BlueSky

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1996-yamaha-xvz1300-royal-starter-motor/253534332810?hash=item3b07d2e78a:g:Wv4AAOSwblZZLkdz

The slow starting can be helped by cleaning up the starter and connections, maybe adding an additional internal ground and larger cables, but the real problem is that the starters through 1990 were two brush weak starters. The real fix is to buy a 4 brush starter for a 91 or newer V4 and replace the 2 brush.

Thanks Godlover, but I'm sort of set on a gold or red GW if I buy one. And some improvements were made in 2006 such as better cooling as I understand so I want a 2006 or newer. I think 2006 is the only year for a Gold colored GW. I just checked out the drive to the dealer. It's 855 miles and supposedly would take 12.5 hrs to drive it. Fuel and tolls would be $400 or so to make the round trip plus a motel room. Wish it was closer. I suppose I just need to get off my arse and fix the things I need to fix on my 89 Venture. It only has 6k miles on it.

$3k for an alternator failure sounds like BMW territory! Yikes! Thanks for the tip! The CTX1300 didn't sell well and I think was only offered for the year 2014. I'm not crazy about the style of it either. And they neutered the ST1300 engine before putting it in the CTX. Maybe it was because of the cruiser chassis design and that design is not made for performance handling in the twisties. I'm sure it's plenty fast still but. I'm not sure what I will do. I wish that GW was close by. If so, I might not be able to resist. It would be a 2 day trip to go buy the one I want. Where I live the only new bike dealers are the Harley of course and the Honda/Suzuki. And the owner of the Honda/Suzuki dealership is one of the biggest buttholes I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. I used to take my Hondas to the Kawasaki/Yamaha/BMW dealership (now defunct) to get my bike inspected and buy stuff. The price of used BMWK1600GTLs is coming down!

6 weeks ago, I was doing sets of 50 squats as part of my exercise program. So, I'm assuming that in a few more weeks, the shingles nerve damage to my knee will be healed and my knee won't be a problem. Hoping! It is very slowly getting stronger and the numbness is going away very slowly. I also decided that I was going to lose some weight so I cut back on the calories. I'm losing weight and that single thing will help many areas of health, arthritis, blood pressure, cardiovascular, energy, probably everything. Yeah, I'm 74 but I refuse to give up! Middle finger to age!

I wish I could ride a GW for a while first but I haven't had the opportunity. I test rode one for a short distance in 2010, a gold 2006 that I haven't been able to forget about. The dealer wanted $17,500 for it and I wasn't ready to pay that much for a bike at that time. I think that gold is the perfect color for a Goldwing. I used to be about 6' tall but now I'm closer to 5'10" with my flat back discs. I have a 29" inseam. I've been reading some negative posts from current GW owners about the new GW. Some don't like the smaller seats and smaller luggage since it is supposed to be a long distance tourer.

A dealer has it so I'm positive it will be sold to the first guy who comes with the cash or credit. I also don't know how many BS fees he will try to tack on to the price. I've been watching the subject GW for a while and the price just dropped from $9,999 to $8,999, which judging from the prices I see on local GWs is not a bad deal.

I just watched Rick's West Trip video again getting fired up to ride. Almost makes me wish I had kept my 2004 Kawasaki Concours. Loved the sound and perfomance of that sport tourer. With a 7.5 gallon tank it had a long fuel range. It's biggest negative is how top heavy it is. I don't know how Rick was able to ride it in the mud in the Redwood Forest. I've been watching some of those "Living off the Slab" youtube videos too. Some good information there for a novice tourer.

I was jacking up the front of my Kawasaki today in preparation to replace the fork seals for the 3rd time in 9 yrs. when my wife walked by and said that I should get rid of my old bikes and buy a newer more reliable one. So, I told her that I did have my eye on this 2006 Gold colored Honda Goldwing with 20k miles on it that cost $8,999. She said buy it. I then told her it's about 700 miles away and it would be a long trip. It's tempting though. I still have a numb in the front very weak knee from the shingles and I'm still not feeling normal so I have to take that into consideration too when thinking about making the trip.

Maybe ask a mechanic at the local Yamaha dealer if he can recommend a mechanic who does work on the side. Maybe check craigslist. I looked one time and there were a couple motorcycle mechanics who had an ad. If you decide to tackle the carbs yourself Damon Ferrara's video would be well worth the money to buy. He sells a very detailed video about rebuilding a set of Vmax carbs which are about the same. I think I paid $20 for his carb video and engine video and since it took him a couple weeks to get around to shipping them, he refunded the money. I thought that was beyond honesty and decency. If he had mentioned it first I would have told him it was okay.

