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Gearhead

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Everything posted by Gearhead

  1. Gearhead
    That's some pretty stiff expectations. The only tires I've done even close to that well with were Dunlop E2's on my Virago, much lighter at 550 lbs. I got 23,000 front and rear from that set, and have close to that now on another E2. Nothing else out there that I've tried or heard of even comes close, except maybe the new E3. Also on the Virago, I ran a set of MT66's and got 17k front, 13k rear. On the Venture, I have an E3 on the rear which is still looking pretty decent at 16,000 miles. I have a MT66 on the front which, with 11,000 miles, still has some to give. It's always hard to guess accurately, but I'd say the rear will reach at least 20k, and the front should make 15k. Jeremy
  2. Gearhead
    Nathan, 1) Did you get the mechanical issues worked out on this bike? 2) Why no trunk or bags? 3) Why can't you remove the fairing and fenders for painting? By the time you're done masking everything, you might wish you had. Jeremy
  3. Gearhead
    Thanks guys for your input. Condor, I did not directly ground the braided shield, but it is connected to the outer portion of the PL259 connectors which are in direct contact with the antenna bracket (grounded) and CB metal case. The CB case I presume is grounded through the wiring harness, but just for yuks I made a separate ground wire to run from a screw in the case to the frame; it actually made the SWR a little worse. Jerry, regarding the splitter / duplexer, I didn't expect it to drive the SWR so far up. But most of my testing was without the splitter anyway. The "impedance matching transformer" did come with the antenna. As far as I can see it's just a wire with a ring terminal coming out the bottom of the antenna. I'm not using it as it makes my SWR worse. They say to tune without it first and only connect if necessary. When I connect it, things get worse. I did remove the fold down and it had no effect. I ground just a bit off the brass at the top of the antenna (with the tuneable tip removed completely) and it helped slightly. At this point, my lowest SWR is down to about 1.5 at CH1 and it goes up from there; testing it at Ch 2, 3, 4 etc showed a gradual increase to around 2.5 at Ch 40. So I don't have that "dip" in SWR that's supposed to be at Ch 20; my resonant (center) frequency is currently at some frequency below the CB band. I think more material needs to come off the top, but I dunno why my installation wants an antenna that's so "short". My cable buzzes out OK, but I haven't traced the entire length for nicks. I want to hook up another cable and try it. Jeremy
  4. Gearhead
    I've not done the solid mounts, so this is just my opinion, FWIW. Yammy mounted the motor in rubber so it could move a little and absorb vibration. All 6 mounts are rubber, of course. Replacing them all with solid mounts transmits more vibes into the frame but allows the engine to stiffen up the chassis, helping the hi-speed weave. That's all fine and dandy, I like it. But...I wouldn't replace SOME of the mounts with solid and leave the others rubber. The solid mounts won't give, while the rubber ones will. This will place great stress on the mounts that are solid because they will be trying to prevent the movement that the rubber mounts are allowing. Jeremy
  5. Gearhead
    Ditto, completely. A week ago I rode about 30 miles of sweeping turns. My 12-year old daughter was on the back, dozing off. That's happened with my kids before and it's a little nerve-racking, but OTOH, they always stay pretty-well centered 'tween the armrests. But for some reason this time I felt compelled to keep my left hand on her calf the whole way just to make sure that if she slid at all I'd know right away. She never did, but the one-handed ride was no problem, handling-wise. Wizard, I've run a pair of Pirelli MT66's on my Virago and liked them. I currently have one on the front of the Venture, with an E3 on the back, and it handles nicely. E3 is not available in the Venture's size. The MT66 is a good-handling tire, made in about every size imaginable, wears pretty well, and to top it all off, it's cheap! Jeremy
  6. Gearhead
    Yup, and if you need new pads, try the HH sintered pads. To answer your question, the front brake is not super powerful with one disc on an 800 lb bike, but it should not be as weak as you describe. Bleed, check the easy stuff, consider HH pads, then re-evaluate. BTW, sintered pads have a reputation for being hard on rotors. So when I installed mine, I miked the rotor thickness in several places with a machinist's micrometer. After 1000 miles I miked it again and it measured the same. I should recheck it now. I did notice that the HH pads cause a dull, rougher-looking surface to appear on the rotor compared to the slick-shiny look made by regular pads, but no measurable wear. And yeah, these bikes spoil you for weather protection. I love the heat outlets too! Jeremy
  7. Gearhead
    The electrical stuff could be. Bad connections (high resistance) at the connectors cause all kinds of grief. You could have several of these. The mediocre charging voltage sounds like this problem. Could be the AC or DC plug to the Vreg, the battery cables, or the ground. A loose cam chain, as experienced not on a Venture but on two other bikes, is a constant light rattle regardless of load but of course changing with RPM. It's much lighter sounding than a rod or main. Use an automotive stethoscope, cheap at Harbor Frieght, to isolate the noise IF it will make it while running on the centerstand. Jeremy
