Flyinfool

good to know they cant catch a 1st gen..........

That could work for starters. Give me some time to make up a drawing with needed dimensions. MKII Collector.pdf

OK, I am having thoughts here. That is always dangerous. IF Marks is truly no longer offering this. I have no desire to compete with anyone. Since I did not get to ride this year for health reasons, I will not have a winter bike project to mess with. I have a couple ideas on how to make up a new collector but I would need one to get measurements from. Anyone have one that they are not needing? It can be very ugly with holes or other damage as long as it has the 6 nipples and mounting bracket all still in the right place, so I can take measurements to locate all of that correctly. This will be a long project so I would need a collector that you do not need back real soon.

Some good pics would help a lot here.

Does the FJ braking leave something to be desired? The Venture is much heavier and needs more brakes to get it stopped in a hurry if needed.

Start with a fluid change. Old fluid will have water in it. With heat the water boils and has the effect of air in the lines. The slave can get pretty hot on a hot day like today. I found a clutch in my basement.........

I finally figured out the trick to the DMV. If you are not the first one in line first thing in the morning, plan to make a day of it. I get there 20 minutes before they open and am in and out as fast as the paperwork can be done. Most of the rest of the people there at that time are kids for driving tests that they have appointments for and go into a different line.

Gee, and up here in the north, we have been known to get first snow in September......... Not the norm, but it has happened. Our average first snow is Oct 28. I'm sure that as you head farther north that date gets earlier.

Start by checking the exhaust pipes when starting from cold to see if they are all warming up at the same rate. Maybe you are not running on all 4 cylinders. These bikes run amazingly well on 3 cyl (some never notice that they lost one) and still run but noticeably rough on 2 cyl.

:sign yeah that: There are a couple of the paintless dent repair shops in the Milwaukee area. My brother had a dent removed from his car door, it took about a half hour and you could not tell anything ever happened. But call them first, They may have issues with working on a gas tank due to the fumes. They may have a special cleaning procedure to get all of the fumes out of the tank before working on it. The process of rubbing steel tools on a steel tank does have a good potential to make a spark.

I have been using Valvoline 10W-40 motorcycle oil. But after the events of this spring and the last week, I am rethinking that choice. The Valvoline does not leave much of a protective film on engine parts. I had my valve cover off for 3 days with the bike in the shed, it did not rain during this time. Last night when I went to put the valve cover back on I noticed that all of the cam lobes showed slight surface rust. The engine was still hot from running when I took the valve cover off. The oil film was not able to protect the cam from atmospheric moisture for 3 days. That aint very good. I figure that if there is not enough film to protect against simple humidity, then there is nothing left to lubricate the cam at startup either. I am not sure what my new choice will be yet. I have till Saturday to decide......

Look in your local yellow pages for plastics suppliers. There are several in your area. Since they often supply cut to size sheets for their commercial customers, they usually have a small showroom full of cutoffs, blems, drops etc.

Not a problem there my good buddy @cowpuc. My machine is now wind powered with a high capacity battery backup. I no longer have to consider the cost of running it. I will never again have to shut it down just to save some fuel.

This morning I filled up on the way in to work at $2.51. On the way home gas skyrocketed up to $3.29. A jump of $0.78 in just a few hours, all brands shoot up at the same time by the same amount but there is no price fixing in the gas market..........

OH bummer. I hate when that happens. If you are real lucky, the black underneath is still ok and you can wet sand most of the crud out of the clear. Maybe touch up with a clear buzz bomb.

Kind of makes the $12 to be a supporting member the best $12 you will spend on your bike.......

:sign yeah that: Heheheh I knew I could wake @cowpuc up. As far as the converting to modern lighting, it does help a LOT. Unfortunately I never took any amp readings before I did the conversions so I have nothing to compare to other than the system voltage. Mine was also changed little by little over several years. I so far have around 525 LEDs on the bike, and I still have about 1500 more LEDs in a box waiting for me to decide how I want to mount them ALL. Before the lighting change, when I came to a stop all of the lights would dim and the voltmeter on the dash would drop to about mid scale. With the brake not applied. The brake applied not only has the extra power of the brake lights but also activates the Electronic Anti Dive circuit, which draws a lot of power. Now that i have replaced the headlight with a HID and all other bulbs with LED, the voltmeter does not drop at all while stopped, and non of the lights dim, even if I have the brake on. There are a number of changes that have to made to the bike to convert to all modern lighting, but it is not real difficult to do, time consuming yes, but not difficult. But to keep things simple, since this thread is about cooling, It is best to start another thread about lighting. Or do some searching, there are a few threads already done with everything that has to be done along with lots of discussion for the various conversions. For LED headlight http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?107457-Installed-an-LED-headlight-in-the-1986-1st-Gen For HID headlight http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?45603-Just-got-my-new-HID-headlight For the rest of the lights to LED http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?77042-MORE-lights And even more LED lights http://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?41588-Lighting-up-my-Venture And there are a bunch more.

Well Puc and I do both drink from the same water source. Hows that for scary. Not greasy burgers, BUTTER burgers, this state is Americas Dairyland after all.

Before you take anything apart, do a few checks with your volt meter to rule out a bad connection. If you have a bad wire somewhere the 4 brush will not help either. set meter to lowest volts scale. Connect black to battery negative terminal. not to the bolt or connector that is attached to the battery but get to the actual lead part of the terminal. Connect red to starter case. Crank starter. Any voltage displayed is power being lost by resistance in the ground circuit. anything much more than .2 volts is a problem to start hunting down. Now connect the red test lead to the positive battery terminal same as above. Connect the black lead to the post of the wire connection at the starter. Crank starter. Any voltage displayed is power being lost in the positive start circuit. because there are more connections there is more potential for power loss, but you want it to be under .5V. This test does not tell you where the problem is, it can just tell you that you have a problem, but you can use the same process to start narrowing things down to isolate the problem. The ground mod did make a big difference on my 2 brush starter. Then the heavier cables made another big difference.

Its the same.

While a 4 brush starter is the best solution, The ground mod that this thread is about is a definite improvement for those that may not have the cash for a 4 brush starter and is a great way to improve what you already have. I have the ground mod on my bike and see no real need for a 4 brush at this time.

Sounds like you at least have a plan. A plan is better than nothing. It is amazing how such a tiny bit of some drug can have such a profound effect on a body. If you are close to 90,000,000mg and you add 5mg of a drug and look what that tiny fraction of a percent did for you. Just amazing. Puc you keep your spirits up and that will help to keep the bad things down. Besides your buddies in MI are counting on you keep typing enough to keep me busy reading about your adventures all winter and out of the back shed. Prayers still comin your way buddy.

If you are going to do a lot of additional lighting, you may want to turn it off if the bike will be idling for long periods. Once up to cruising speed the output is much better to handle things. It is just at low RPM that you might have an issue. Which brings up another point, these engines like to sing a bit, don't try to ride it like a Harley, it wont like it. Keep the RPMs up.

Welcome What you are looking at is perfectly normal. That is just the way Yamaha set up the gage on this bike. Most all newcomers have the same concern. Mine runs on the edge of the red whether it is 70° or 100° out there. At 10° it will run lower...... The fan should turn on just below the edge of the red, drop the temp some and cycle back off. You can test this just idling in the driveway. We have some rules on this forum. We all love to see pics of bikes, especially new to you bikes. Don't let that @cowpuc character catch ya posting without pics, he aint far from ya is is just liable to ride down there to take pics and then take you and make you eat hot dogs....... Maybe even ice cream.....