$1500 to finish out that voyager kit on one of your Ventures sounds like the cheapest way to go!:biker:

This guy has 3 videos of bringing back to life an 86 Venture he picked up for$200 Can. We need his expertise on this site and he needs ours.

That first link has a phone number. Call him and tell him you want the trike and will come pick it up tomorrow and see what he says. I'm sure it's a scam but you might could have some fun with the guy.

https://onslow.craigslist.org/mcy/d/motorcycle-honda-goldwing/6544913172.html https://fayetteville.craigslist.org/mcy/d/low-milage-goldwing-trike-low/6543939914.html https://fayetteville.craigslist.org/mcy/d/green-honda-gl1500-goldwing/6537226640.html https://eastnc.craigslist.org/mcy/d/motivated-seller95honda/6528329437.html There are more.

If you search craigslist in eastern nc or raleigh nc, or charlotte nc you will find it is still posted multiple times.

Really cool! It's just a matter of time!

Quality products are a result of management philosophy. If management doesn't require quality, it won't be there. It doesn't really matter where the product comes from. The last new Ford Ranger I saw, the engine and the transmission was made in the EU in different countries, France and I can't remember the other.

In the case I just talked about, the guy who missed the purchase found an identical Concours very quickly because I saw him riding it to work. Dan, you shouldn't dwell on the negatives. Find another one if that is what you want. There are lots of trikes out there. Life is too short to be negative. Have fun every day if it is at all possible!

I used to buy and sell a lot of cars and I always sold the vehicles to the first person who showed up with the money. Talk is cheap. Cash is king. When I sold my 2004 Kawasaki Concours that I had advertised for over a year a guy came to me and said he wanted to buy it but he didn't have enough cash and didn't borrow money. He wanted to give me a deposit the following Sunday and would pay the rest in two weeks with me keeping the bike and title until he paid the rest. I sort of reluctantly agreed and told him that when I got the deposit which was half of the price, I would stop advertising it and would hold it for him. Well, another guy came by on Saturday with the cash and I sold it to him. The guy who wanted to put a deposit on it the next day was pissed but I didn't think he was justified in being so. I didn't personally know either one of those guys. Both were contract workers at a nuke plant outside of Homestead FL where we had an almost $2billion project going on. If I know the potential buyer it would be different but I didn't know either one of those guys.

A peculiar fact is that when I was a kid, "Made in Japan" was synonimus with junk and it was some Americans who went to Japan to help them with their quality control according to what I remember reading. So, after a while the Japanese products were much better than American products. American car manufacturers concentrated on advertising and not quality to sell their cars until the Japanese kicked their butts into realizing they had to build higher quality vehicles. BMWs are highly engineered products that will last a long time but you can find lots of horror stories about how much it cost to repair them.

I was a Startup and Test Engineer at the Brunswick Nuclear Power Plant when it was built. One of my systems to check out and start up was the air compressors and systems. These were huge piston type compressors. Since they were built to be oil free to supply oil free air to the instruments in the Nuc Plant the compressors had teflon rings. Well, the plant was using more air than the designers calculated and these compressors were running a lot at a max discharge pressure of 125 psig. Continuously running at that pressure would get the discharge up to 460 degrees F. Since the maximum usable temperature for teflon was 500 degrees F, the compressors had to be rebuilt often. The compressors did not have a cooling system but there was a heat exchanger on the outlet piping to cool the air discharge. We had to add more compressors to the system to help with the air demand. So, if your compressor was running continuously, it could have gotten really hot!

Yeah, I think it blowed up! Did you change the oil occasionally and make sure it stayed full of oil? What brand is the compressor? I got over 30 years of service out of my Craftsman 2hp air compressor. (I used to buy everything from Sears. Now, I buy almost nothing from there. ) If I had kept the tank drained it may have lasted longer. It started leaking air out of a tiny rust hole on the bottom of the horizontal 20 gallon tank. I put it on the edge of the street with a "Free to Good Home" sign on it and it got picked up pdq. I replaced it with a 30 gallon 1.9hp vertical tank compressor.

It had to be a scam anyway at that price. There seems to be several scams on the NC craigslist at any given time, bikes priced ridiculously low and the ad normally only has the craigslist email as a contact.

https://eastnc.craigslist.org/mcy/d/1940-indian-sport-scout/6515143312.html

With the TC off , he didn't have any trouble spinning the rear wheel did he? I really like the new GW too. It seems to me to be a new Gen 1 Venture.