Chirp. There has been a lot of discussion on the "chirping" sound on the second gen Venture and Royal Stars. There is often some confusion about this sound. These bikes use straight cut gears which create a whine that is best described as the sound made by an old granny gear truck when you are letting it coast. That is a normal sound that is characteristic of the straight cut gears. The sound that is NOT normal is a high pitched chirping sound. This is a result of improper clutch basket clearances. Yamaha has replaced many clutch baskets under warranty and many people have reported that this has greatly reduced or eliminated this noise.

Dry drive splines. Yamaha seems to be very stingy with the grease that they use on the rear drive spines on these bikes. There have been many reports of noise from the drive area. Yamaha has lubed some of these as a warranty issue but many of us have done the job at home. It requires a lift to remove the rear tire and then pulling the drive shaft to lube the front splines and also removing the rear drive from the wheel hub to grease the "fingers".

Trunk Cracks. The 1999 model RSV had an issue with the trunk bottoms cracking. Yamaha came out with a support kit to address this problem and installed it under warranty.

Audio Problems. Many people have had problems with the audio system due to back connections of the 5 din plugs inside the fairing. The fix is to split the fairing, unplug the connectors and apply a bit of dielectric grease to the pins.

CB Antennas. The 1999 model RSV came with very poor CB Antennas. Many were replaced under warranty. The design was changed with the 2000 models. Many have replace the '99 antennas with aftermarket units.

Backfiring. Upon deceleration, many have experienced a loud backfire. This actually sounds like a cannon going off. Some have corrected the problem by syncing the carbs but many of us have plugged the AIS system to stop this problem completely. There is a tech article here on plugging the AIS.