American

I hope the notify me, I have not received any emails from Yamaha on this. I wonder how they know who bought each bike are they getting the information from each selling dealer?

I doubt that 8mb thumb drive is what they are sending as 8 mb is nothing these days and updates are likely to be up to a gigabyte in size as according to the manual updates may take as long as 45 minutes and have the bike on a charger so you don't run the battery down during the update, or they say have the bike running, not sure I want to let it idle for up to 45 minutes and third they say take it to a dealer for the the update.

Before you settle on the Honda GoldWing Tour you might want to watch some of the videos from Traxxion Dynamics. When you play that video there will be more on the right side, Traxxion Dynamics has developed a new shock and spring for the 2018 GoldWing so if you buy one you might want to factor in the price of replacing the stock GoldWing suspension. Video link is not showing up for some reason, but you should do a search about the issue.

Any engine no matter if it is liquid cooled or air cooled is going to radiate heat from the engine itself. An air/oil cooled engine is going to use the engine fins to pull heat from the engine and it will use the oil cooler to pull heat from the oil. A liquid cooled engine circulates antifreeze through the engine then to a radiator where is needs air flowing through it to cool down the coolant, if no air is flowing through the radiator the fans will kick on when the engine coolant reaches a certain temperature. This will keep the engine around 200 degrees to 220 degrees as the coolant circulates through the system and cools down in the radiator. With the liquid cooled engine you have two sources of heat to deal with, one is the heat radiating off of the engine itself and then you have the heat coming from the radiator(s) that is being directed through the body work cowling which if their is no wind ends up around the rider as it exits from the cowling. I live in Southwest Florida and it gets hot here, and we have high humidity to go with the heat. I have seen over 100 degree read outs on my bikes on board air temp displays, add in the humidity and it is hot period. You are likely to be no more comfortable on a liquid cooled bike stuck in traffic than you would be on an air cooled bike stuck in the same traffic. Then you have the maintenance issues with liquid cooling, you have maintain the cooling system, flush the radiator to replace the coolant every so many miles, you have to maintain the cooling system hoses so they don't fail and you have a water pump as well that can fail. If the ambient temps get to hot it can even overwhelm a liquid coolant system and cause the engine to over heat. Just because an engine is liquid cooled does not mean you won't feel any engine heat. My old 1989 Honda GoldWing GL1500 would bath you in heat when stopped and the cooling fans kicked on, when you were moving it would cook your left foot from the heat radiating off the left cylinder head.

I don't know what else to tell you, I made the thumb print on a USB thumb drive like the Yamaha Toolbox directions said then I put the USB thumb drive in a USB port on my iMac and it gave me an error code. That is when I did the procedure listed above and retried opening and running Yamaha toolbox and it detected the USB thumb drive. Now all I have to do is insert the USB thumb drive into a USB port and then open Yamaha Toolbox, sign in and it sees the USB thumb drive and on the right side of the Yamaha Toolbox screen it shows me an assigned number on my USB thumb drive. I think the file Yamaha Toolbox is looking for is device_checksum.md5. But it might also be looking for device_status.ini file as well, in any event Yamaha Toolbox needs one of those two files if not both of them in order to communicate with the USB thumb drive.

I know that number on the fob is emergency code to start the bike without the fob, I was just saying that the emergency fob code is also on the fob. I did not get a card with my bike nor any usb thumb drive.

My Star Venture Transcontinental was the 1063 bike produced but I can't tell you if the Eluder is in the same serial number sequence with the Star Venture bikes. The Transcontinental is just an option so its serial number sequence would include the Star Venture base model. Being the Eluder is the same bike just a bagger version it could very well be included in the serial number sequence as the Star Venture bikes.

I have had the same issue updating my Garmin chart plotter on my boat and it uses SD Cards, I use SanDisk SD Cards again name brand.

Has nothing to do with the thumb drive, it is the Yamaha Toolbox not being able to drill down into so many folders to find what it needs. I had to do the same thing with the Harley to do updates on its entertainment system. My thumb drive is a 8 GB Toshiba a good name brand thumb drive.

Seems people are having a hard time getting Yamaha ToolBox to see their thumb drive and they are getting an error code instead of the system seeing the thumb drive and accessing it. I think I have found their problem, if you open the thumb drive via the file manager you will see a folder named NaviFolder. Double click on NaviFolder and it will take you to two new folders, one named fingerprint and the other named update. Double click on the folder named fingerprint and it will open to a new folder named DEV-MD5. Double click on the folder named DEV-MD5, that will open five items, you do not have to do anything further on the thumb drive. The five items are content, device_checksum.md5, device_status.ini, license and save. With that last folder open with the five items showing go back to Yamaha toolbox and follow the procedure again and this time it will find the file it was looking for and will do its thing. The problem is the Yamaha Toolbox can't find the file it needs as there are to many folders to access. You can thank me later.

