American

I would not call mine hard shifts but I would say they are firm. As the miles add up I expect things will wear in nicely. My 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour took 30,000 miles for the transmission to fully break in, My Harley Davidson Ultra Limited Low took about 20,000 miles to fully break in and I expect this Yamaha Star Venture Transcontinental to take around 25,000 to 30,000 miles to fully break in the transmission. A good synthetic oil helps as well, I will be using the Yamalube full synthetic with ester 15w-50 starting with my 4,000 mile oil change.

Mine is also Raspberry Metallic as well.

My SVTC has R12.0.6 on it and it is working fine, I don't know if the dealer downloaded it during the 600 mile service or if it was on there when I bought the bike.

They are going to be more concerned with overall compatibility then they are trying to make every file system work, be it a iMac or a Windows computer both are capable of formatting and reading/writing FAT32. According to the link above 16 GB may be the limit, that is Yamaha music but they are the ones who worked with Yamaha on the entertainment system for the SVTC. They also list compatible thumb drives.

I found this for Yamaha:https://fr.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/0/322610/tested_usb_flash_memory_list_for_m7cl_ls9_cl_ql_series_en.pdf

In order for systems to be compatible they normally use FAT32 as that is the most compatible standard for file system. I have my 16 GB iPod 4 hooked up to my fairing USB port on my SVTC and it works without a problem.

What you are describing are the stupid move over laws, in Florida you have to slow down to 15 MPH under the speed limit and change lanes if a multi lane highway. If you are unable to change lanes because of traffic you only have to slow down and maintain your lane however if a police officer pulls you over and writes you a citation for the move over law it is now your word against the police officers word if you could have safely changed lanes, pretty much a no win situation for the person getting the citation. If a single lane highway you have to slow down to 15 MPH under the speed limit and maintain your lane. I have a huge problem with this law. First I am a retired Florida Highway Patrol trooper, but when this law went into effect one day I was traveling southbound on the Florida Turnpike south of U.S 41, the Turnpike in that area had four southbound lanes. A trooper had a car pulled over and one person slowed down suddenly and changed lanes as the law requires, well that did not go so well as traffic in the other lanes had to suddenly slow resulting in a car having swerve to avoid a crash and from that point it was mayhem, no lie there were a total of eight cars spinning out of control. How none of them hit anything or each other is beyond me I was also traveling southbound behind them all and watched the entire thing unfold in front of me. That was my first bad experience with the Florida move over law. The second bad experience with the Florida move over law I did not witness but it occurred on Alligator Alley in the eastbound lanes, it is a four lane highway with two lanes each direction, this time a Collier Country Sheriff deputy had a car pulled over on the right shoulder of the road, the deputy had just gotten the license, registration and insurance card from the driver and had walked back to his patrol car when a woman approaching the deputy slowed suddenly and changed from the outside lane into the inside lane, there was a car already in the inside lane that honked their horn to alert the woman that she was about to hit the car in the inside lane, the woman who slowed suddenly and started the lane change heard the horn and swerved back into the outside lane losing control of her vehicle and spun around striking the car the deputy had pulled over in the left rear door killing the passenger sitting in the left rear of that pulled over car. If the lady had been 5 to 10 seconds earlier should have also hit the deputy as well. My issue with this move over law is it looks great on paper, but real life is not on a piece of paper. We had gotten along fine without this move over law for decades and it was not a huge problem. The problem with this law is you have to slow down and you have to change lanes also on high speed expressways/highways this becomes a very dangerous combination as evidenced by the two examples I cited above. If our law makers were smart, (yeah right) they would have only required the lane next to the emergency vehicle to slow down the same 15 MPH under the speed limit without requiring the lane change just like on a two lane roadway. It is the required lane change that introduces 99% of the danger in this law. The majority of crashes on the highway of a car hitting an emergency vehicle on the side of the road are two fold, one is just inattentive drivers, i.e. playing on their cell phones facebooking, surfing the internet or texting. The second half of that are drunk drivers, a drunk driver will drive into the back of an emergency vehicle because they fixate on the lights and they just drive right into the back of the vehicle. The move over law does nothing with a drunk driver, nor does the move over law do anything with the distracted driver playing on their phone. The move over law does not even do anything with an attentive driver because the attentive driver is aware of the emergency vehicle and is already being cautious. The truth of the matter is the move over law is not about safety but just another excuse to pull over a driver and collect more revenue via a traffic citation. Face it our governments are money junkies, the more money they can take in the more money they can spend, they simply don't know how to budget or they just refuse to budget because it is not their personal money. As for the cell phone issue that one could be dealt with overnight, every smart phone today has a built in GPS in it, all they have to do is send a mandatory update that the user cannot stop that disables the texting feature, and internet feature and that would take care of the texting and surfing/facebooking when the phone detects it is moving 5 MPH or above, they could even disable the normal phone call function leaving only 911 available incase an emergency call needs to be made while the vehicle is moving. Lets face it smart phones have only been around since 2007, that is only eleven years yet people claim they can't do their job unless they are texting and using the internet while moving/driving. I call total BS on that because of the short time smart phones have been around, heck we made it just fine before smart phones, we made it just fine before cell phones for that matter. The other excuse is passengers would not be able to use the phone for texting, surfing the internet or facebooking, to that I say big deal, as again smart phones have only been out since 2007 or eleven years and we all got along just fine before them. OK I am stepping sown off my soap box for now.

