coming loose and that would have to be all the bolts, that might be a problem. I'm interested in what you find. Mike
  21. Thinking about a possible warped rotor also. Odds are against it if you are not feeling a pulse when braking but it could be enough to be slapping the pads back against the pistons.
  22. Ran across that before a few times. Best case, pads were shaking. Check the retainers. Worst case.......check the rotor for a hairline crack. Hard to see but will make a tick, tick, tick everytime the pads cross it. Not good. Hoping for pads. Mike
  23. Hey Giga, Yep, Squidley used to make those brackets. I got a set on mine. Work just fine. However, I may be wrong but I do think he is out of them.
×
×
  • Create New...