American

Inflate the tires to 41 PSI cold, as you ride the tires build heat that in turn increases the tire pressure, that is all normal, every tire does that, this is just the first time you have likely had the ability to see it in real time as most TPMS in the past only flash a light if the tire pressure gets to low. My Ram 2500 shows the tire pressure and when the tires are set to 65 PSI cold they will heat up as you drive and the tire pressure will raise as much as 5 PSI per tire. My Star Venture the front tire will rise 1 to 2 pounds while the rear tire will raise 2 to 3 pounds when they start to build heat from riding. You have to remember that the tires are flexing and rolling over a surface that has friction and both of those cause heat. Do not lower your tire pressure trying to maintain 41 PSI while riding and always check your tire pressure when the tires are cold. If you ever have to check tire pressure when the tire is at operating temp then the common answer from tire manufactures is to add and extra 4 pounds of tire pressure that way when the tire cools down it will be at or near its proper cold inflation pressure. If you set a tire that has reached operating temp to its cold pressure when it cools down it will be under inflated and an under inflated tire builds up even more heat which can lead to a blow out.

There is something that the forum software and the apple software just don't like with each other, I posted a photo taken with my old blackberry phone that is on the apple computer and it as well posted it 45 degrees to the left. It is something apple does that the forum software just does not like and it rotates the photo 45 degrees.

I owned a 1989 GoldWing GL1500, took a break from riding from 1992 until 2013 and I bought a 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour, it was a good bike but I saw the writing on the wall with Victory even as most Victory owners were in denial and even my local Victory dealership refused to believe that Polaris would shut down the Victory brand. So in 2015 I purchased a new 2016 Harley Davidson Ultra Limited Low, it was a twin cool twin cam engine and was an ok bike after putting in another $5,000 dollars to make the suspension work and doing a stage one kit on the engine plus replacing the windshield and some other parts. The one thing I just did not like was it developed a vibration in the 30 MPH range in 3rd gear that would just drive me nuts, and of course when in traffic in Florida in the 45 MPH zones you get stuck traveling 30 MPH in 3rd gear. Honda came out with the 2018 GoldWing Tour, I was interested, liked what I saw, then read that you could not put two full face helmets in the trunk. Well we did go look at a new 2018 GoldWing Tour with the DCT transmission and boy did I like the bike on the showroom floor, this was a Honda dealer in Sarasota, Florida. First thing my wife and I did was try putting our helmets in the trunk, they fit but barely and I could see them getting scratched up but they did fit so it was not a deal breaker yet, now my helmet is a small and my wife wears a xtra small and they are Corsair X helmets with Sena 30K headsets on them. Where the problem jumped up on the GoldWing Tour was the trade in, we were right side up on the Harley so there was no negative money to deal with, but the first words out of the salesman's mouth was to say he was going to insult me on a price on the Harley, that they are not good bikes, this and that. I could see where this was going and it was going to be a total waste of time so I simply thanked the man and said I don't want to waste his time or my time and we were leaving but the damn salesman just would not let it go and kept on and on about the Harley. I again told him look I don't want to waste his time or mine time thanks anyway. My local Honda dealer would not even talk to me about a price and just ignored me which is standard with that dealer in Ft. Myers. They have a bad reputation anyway. That is when I went and looked at the new Yamaha Star Venture in Punta Gorda and liked what I saw. I made a deal with them on the trade in for the Harley and left with a new 2018 Yamaha Star Venture Transcontinental that has far more storage room than the GoldWing Tour has. All in all I think I bought the best touring bike on the market right now in the Yamaha Star Venture. This 2018 Yamaha Star Venture Transcontinental is much more advanced than the old 1989 Honda GoldWing GL1500 was, the Victory Cross Country Tour while a nice bike does not hold a candle to the Star Venture, and the Harley Davidson Ultra Limited Low, well the vibration I just got tired of, don't know why so many think it is a good thing but I did not like it. The bike itself was nice enough but man the vibration was the killer for me. So now the Yamaha Star Venture Transcontinental reigns supreme with my wife and I and I don't feel any need to be buying replacement parts or doing a stage one kit to the engine, this bike has all the power I need and it is pretty darn comfortable the way it is, I did order the Yamaha Star Venture high backrest as I have some issues with my back but I have to tell you so far with the riding I have done my back has not bothered me at all and when the tall backrest finally comes in I think it will be just right all the way around with some more lower back support. Yamaha as far as I am concerned you hit a grand slam home run with the Star Venture motorcycles.

