Freebird

I really don't know when they came out. I'm talking about the style of the '93 being discussed here though. I felt like my knees were in my chest. I just did a little research and it looks like 1986 may have been the first year of the new style.

I have always thought that the Viragos are beautiful bikes. I've owned older 750 and 920 models years ago. I bought a 535 for my wife a few years ago but she didn't care the way it handled. When the new style like that '93 came out, I really thought I wanted one of them but after sitting on one, I realized that it would never work for me. It was the 1100 that I tried and I found that they are really small for an 1100. No way would it work for a tall rider.

You are probably making the right decision. You can always replace the bike at some point in the future. Sounds like your priorities are in order.

Of course it's safe....anyway....all my pets have to eat SOMETHING.

OK, there are several ways of doing it. They all work and there are advantages and disadvantages to all. That being said, this is the reason that I prefer the pictures be uploaded here instead of linked from a remote site. There have been a number of times over the years when people have posted some very good technical articles. Great write-ups and complete with pictures. Then a few months or years down the road, the original author of the articles either moved on to another bike and left here or simply came to the point where they needed more space or whatever in their photobucket or wherever they had uploaded the pictures. Either forgetting or no longer caring that they had linked them to a post here, they deleted the pictures at the remote site. What we are left with then is something that used to be a very helpful tech article and is now just some words that don't make a lot of sense when they are referencing pictures that are now just red x's. I have have spent a good bit of time over the years going through and either deleting or rebuilding articles that were rendered completely useless due to the fact that the remotely hosted pictures were no longer available. Therefore, at least for technical posts that many here might find useful for years to come, I prefer that the pictures but uploaded to VentureRider.org and not linked to remote sites.

Yes, you don't have to host them anywhere. Just click on "manage attachments" as stated above and you upload them directly from your computer to here. Just make sure that they aren't too large. They should be resized to no larger than 640 x 480 and a maximum of 200,000 bytes.

Yes it is. The splitter just allows you to keep the aux plug beside the tape deck active and plug your GPS into the other one. If you don't care about keeping the one by the tape active, you can just unplug it and plug your Garmin directly into it.

Sometimes you will run across a great deal on Craigslist. I've bought a number of things off it. The red flag though is not usually just the price but the terms. If they say that they are in the service , out of the country, etc. and want to use some escrow service it is almost ALWAYS a scam. As has been said, Ebay does NOT have an escrow service. Don't be sucked in by this mess. If you can't look at it and make the exchange face to face then it is more than likely a scam.

Yes, I've worked on it and trying to make it more consistent. I can't get the unanswered threads and etc. to work on the home page though.

Actually, you can use it from anywhere in the forum. There had been some confusion in the past where people were trying to find it on the actual home page of the site. Though there are two menu bars there also, the Google search does not exist on the home page. As for why you got the different number, I really don't know but I'm thinking that by the time you get through 50,000.....you really won't care.

