Freebird

OOPS....never mind. I'm sure the 3.6 is a good motor but it was the 3.8 that I was thinking about. That is what the Bonneville had in it.

I think you will like the car. In my opinion, the 3.6 is probably one of GMs best motors ever. The previous generation came with a choice of the 3.6 or a small V6, 3.1 I think it was. The 3.6 was far superior. I put close to 200,000 miles on a Bonneville with a 3.6 and the only thing I ever did to it was replace an electric cooling fan. It was just a great motor. The only Impala available in recent years with a V8 were the SS models. I think the the last SS has been dropped but didn't look to be sure. I just can't see the Impala with a 4 cylinder though.

Really sorry to see this my friend. I can only imagine the sadness that you all must feel. Please know that you and your family will be in our prayers.

My best Christmas present EVER. It was 4 days late but I still count it as the best. On December 29th, 1995, my lovely finance at the time took my hand in marriage. It is the best thing that ever happened to me at Christmas or any other time. Eileen is my soul mate and, best friend, lover.

Most likely the cooling plugs behind the cylinder fins. VERY common and and a cheap and easy fix.

What fantastic news. It truly is the season of miracles. We will continue to keep her in our prayers.

Not sure what it is but I do want to ride it.

LOL...yep...I'm happy now and can say that this issue is settled at least for a while.

It is estimated that there are more than 2,000 shipwrecks on Lake Erie. That is SHIPS...MANY more if you count small craft. It can get very rough and do it very quickly. You really have to watch the weather when you are out there.

Great story and great outcome my friend. What a wonderful Christmas present. I will continue to pray for her and for you that this was indeed the issue causing the other problems. I have learned, as most of us have, that these Doctors are often looking for the needle in the haystack and it's a wonderful thing when you finally get one that looks outside the box for solutions that the other have missed. So glad that things are looking better my friend.

Guilty as charged. I never think about pictures when I'm alone. Will do better next time though. Maybe.

OK...it's not that often that you are able to get the bike out close to the middle of December in Northern Ohio but this was one of those days. I tell you, it felt GREAT. I looked at the temperature and saw that it was 57F. Now that's decent riding weather. So fired it up and at least got a few miles in. Probably no more than 75 miles total but I'll take that anytime in the winter here. Got back home and felt energetic enough to wash the bike. Not a bad day. Not a bad day at all.

Good luck with the Sleep Number. We have one. HATE it. Ended up putting a 4" memory foam mattress on top of it.

Would I want to ride it cross country? NO! Do I think it's just cool as heck? YES!

Nice. Single hole. Hated those double hole models.

NOT TRUE. You asked and I said YES. Troublemaker.

These are fun stories but maybe this thread should be in the "embarrassing moments" forum? Not a big deal but I could move it if you think it should.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our home to yours.

All good responses folks and I do appreciate it. It is obvious that the consensus is to keep things as they are. I said from the beginning that I felt that trying to make it an "all brand" site would be a mistake. I guess I just needed confirmation about that from all of you. So, we will continue as we have been. I'll read back through all the posts and look at the other ideas you have suggested regarding new topic areas and that sort of thing. No major changes though. Maybe work on getting the word out a bit better and go from there. Thanks for your thoughts and ideas. That is what I was looking for.

Here are some random thoughts regarding some of the things mentioned so far. This is not meant to shoot down a single one of your thoughts, just expand on them. I am pretty much in agreement that opening it up to "all bikes" is not the solution. I said from the onset that I just don't think we can be all things to all groups. Our strength here is the the V4 Yamahas. I don't think we would be a big draw considering all the well established sites already out there for the other bikes. My one exception to this thought and even this goes against some of what I just said. But I'm a bit warmer to the idea of at least opening it up to the VStar line. At least they charge the same badge. That maybe be something to look at. As for local chapters. I'm not sure that is a viable option either. Think about it. If the majority of you are of the mindset that we should keep this a V4 or at LEAST a Yamaha site, how would local chapters help? How many of us have said many times that we hardly every see other Ventures and Royal Stars in our local areas. I think that to make local chapters successful, they would have to be open to all bikes. If the website remains the central meeting place for those local chapters, wouldn't that mean again moving toward making this an all bikes site? There is no reason to do away with any features or specific areas of the site. Even at our current membership level or even less, we are fine with our current hosting and software. We have more than we actually need at this time. Even if, in the future, I scaled back on our current hosting plan we would still be OK with everything we have now. It's not the server space that adds to the cost but the server load and bandwidth. I can maintain our space and etc. and simply decrease the bandwidth and etc. if the cost becomes an issue. It is NOT an issue at this time. At our present membership level we are ok with costs. My only reason for my original post is my desire to keep this place interesting to all of you. I am not overly concerned at this point with the number of members that we have. Not for the sake of the actual numbers. It's just that more members and new members bring new thoughts and experiences that many of us enjoy reading about.

All good comments folks. I just want to make one thing clear. Shutting this site down is not under consideration! So you can take that off the table. VentureRider will be around for a long time.

Now we are getting some input. Thanks and keep it coming.

40 views and 1 reply? Come on folks, did you miss the part where I asked for your input?

I just want to update everybody on the state of our club at this time. Membership continues to fall. We are down to about 1,000 supporting members. That is not doom and gloom but does represent a fairly significant decrease over the past couple of years. I don't think it is unusual to have such a decline for bike models that are no longer being produced. It is always difficult when there are no new models to discuss. No new discussions on the best accessories, performance modifications, etc. When the latest model sold was basically a design from 1999, most things have been talked about over and over again. So we reach the point where most of what keeps us together are the friendships, meets, etc. Is that enough? I hope it is but the declining numbers may not support my hope. So do we need to do something here to make it more attractive to old members and help draw new members? If so, what would that be? I honestly don't know. I will say that, and this is just my opinion, changing over to an "all bike" format would likely be a mistake. I base my opinion on a couple of things. The Venture Touring Society was once the largest owners group in the world for the Yamaha Venture motorcycle. There was a time when they had several thousand paid members and some huge rallies. They even had a relationship with Yamaha where they gave away a new Yamaha Venture at the International Rallies. When Yamaha discontinued the Venture in 1993, I guess there was a lot of discussion on what that would do to the club. At some point, not sure what year, they made the decision to drop the VTS name and change it to the Motorcycle Touring Association. That seemed to be the beginning of the end. A lot of the Venture riders felt that the club had turned their backs on them and the club never really picked up a significant number of Goldwing, Harley or other riders. Now there is a possibility that the transition was just handled wrong. There was leadership change in the club and other factors involved but still, I think that they just lost their identity. The second thing is that I just don't know that you can be all things to all riders and brands. I was asked a few years ago to add a GoldWing area to the forum and I did so. The truth is though, it has seen very little use. There are a number of old and well established Goldwing sites out there that are full of great information. People can go to one of those sites and do a search and find their answers in the amount of time that it even takes to post their question here. It has been suggested that I add areas for other bikes like Harley, Victory, etc. It's not that I'm against doing that but for the reasons listed above, I'm hesitant to do so. The fact is, this is a Yamaha site. Venture, Royal Star, etc. I'm not sure that we could successfully change that even if we wanted to and I'm not at all sure that we want to. So what are your opinions? Are there things that we can do that would help us retain our members and possibly attract new members? Do we just leave things as the are and hope that the membership numbers just level out and we stay viable? I don't have the answers. I don't even know if we even have a problem. Maybe it's just the nature of such things. Maybe we just maintain what we are doing and if it eventually just fades away, we accept that as the inevitable and go on with our lives.

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