Riding is a skill, but to many think that the skill is revving the engine to 7,000 or more RPM depending on the rev limit of the engine, it takes even more skill to learn how to ride a low revving engine to wring the performance out of it. Anyone can wind out the engine, there is really not much skill in that, but to know were the power band is within the rev range is the real skill part. But like I said to many think the skill part is having high revving engines and maxing out the RPM's in each gear, those people have gone over the power band in most cases and are not the most proficient riders, oh they make a lot of noise and such because they have hit maximum engine revs and sound like a bumble bee they think they are ready to enter the next MotoGP race. Some think if they can't turn 7,000 or more RPM's then they can't be happy.

If you want a photo of my old Victory your out of luck as I no longer have any photos of the bike outside of a rear shot showing the tag.

To answer your question it is yes and no, yes in that you get a quicker throttle response and no in that a quarter turn adaptor used on a throttle cable can not come close to matching what they have done with the electronic switch. In other words this in not your old quarter turn adaptor you have used on old cable operated throttles.

The drive modes are just change the throttle response, my Harley had the ability to do that, I had a Vance & Hines FP3 tuner on the bike and you could adjust the throttle response but Vance & Hines had a warning to be careful as if you selected for example 1 to 1 throttle response, that is the throttle body reacted on a scale of one to one with your right grip as you turned it could make the bike to responsive until and if you could get used to it. I think the FP3 gave you five choices to pick from starting with stock and then each one made throttle response quicker until you got to the 1 to 1 ratio. I bet Yamaha's system is doing the same thing except instead of having to program it you just push a button. I find the Touring mode suits me just fine.

I would never buy a Harbor Freight torque wrench, to many have been found to be defective by people over the years. Hoping you did not get a defective one after breaking off a critical bolt or strip a critical thread is not the time to find out you got a el cheap defective torque wrench. Buy a CDI torque wrench at least, they are owned by Snap On Tools but you can get the CDI branded torque wrenches much cheaper than the Snap On branded torque wrenches. You can buy CDI torque wrenches at this link and they have sales a few times each year. https://www.protorquetools.com I own Snap On torque wrenches and one CDI inch pound torque wrench. The difference between the CDI and Snap On torque wrenches is the Snap On will have a little nicer handle i.e. a little bigger around to grip with. CDI are the same outside of the size and ergonomics of the handle and like I said they are owned by Snap On and make all the Snap On torque wrenches.

I owned a 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour only mine was red, I put 44,000 miles on that bike and being that I have owned the Victory and now own the Star Venture I can tell you from first hand ownership experience that the Yamaha Star Venture Transcontinental is hands down a better performing motorcycle than my 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour was and I liked my Victory, it was a good bike but it did not handle as good as this Star Venture does, the Victory was more top heavy and while I did not find the Victory overly hard to maneuver in parking lots and slow speeds the Star Venture handles even better at parking lot speeds and slow speeds in general. As for cornering the Victory is no match for the Star Venture, while the Victory is a very competent bike handling wise, the Star Venture is just better, the Star Venture just drops into a turn and feels so good a much better feeling than the Victory had. I am not knocking the Victory, I liked mine but the truth is the Star Venture is just a better motorcycle than the Victory was.