Yes that is what I have used for years. There is a can on eBay someone is selling and yesterday the bid on it was up to 102 dollars. Liquid Glass cost about 35 dollars a can in AutoZone when I was buying it from them and maybe you could find it online for couple of bucks cheaper. Oh well everything seems to come to an end. Sad to see Liquid Glass off the market.

I found the restart procedure after a tip over and the sensor shuts the bike down: This is on page 8.1 of the owners manual. TIP: This model is quipped with: A lean angle sensor to stop the engine in case of a turnover. In this case, the display will indicate error code 30, but this is not a malfunction. Turn the vehicle power off and then on to clear the error code. Failing to do so will prevent the engine from starting even though the engine will crank when pushing the start switch. An engine auto-stop system. The engine stops automatically if left idling for 20 minutes. If the engine stops, simply push the start switch to restart the engine.

This was a specific issue when you entered information the system could freeze, they showed you how to fix the freeze when it happened and said a fix would be in the next update which would be R12.0.6.

I just ran across it but I could not tell you how to find it. It was somewhere on Yamaha's site but for the life of me I don't remember how I stumbled across it.

Enjoy the GoldWing Tour, I looked at them but the Honda dealers around me don't want to deal and by deal I mean they don't want to take a trade in, I am not interested in trying to sell a bike myself but the Dealer in town would not even talk to me, the dealer two counties north of me flat out told me they were not interested in doing business with me. My old bike was a beautiful 2016 Harley Davidson Ultra Limited Low, so I ended up at the Yamaha dealer one country north of me and they were very happy to make a deal and take my Harley in on trade. The same dealer where I live that sells Honda's also sell Yamaha's so there was no way I was doing business with them either way. Get that Traxxion Dynamic front/rear shocks package ASAP when you get the bike, my understanding is Honda has made the suspension so soft and so under dampened that is causes the tires both front and rear to start cupping right away. While I liked the 2018 GoldWing Tour I am rather glad the Honda dealers did not want to sell me their bike, now that I have the Yamaha I don't think I could have lived with the lack of storage the Honda has. It is a must for our helmets to fit in the trunk as they are Arai Corsair X helmets with Sena 30K bluetooth intercoms so they are about a $900 dollars worth of helmet/intercoms. Our helmets did just barley fit into the GoldWing trunk but it was so tight they would have gotten scratched up and no way was I about to hang those helmets on the external helmet locks Honda put on the GoldWing Tour. The Star Venture trunk swallows both helmets with room to spare and the saddle bags are large as well. Personally I think Honda a made a big mistake with the direction they have taken the GoldWing Tour While it has some cool new tech i.e. the suspension and the dual clutch transmission removing so much storage was a huge step backwards. I also don't think I could swallow having to upgrade the front and rear suspension to the tune of $799.95 for the front shock and $849.95 for the rear shock plus labor to install for total of over $2,000 dollars on top of the price of the bike. The Honda also uses two tie rods one of which is redundant in case the main tie rod fails. These tie rods have been found to be going out of spec with very few miles on the bike, the spec from Honda is only 5mm of play before the tie rod is considered out of spec by Honda. Not trying to scare you but you really do need to do a lot of research on the new GoldWing Tour before you pull the trigger. Traxxion Dynamic has a video about the tie rods and the play issue in them but they have no solution for the issue. It seems some bikes are starting out at the 5mm of play which all falls into Hondas specs but that leaves no room for wear. Being a new model with so much brand new tech it might be wise to hold off a year and see if Honda fixes some of these issues. I know the Yamaha Star Venture is a brand new bike as well but Yamaha is using tried and true suspension technology that has been used for years and is very well sorted out. I think the biggest issue with the Star Venture if anything pops up will be the new entertainment system but that is normally fixed with software updates. If you do go ahead with the 2018 GoldWing Tour I hope you enjoy it and keep us informed on how it works out for you.