Sent to me by an old friend from the MTA. I think that man of us knew this though. "Riding a motorcycle every day might actually keep your brain functioning at peak condition, or so says a study conducted by the University of Tokyo. The study demonstrated that riders between the age of 40 and 50 were shown to improve their levels of cognitive functioning, compared to a control group, after riding their motorcycles daily to their workplace for a mere two months. Scientists believe that the extra concentration needed to successfully operate a motorcycle can contribute to higher general levels of brain function, and it’s that increase in activity that’s surely a contributing factor to the appeal of the motorcycles as transportation. It’s the way a ride on a bike turns the simplest journey into a challenge to the senses that sets the motorcyclist apart from the everyday commuter. While the typical car-owning motorist is just transporting him or her self from point A to point B, the motorcyclist is actually transported into an entirely different state of consciousness . Riding a motorcycle is all about entrance into an exclusive club where the journey actually is the destination. Dr Ryuta Kawashima, author of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain, reported the outcome of his study of “The relationship between motorcycle riding and the human mind.” Kawashima’s experiments involved current riders who currently rode motorcycles on a regular basis (the average age of the riders was 45) and ex-riders who once rode regularly but had not taken a ride for 10 years or more. Kawashima asked the participants to ride on courses in different conditions while he recorded their brain activities. The eight courses included a series of curves, poor road conditions, steep hills, hair-pin turns and a variety of other challenges. What did he find? After an analysis of the data, Kawashima found that the current riders and ex-riders used their brain in radically different ways. When the current riders rode motorcycles, specific segments of their brains (the right hemisphere of the prefrontal lobe) was activated and riders demonstrated a higher level of concentration. His next experiment was a test of how making a habit of riding a motorcycle affects the brain. Trial subjects were otherwise healthy people who had not ridden for 10 years or more. Over the course of a couple of months, those riders used a motorcycle for their daily commute and in other everyday situations while Dr Kawashima and his team studied how their brains and mental health changed. The upshot was that the use of motorcycles in everyday life improved cognitive faculties, particularly those that relate to memory and spatial reasoning capacity. An added benefit? Participants revealed on questionnaires they filled out at the end of the study that their stress levels had been reduced and their mental state changed for the better. So why motorcycles? Shouldn’t driving a car should have the same effect as riding a motorcycle? “There were many studies done on driving cars in the past,” Kawashima said. “A car is a comfortable machine which does not activate our brains. It only happens when going across a railway crossing or when a person jumps in front of us. By using motorcycles more in our life, we can have positive effects on our brains and minds”. Yamaha participated in a second joint research project on the subject of the relationship between motorcycle riding and brain stimulation with Kawashima Laboratory at the Department of Functional Brain Imaging, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer at Tohoku University. The project began in September 2009 and ran until December 2010, and the focus of the research was on measurement and analysis of the cause and effect relationship involved in the operation of various types of vehicles and brain stimulation. The study measured changes in such stimulation over time by means of data gathered from a long-term mass survey. The reason for Yamaha Motor’s participation in this project is pretty obvious and not a little self-serving, but further research into the relationship between motorcycle riding and brain stimulation as it relates to the “Smart Aging Society” will certainly provide some interesting results. The second research project was divided into two time periods throughout 2009 and 2010 compared differences in the conditions of brain stimulation as they related to the type of vehicle and driving conditions. A second set of tests measuring the changes in brain stimulation over time involved a larger subject group. Yamaha Motors provided vehicles for the research and made its test tracks and courses available for the study. What the study revealed is that what you’re thinking about while you’re riding – and your experience on the bike - changes the physical structure of your brain. Author Sharon Begley concurs with Kawashima’s findings. In her tome, Train Your Mind – Change Your Brain, Begley found much the same outcomes. “The brain devotes more cortical real estate to functions that its owner uses more frequently and shrinks the space devoted to activities rarely performed,” Begley wrote. “That’s why the brains of violinists devote more space to the region that controls the digits of the fingering hand.” Source: http://www.motorcycleinsurance.com/this-is-your-brain-on-a-motorcycle/

Yes, and it will be moved to there after it has been here for a few days.

I hadn't seen that one and I like it. I think the Search Tempest that I posted is better if you want to define the distance that you are willing to go and etc. but yours works better if you truly want to do a quick search of the entire Craigslist. I like the simple links that it returns much better than the one that I posted.

I see many posts here stating that the search function does not work or does not work well but if you know he best way to use it, it actually works very well and is simple to use. I concede that the base function included with VBulletin leaves a lot to be desired. That is why I long ago installed a modification called "Google Search". It is very simple to use and returns much better results than the standard search function. Here is the best way to search the VentureRider forum. First of all. Make sure you are on the home page of the forum, NOT the Venturerider home page. The home page of the forum is the page that lists all the various forum areas such as Watering Hole, First Gen Tech Talk, etc. To make it simple, you want to be at http://www.venturerider.org/forum At the top of the page are two blue menu bars. You will see the "Search" link in the lower menu bar. It is the third button from the right side. Click on the "Search" button and a drop down menu will open. Do not enter your search terms in the top field. Look at the very bottom of the drop down menu and you will see an option for "Google Search". That is what you want to use. Enter your search term, for example "oil", in the field just below "Google Search". Do NOT click search just yet. You have two selections to choose from just under the field where you enter your search terms. The are "web" and "www.venturerider.org". You want to click on the circle beside "www.venturerider.org". That way you are searching only the venturerider forum and not the entire Internet. After you have entered your search term and clicked on "www.venturerider.org", then click the button that says "Google Search". That's all there is to it and it works very well. I am adding some pictures to show exactly what you should be seeing. The first picture simply shows which search button I am referring to. The second shows what you should see when you click on the search link. The third shows what you should enter to search for, example, oil.