No war trying to be started but Mike Schultz of Arizona Victory has even been criticized by Victory owners for a lot of what he said in those videos he did. I just want to make it clear those videos are not from Victory nor have they ever been endorsed by Victory and they sure as heck where not a decision in their design of the Victory engine which is an over head cam engine.

A valve clearance check is in the scheduled maintenance that does not mean the valves have to be adjusted, they only get adjusted if they are found to be out of adjustment with the spec being .000 to .0016 and you can buy feeler gauges that meet those specs, I have two sets of feeler gages in my tool box that I have owned for a good 38 years now that will meet the Yamaha specs. If you check the valves and they are within .000 to .0016 that falls within the tolerance in the manual. If you are over .0016 then you need to adjust the rocker arm for the valves. Like I already posted this is a tried and proven valve train that has been used for over a decade in Yamaha's 113 CI engines and one owner did not do a valve check until he had 50,000 miles on the engine and his valves were still in spec not needing any adjustment. Pretty much everything I found was the same, this design does not have a problem staying in spec likely due to the use of the hydraulic lifters used. I don't see valves going out of adjustment being a problem with this 113 CI engine.

I did some google searches on the 113 CI engine in the Stratoliner/Raider about adjusting the valves and it seems it has not been a problem in the older engines, I did find one repair shop who claimed that he performs first services on those bikes and has found the valves to be out of adjustment at only 10,000 miles, now who does their first service at 10,000 miles, I suspect he is just trying to scare in service work. One person did not check his Stratoliner 113 until 50,000 miles and he said they did not require any adjustment so from what I have researched as limited as I did it is appearing we are not going to have an issue with the valves falling out of spec as the top end of this engine has been in service for over a decade. Yamaha has provided the ability to adjust the valves and provided their mileage to do said check of the valves, notice it is a check not an adjustment, you only adjust them if they are found to be out of spec. A lot of people said their Yamaha techs told them they have found it not necessary to adjust the valve unless they get noisy. My take on it is if you are running a quality synthetic oil with ester or PAO with ester added you will not have any issues with the valve train on these 113 CI engines. From the past history of this valve train in the Stratorliner/Raider bikes I think it is a proven sound design.

Does anyone know the end results of the many miles on this valve train design on those earlier engines what the end results were of valve clearance checks? That would be a good indicator of how this engine will be in regard to valve clearance as well.

I am sure Yamaha has just erred on the side of caution and it will ultimately be a non issue in the future. Yamaha really put a lot of engineering they learned over the years into this engine like ceramic coated cylinder bores, you won't find that on any Victory. It looks like you may the first to 16,000 miles so if you check the valves or have them checked at the dealer please do post the results. I will do the same as I purchased a maintenance contract that covers all required maintenance in the owners manual for the first the three years I own the bike unlimited mileage.

I will trust Yamaha's engineering over Polaris any day of the week. Polaris got a lot wrong on the Victory's like porous cylinder heads that leaked oil, a recall that stopped the sale of all Victory's for a time because they failed to properly tighten to specs a part inside the engine. We won't even get into how many years it took Polaris to finally get their transmission worked out, oh and lets not forget about how you can destroy the starting system on a Victory if the engine backfires upon start up. LOL, ok I opened the video you provided and that is one of the infamous Mike Schultz videos from Arizona Victory, he got a lot wrong in those videos as he did a series of them and even Victory owners were shooting him down on a lot of things he said in those videos. Those videos are not from Polaris/Victory but rather a Victory dealer who took it upon themselves to make them. Also didn't Arizona Victory shut down one of their two Victory dealers in Arizona leaving a mess for Victory owners to sort out that had their bikes in for service work, this was all before Victory shut down by the way.