  8. Gearhead
    It must be blowing as soon as you turn the key on. I have a similar situation on my Virago - tail light and parking lights. Start inspecting the wiring from the blinkers and horns. Pay attention wherever the wires go around corners and where the harness moves with the bars. These kind of faults, intermittent, aren't easy to locate. Jeremy
  9. Gearhead
    You're repeatedly blowing just one fuse? Could be a short in that circuit - a bare wire somewhere. Jeremy
  10. Gearhead
  11. Gearhead
    Hi CB experts! My CB has been nothing but a headache from start to...well...I haven't finished yet. Broken antenna, bad squelch and volume pots, SWR meter issues and now tuning problems. I installed a Wilson Flex 3' antenna with tunable tip. I like it better than the Firefly (or did like it better) because the Firefly is much fatter, achieving it's light weight by being hollow. I like the thin-ness of the Wilson aesthetically. I have the 203EZ folding mount. My bracket looks different from some I have seen and I think was adapted off something else. I modified it to move the antenna backward 3", placing it above the very back edge of the RH saddlebag so it the lid wouldn't bang into it when removing. The cable was already on the bike. I am intending to use a Firestik AR-1 duplexer/splitter. Went to tune it this morning, thinking this would be a slam dunk - just mess with the tunable tip and be done. Wrong! I was measuring with the splitter out of the loop, just the CB and antenna. SWR was super high, above 3 on all channels, but a little higher on 40 than on 1, so I lowered the tunable tip. Improved slightly. Finally removed the tunable tip entirely and got readings of 1.7 on 1 and just under 3 on 40. Ch 20 was somewhere in between, in the low 2's. Huh? What gives? Now I know that JB (lonestarmedic) used the same antenna on the same bike and got 1.5 at channels 1 and 40, I have something unique going on. I've studied this on the web, and here's what I already checked: - Bracket ground has 0 ohms to bike frame. Supposedly high SWR is caused by a bad ground plane 90% of the time. - Just for yuks, I added a ground wire from the bracket to the frame and SWR improved slightly, 1.5 on 1 and 2.5 on 40. The same happens if I hold the bracket with my hand. - Cable has continuity in the center and in the shield, but no short between the two - like it should be. - Putting splitter in the circuit made it worse - SWR way over 3 across the board. - Performed measurements in an open space. - Connecting the Wilson's "matching transformer" lead to ground made it worse. This makes sense. I don't understand this feature, but Wilson says it will lower the center freqency by 20 channels. My center frequency is already too low; I think it's below channel 1 in fact. - Tried removing fold-down mount - no change. - Double-checked how to connect and use the meter. So where do I go from here? Do I need to start removing material from the tip of the Wilson, even though it's supposed to have the full tuning range in the adjustment? What else? Frustrated, Jeremy
  12. Gearhead
    Hello! These bikes have linked brakes. Here's how it works. When you step on the pedal, you get rear brake and the LH front brake together. The RH lever operates only the RH front brake. Thus, you will find that the pedal (what you think of as the "rear") has a ton of stopping power while the lever has relatively little. Of course, they should be used together. Of course something could truly be wrong with yours. Is your lever real squishy or does it come back to the grip? First flush and bleed the system. If it persists it could be the lines. But if the lever isn't squishy, I don't see how the lines could be bad. Have the pads been contaminated with oil? I improved the bite of the lever a little by installing EBC HH type pads, sintered, just on that brake. But mostly I had to get used to the fact that instead of the pedal being mostly useless in a very hard stop like many bikes, the pedal is where most of the braking power is. Jeremy
  13. Gearhead
    Todd, what you describe sounds like trailer whip, usually caused by insufficient tongue weight. Wizard, I've read that carrying a passenger often makes hi-speed weave better. The extra body changes the natual frequency and adds damping. Extra weight on the back, rigidly attached, makes weave worse, which is one reason full-dressers struggle with this phenomenon - the trunk. It's also why Kawi, on their police bikes, used to mount the heavy police radio on its own suspension. Though it was high and rear-mounted like a trunk, it wasn't rigid. Neither is a passenger. Wizard, you talk as if Venoms and E2's or 404's are the only tires for this bike. What about Pirelli MT66, Michelin Commander, E3 (rear only), ME880, or maybe others? One more for Wizard, you mention that your head bearings may be too loose, causing low speed wandering. In my experience, those wanders are caused by head bearings that are too tight. FWIW. A general comment: I read people saying they had Bridgestones do this or Dunlops to that. All these brands make many models, and each has its own characteristics - cross-section, tread pattern, rubber compound. You just can't generalize by brand, methinks. Squeeze, what does your esteemed government have against Michelin Commanders? There's my 2 cents. That from a guy without much sense at all :-) Jeremy
  14. Gearhead