Mine was already activated as well, the key code is also on your remote, it is the label inside where the removable key slides out of. Updates should not be a problem as the activation code is only good for the initial activation as far as I know, updates should be nothing more than downloading them from the web site onto a thumb drive and then plugging the thumb drive into the bikes USB port in the fairing and the system should update, you will likely have to follow some prompts but if it is like my Harley was it should be pretty easy.

There is more to be said about that then you know, people from hot climates go up north and need a jacket while the locals are walking around with just a long sleeve shirt on. The reverse is true when people come down south they are burning up while the locals are just enjoying the nice day it is. I for one do not like the cold nor does my wife.

My wife rides with me and has no complaints about heat from our old 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour to our old 2016 Harley Davidson Ultra Limited Low to the new 2018 Yamaha Star Venture Transcontinental, all three bikes are V-Twin with the Victory and Yamaha being air oil cooled and the Harley being air cooled with water cooled heads around the exhaust valves. To many people get on a motorcycle and think it should be like in their air conditioned car. My old 1989 Honda GoldWing GL1500 was liquid cooled and it would throw off quite a bit of heat and would about cook your left foot while riding due to the heat coming off the left cylinder head.

OK Yamalube is adding some ester group V to their PAO group IV full synthetic oil which is fine you still get the benefit of the polarity of the group V Ester. Here is a video about Yamalube from Yamaha and you can see as the video plays some large V-Twin Yamaha's being rode in the video.

The Yamalube 15w-50 should be a good oil as it contains ester based synthetic in it. Redline oils are a full group V ester synthetic, but some group IV synthetics will add group V ester to them because of the benefits of ester being a positive charge and will cling to the metal parts better than a straight group IV PAO synthetic will. I do not know if the 15w-50 is a PAO group IV synthetic with some group V ester added to it which is fine or if it is a full group V ester synthetic. Either way from the sounds of it the Yamalube 15w-50 full synthetic sounds like a good oil.

I just plugged in my Toshiba 8 GB usb thumb drive and the system did not say it was no recognized but I did not try to do anything else with it other than plug it into the system via the USB port in the front fairing pocket.

Yamaha may not be activating the Navigation at the factory because they are in Japan which maybe could cause a location problem once the bike gets to its North American market. My bikes navigation system was already working and this morning is the first time I have even entered into the navigation screen. I assume the dealer did any set up to turn it on. My advice to you would be to take it back to your dealer, also one other thing regarding USB sticks, sometimes a usb stick just does not work in said system in this case your Yamaha, you might try a different USB stick. I have not really played with the navigation system nor have I looked through the manual on the navigation system. All I can tell you is I can pull up the navigation system on my bike and I can display the map screen. Can you tel me what the need is for a USB stick? Just for information most devices are designed to accept FAT as your format because it is the most compatible system. If there is a way to format the usb stick on the Yamaha system that would be the best bet as sometimes formatting on a computer does not work with certain devices. Like I said I have not really played with the navigation system other then turning it on this morning and I can show the map and the enter a destination icon is not grayed out so I can open that if I want. There are a couple of grayed out icons but the label of them looks like you have to enter a destination first for them to become active.

Problem with Yamalube 10w-40 is it is a conventional oil. I rather not use a conventional oil in an air cooled engine when synthetic is superior.

I did some more searching and all the 15w-40 oils are all diesel oils. Pretty sure the manual and service manual are just a type-o and they meant to list 15w-50 which is the only 15w grade they make that would be for this bike, they also make a 15w-30 full synthetic but that is a race oil and normally race oils do not have all the additives a street oil has in them because race engines are serviced more often with shorter mileage intervals than a street engine.

I am going to assume the owners manual is a type-o because I did a search and can't find a 15w-40 Yamalube oil. I do find the 15w-50 yamalube. https://www.shopyamaha.com/yamalube-products/engine-oils?taxo_productdepartment_ss_facet=30&taxo_productcategory_ss_facet=95&taxo_productcategory_ss_facet=93&dealernumber=&taxo_productcategory_ss_facet=94&nw=yamaha-motor-company My dealer also lists a full synthetic oil change package, they actually offer three levels of oil changes, Conventional oil, semi-synthetic oil and full synthetic oil.