It is supposed to fix the navigation from freezing up as one of the fixes. I saw a Yamaha video on it and they said that 12.0.6 would fix that issue.

Cool, your bike came off the line 48 bikes after mine did.

You sure you were not looking an Eluder as they come in Impact Blue, Raven (Black) or Liquid Silver. The Star Venture comes in either Raspberry Metallic or Granite Gray.

California banned a few years ago but I can't find it online now either. Major bummer for me because all my vehicles have Liquid Glass on them.

I have bought it from AutoZone stores or I order it on line. It may have been taken off the market which would be to bad as it has been on the market for decades, I know California has banned it so that may have been the death of it.

It is the strong head winds that knock me down to 37 MPG, which is still good fuel milage for such a big powerful bike.

I put on my 5th coat of Liquid Glass polish on my 2018 Star Venture Transcontinental yesterday afternoon and with Liquid Glass polish once you get to the 5th coat you can really start to see the depth like looking into glass. Looks like you can reach right into the paint. The more coats you put on the deeper the shine becomes with Liquid Glass polish. Liquid Glass is easy to apply and just as easy to wipe back off and you can apply it in the sun if you want. It needs a four hour cure time between coats for multiple coats. Victory motorcycles were not known for their paint as most complained about the paint on them, but my 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour had 33 coats of Liquid Glass on the paint when I traded it in on the 2016 Harley Ultra Limited Low and the paint on that Victory rivaled the best paint on any of the Harleys in the show room. The dealer sold that Victory within 30 days of my trading it in. So for those of you who want the paint to look its best on your new Star Venture I suggest picking up some Liquid Glass polish and start applying it a coat at a time. Disclaimer I do not work for and own stock in Liquid Glass, I am just a satisfied customer of their great product.

112.5 miles divide by 2.361 gallons of fuel comes out to 47.6 MPG hand calculated. Best tank of fuel yet, I have been seeing any where from 37.9 to 43 MPG depending on the stop and go traffic and headwinds. I was stunned when I fueled up and did the math on that tank of fuel, I was not expecting that high of mileage, I was thinking around 43 MPG but I will take those 47 MPG when I can. My 2013 Victory Cross Country Tour nor my Harley Davidson Ultra Limited Low ever reached 47 MPG. Best I ever got out of those two bikes was the occasional 43 MPG tank of fuel on perfect days. The only complaint on that lunch trip was the damn love bugs are out and heavy in Sarasota county and were getting heavier the farther north we traveled. Not as many love bugs down in Charlotte county or Lee county where we live. I just noticed I typed in 04 for the month in the title, it should have 05/11/2018. LOL

If you look at the bottom right side frame rail you will see a sticker similar to the vehicle information in your drivers door/door jam of your car. This sticker has information about the bike and includes the build date month and year. My bikes build date was 11/2017 with the last four of the VIN 1063. What are the other build dates and last four of the vin? It would be interesting to see the build dates and how they match up with the last four of the vin numbers to see how many of our bikes were built in the same period. My bike was six month old when I bought it on 4/2018.

Just checked my Star Venture and I already have R12.0.6 installed so I don't know if it was already on the bike when I bought it or if the dealer updated it during the 600 mile service. This update was released back in February 2018 so it has been out for a while. My bikes build date is November 2017 so somewhere along the line someone updated the software on it. You can find your build date on the Botton right side frame rail on a sticker with the bikes information on it. This sticker is like what is in the drivers door jam of your car.

OK I found it and I already sign up for that as my information is there. For those who don't know here is a link to the Yamaha motorsports web page and you look at the very top of the page for the My Yamaha and click that and you will be able to register. https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/motorcycle

For those of us who have not can you tell us where this site is so we can register? Is it on the Yamaha home page? I downloaded the Yamaha ToolBox but I did not know of another place I could sign up for more.

What was the restart procedure after you righted the motorcycle? I know both my Victory and Harley you have to I think cycle the key and I think the Victory you also had to wait for like 45 seconds before you tried to restart the bike or it would not start. Just curious what you had to do with this Yamaha to restart it after the tip over.