The Yamaha uses a hydraulic lifter as well and I bet as these bikes get some miles on them we are going to find that they don't need valve adjustments just like the folks who ride Goldwings, those bikes over the years never had their valve covers cracked open to check their valve clearance and the ones that did rarely was one found to need an adjustment.

https://www.allsportinc.com/default.asp?page=xNewInventory#page=xNewInventory&vt=motorcycle%20%2F%20scooter&year=2018&vc=touring There is a link to the dealer, they have three in stock but are priced on their dealer web page $26,999. I have some concerns with the ebay listing as if you check the sellers history they have sold a lot of metal detectors recently. If they really want to move the bikes offer them on their web site at a good price instead of full list price, there would be no ebay fees to pay and they would sound more on the up and up instead of looking like a shady seller.

I had lifetime subscriptions in two vehicles but they are long gone now, sadly Sirius no longer offers the life time subscriptions so I no longer subscribe to their service. I would do a life time but I won't pay a monthly rate. It is to expensive for what you really get.

I moved over from a 2016 Harley Davidson Ultra Limited Low to this new Yamaha Star Venture so Harley lost one owner in me. Where I live there in Lee and Charlotte counties in Florida there is only one Star Venture base model available and two Elders one a GT and one a base model. How many of those new Wing owners are going to upgrade the suspension right away? One owner has suffered tire cupping on the new GoldWing Tour at just 2,000 miles. I am glad Honda dealers did not want to deal with me, I think I ended up with the better bike in the Star Venture Transcontinental.

A slight correction on the oil, Yamalube 20w-50 comes in either all purpose (conventional oil) or Semi-Synthetic. If you want to run full synthetic you will need to run Yamalube 15w-50 as that is a full synthetic. Yamalube does add ester to both its Semi-Synthetic and full Synthetic oils. I will be running the 15w-50 full Synthetic Yamalube oil in mine. After the service contract is up I will switch to Redline synthetic oil because it is a group V full ester oil. You will find during break-in there is going to be a lot of metallic in the oil as everything wears in, I had some Redline 20w-50 left over from my Harley so after the dealer did the 600 mile service they used Yamalube 10w-40 conventional oil and I ran that for the next 400 miles to the 1,000 mile mark and I dumped that oil as the basic break-in is over by the 1,000 mile mark and I put in Redline 20w-50 synthetic oil and a new Yamaha oil filter. I will run the Redline to the 4,000 mile oil change and at that time I will start using the Yamalube 15w-50 full synthetic. One thing I can tell you is the bike runs a little smoother with the full synthetic oil vs the conventional oil.

Ok this time I went into the phone and rotated the photo and then I went back into the computer and rotated the photo back to right side up from the earlier attempts and this time it posted correct. When I take photos on my phone they are automatically downloaded onto the computer as well. weird.

I take the photos upright on the phone, and they display correctly on the phone and the computer. Must be something with Apple and the forum software that are not working together.

I don't know it is strange now that I see the photo the way it is on my computer and phone when I open it on them. LOL. Let me try posting it upside-down to see what happens. I can seem to post the photo sideways right and left and upside down but for some reason I can't post it right side up.

Except the photo is upside down now. LOL.

The Harley should be improved with their new counter balanced Milwaukee Eight engine but it is still a Harley which means once you buy it you will be adding $5,000 to $10,000 dollars of parts to make the bike run and handle like it should have from the factory. I did a stage one set up on my 2016 Harley Ultra Limited Low and went with JRI rear shocks to get it to ride better, for the engine I did the Vance & Hines Power Dual header pipe, a set of Rinehart 4 inch mufflers and a Arlen Ness big sucker intake that I drilled to route the crank case ventilation to the outside air instead of letting the engine suck in all that oil and believe me there is more oil being sucked into the intake from the crankcase ventilation then people think and that leads to heavy carbon build up on the top of the pistons. Then you will likely change the seat and on mine I changed the trunk rack to the aero trunk rack like they put on the CVO bikes because it just looks 100 times better. I had then change all the lights that had bulbs to LED lights and I added filler lights that go between the saddle bags and the rear fender. In the end I just did not see what the big deal was with a Harley, the Yamaha Star Venture Transcontinental it a far better Motorcycle in my opinion.