What kept me away from the Indian Roadmaster was the lack of a hydraulic clutch. A 28,000 dollar motorcycle and it has a cable operated clutch. The first thing I did when I bought my 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour was drive right home pull it into the garage and removed the cable operated clutch and replaced it with a hydraulic clutch. Never had one problem with the hydraulic clutch on that bike. Victory sold a hydraulic clutch kit that was actually for I think the steel frame bikes but it fit the Cross bikes so I ordered one and had it ready to go the day I picked up the bike. Took me all of one hour to remove the cable operated clutch hardware and install the hydraulic clutch hardware and slave cylinder including all of 2 minutes to bleed the system.

One more thing about Liquid Glass, it goes on easy and comes off just as easy. You can also use the Liquid Glass on the chrome shields and mufflers on the exhaust system and it will not turn blue like normal wax does when the exhaust gets hot. I just bought into the how great Harley Davidson paint was supposed to be and I found out the hard way that Harley paint is really no better than any other manufactures paint. Where Harley has everyone else beat is the number of color options they offer instead of the normal two colors of most other manufactures but as far as Harley paint being better that is a myth. Here is the deal you can sit down and pick apart any bike you buy and ruin your ownership experience or you can put a little effort into the first three months of ownership and be proactive with certain areas of the bike and in the end you will enjoy the bike for years to come instead of grumbling about the finish.

Harley Davidson paint is pretty but it is easy to damage, the fuel tank on my 2016 Ultra Limited Low while pretty colors anything that rubbed on the paint would rub right through the Harley paint. The fuel tank paint was being rubbed through where the front of the seat touched it, where my legs touched the rear sides of the fuel tank were rubbing the paint through. That is why I know about the 3M clear film to help protect the paint, I had to use it on my Harley or it would have had multiple bare spots on the fuel tank. My Victory Cross Country Tour had better paint than my Harley had. You want to make the paint last and look good providing a deep shine that looks like you can reach into the paint then pick up some Liquid Glass and for the first three months just keep adding another coat of Liquid Glass, and that will provide you with a nice hard shell over the paint. I have three coats of Liquid Glass on this Yamaha already and the paint looks good. I had I believe it was 33 coats of Liquid Glass on the Victory and when I traded that bike in for the Harley the paint on that Victory looked as good as any new Harley on their showroom floor. Get a couple of coats of Liquid Glass on the paint then put on some of the 3M clear film to protect the contact areas and then work on getting 30 coats of Liquid Glass on the paint within the first 3 months of owning it and you will have built up a nice protective coating over the paint. I plan on having at least 30 coats of Liquid Glass on this Star Venture by the 3 month mark of ownership. Indian has its issues as well: Do a search on Harley paint problems and you will find pages of complaints about paint on Harleys as well. It is up to you to protect the paint and that is by being proactive when you first buy the bike and in my case I start putting on coat after coat of Liquid Glass. I only did 11 coats of Liquid Glass on my Harley but I should have just built up 30 coats like I did the Victory, I will do that with this Yamaha. One nice thing is this Star Venture seems to be quick to put a coat of wax/polish on.

OK I found a post over at the oil site (Bob's) and someone contacted Mobil about the JASO MA standard and here is Mobil's reply: The only reason why Mobil1 V-TWIN 20W50 is not formally JASO-MA rated is because we were not willing to reduce the ZDDP levels. -- Thank you for choosing ExxonMobil products. If you need further assistance, please contact ExxonMobil at 1-800-ASK-MOBIL Apparently the new JASO standards require less ZDDP as they claim it damages the catalytic converters on vehicles, there is no conclusive evidence that higher levels of ZDDP in a properly running engine has any effect on the life span of a catalytic converter but the federal government makes manufactures warranty catalytic converters for many years past a vehicles normal warranty period so the manufactures decided less ZDDP was the way to go. I like a lot of ZDDP in my oils and I have never had a catalytic converter go bad in my vehicles.

Just remember that a new bike in the break in period will run hotter than after the break in period. My 2018 Star Venture has gotten cooler as it was breaking in. I now have 1,000 miles on it and it puts out no more heat then 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour did or my 2016 Harley Ultra Limited Low with twin cool did. One thing I do find on all the air cooled engines in bikes I have had is if you run conventional oil they will run a little hotter and if you run synthetic oil they will run just a little cooler.