    Squid, Mine's an 87 and I've had it two years. I can't get rid of the mid-speed front-end wobble, the kind where the bars and wheel shake back and forth but only if I take my hands off the bars. I've tried pretty much everything suggested here. BUT - I just keep my hands on the bars. It did have a hi-speed weave, but not too bad. In two years I've put all Progressive suspension and checked and greased every bearing and bushing in the chassis. I have an E3 on the back and a Pirelli MT66 front, both around 40 psi. Front suspension has about 33% sag, rear has around 20% solo, almost 50% 2-up. After all that, the hi-speed weave is reduced to a level where I hardly ever experience it, and it goes away quickly when I do have it. I think that's normal for full dressers. The bike is quite stable up to 100 or so which is as fast as I've gone on it. I regularly cruise the Interstate at 80 or 85. Jeremy
  15. Gearhead
    Ditto for my 87. I don't think the carbs are restricted per se, but calibrated to the restrictive airbox. Recalibration would be a simple matter of jets and needles - simple - yeah, right. The potential's there but would take a lot of tinkering, esp hard without a dyno and EGA meter. Jeremy
  16. Gearhead
    Congrats, and a very good lesson for all of us. BTW, it's not just these bikes, it's pretty much all bike and cars for that matter. They never assemble them with any grease. Jeremy
  17. Gearhead
    Mine did this, and the tack would freak out at the same time - either wandered around or dropped to zero, don't remember which. It was the connector right on the TCI box getting wet. It had corrosion from time and mileage, exacerbated by battery acid exposure - the battery is right above it and eventually some acid leaks out. (Long live AGM batteries, which don't leak acid!) Jeremy
  18. Gearhead
    Standard 4" speaker. I used some Pioneers for 40 or 50 bucks, 2-way type which sound much better. Poly cones resist water, and they've been fine so far. I did the work through the blinker holes. Tight, but possible. Note, even with new speakers it's not really loud enough at freeway speeds. It needs a little more amp. Jeremy
  19. Gearhead
    Also, the connections to the TCI get corroded, partially due to its unfortunate location under the battery. Eventually a little acid gets down there. Jeremy
  20. Gearhead
    Hello. I took my CB apart over the weekend and found the problem! It turns out that both potentiometers, volume and squelch, were bad. Kinda weird that I found two unrelated bad parts. But it makes sense. Thinking back, the squelch knob was a little touchy and noisy when adjusting it before it died. And the volume - I don't think it has worked since before I bought the bike. The few times I've used the CB I noticed that the audio I heard was very quiet, even with the vol cranked. I went to a local truck-stop-CB-shop and showed them what I needed. It turns out that the Venture CB uses totally standard pots (imagine that!) and they had some there with the exact same construction and cross-section. However, they only had them in dual-type. That is, the one pot is designed to be both on/off, vol and squelch, using two concentric knobs. It is really three switches stacked - the on/off clicker, the vol pot and the squelch pot, so it is a little longer than my originals, and the knobs are different. I used that configuration, one switch for all controls, and soldered the original little harnesses onto the new switch. There is enough depth where it goes to accomodate the longer switch. I installed it into the squelch side hole, and put one of the dead pots and knobs back into the vol hole to plug it. I used the chrome knobs that came with the pot, and arranged some o-rings under them to hopefully shed water like the original knobs did. Now I just gotta set SWR and I'll be back in business! Jeremy
  21. Gearhead
    Greg, do any of your local Venture riders have a hack and trailer as well? Does anybody on this list have a sidecar? Also, when you next have the floats out, test them all in a cup of fuel and see if they all float at about the same level of submersion. I once had a float get "heavy" where it was just barely floating. It would work while I set the fuel level, then it would flood out on me on the road. Jeremy
  22. Gearhead
    The seals alone aren't too much, should be less than 30 bucks for the pair. Replacing the seals yourself IS the cheap way out. There is no easy way out, other than ignoring it. This will get messier and messier, soiling your brake pads, blowing back on you, etc. Eventually (this usually takes awhile), the fork will leak enough oil out that it has insufficient lubrication and the fork will be damaged. Jeremy
  23. Gearhead
    Won't that eventually allow coolant into the oil? Jeremy
  24. Gearhead
    Coolant in the oil is usually pretty obvious, making the oil look like chocolate milk if you have run the engine for awhile. How would the coolant get in the airbox if it's not mixing with the oil, or at least with the breather gasses? I'm not sure, but it seems like I've read you can get the breather assy out with the carbs in place. Good theory - the breather has crankcase vent, coolant and oil chambers. Does anybody know for sure just what this puppy is for? Why have a chamber with these 3 chambers? Jeremy
  25. Gearhead
    In Tucson we have 10% MTBE (some sort of ethanol in small proportion) in the winter, not in the summer, and I can't tell the difference in mileage or how the engine runs. I get about 38 avg. Last tank was 40 though - woohoo, throw a party! Jeremy Jeremy
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