The word oil is too short and too common. The minimum word length for the search engine is 4 characters. I can set that value but anything less than 4 characters causing the search engine index to be HUGE and very server intensive. There are a few 3 letter words that I have added but oil is not one of them. You CAN search for oil if you click on the search button at the upper right in the lower menu bar and use the google option. When you click on search and the drop down menu opens, at the very bottom is "Google Search". Enter "oil" in there and then select the "venturerider" button. You can search for 3 character words using that method. Actually, that option works best for ALL searches here. I just tried that and got 58,700 posts that contain the word "oil". It can be a bit overwhelming.

There are a few I think but this is the one that I use. http://www.searchtempest.com/

OH....and you MUST fill them with Mobil 1 Racing 4XT or they will dry rot from the inside out. DO NOT OVER FILL. About a pint of Mobil 1 in each tire will not only preserve the tires but also behave in the same manner as Dynabeads in keeping the tires balanced. One last thing...you should NEVER pull a trailer of any size with a motorcycle. It is best to put the hitch on the FRONT of the bike and PUSH the trailer. All just common sense stuff when you think about it.

Sheeeesh......will nobody ever learn. The car tire goes on the FRONT.....bicycle tire on the rear.

and THAT is the bottom line Cougar and the rest of you. While it may not have bothered some of you, others WERE indeed offended that somebody could be considered ignorant because they may think that it is an unsafe practice. Ignorance is lack of knowledge. If you research this particular topic, you will find that many good riders think that it is perfectly safe and many think that it is not. Many tire experts will also tell you that it is not safe. I'm not saying that it is or isn't, I'm simply saying that we can sometimes get differing opinions from different experts and then come to our own conclusions. If I come to a different conclusion that you do, that does not mean that either of us are ignorant, we just choose to interpret the information differently. This tire issue is just one example. The same holds true in regards to many things that we discuss here. Pulling a trailer, headlight modulators, and on and on and on. It is OK that we disagree and we can all learn from debating some of these things but that does not mean that one is ignorant just because they come to a different conclusion that somebody else. The problem is that some are more sensitive to such remarks than others. If it reaches the point that a member is afraid to post their opinion for fear of being insulted, then we lose what may have been some good information that we could have all learned from.

I have to agree. Just because somebody may have a different opinion that you does NOT mean that they are ignorant. Many very intelligent people have different opinions and even people who are experts in their given fields can have vastly different opinions on any given subject.

Yes, as well as CB, intercom, etc.

I didn't use the volume measurements when I installed the Sonic Springs. Rick Butler has done several of these and I used his instructions. On the oil level, set it 5" from the top of the forks with the forks completely collapsed. The best way to do this is with the forks completely out and sitting on the floor. Rich provides instructions with the springs, so go ahead and read them. But do it in a couple of stages and pump the forks to get oil circulated (pour, pump, pour, pump). Use a turkey baster and measure 5" from the tip and place a wrap of painters tape. Fill it just over 5" from the top and then use the baster to suck the oil out until it sucks air (which means you are at the right level). Then slip the springs into the fork, place 2 washers on top of the spring, extend them fully, drop the grey pvc on top of the spring and make a mark at the top of the fork tube. Take the pvc out and remove 1 washer. Now cut the pvc say 1/4" under that mark. I use a PVC cutter and once it's cut and you are satisfied that that end is flat, sit it on a flat surface and mark the other piece (on the plus side) and cut the other spacer. Now with a washer on top of the spring and on top of the spacer, put it back together. I always do this with the fork on the floor sitting on a low stool so I can compress the spring with the cap and get the threads started. You don't need to tighten the cap until you get it back in with the bottom triple tree with the clamp tightened. Oh, loosen the cap while the forks are still in the triple tree with the top triple tree bolts loose.

I need to point out that I have never used that method. It was passed on from another member and I just added it to the tech library. The only time I have changed mine was when we installed my new Sonic springs last maintenance day. At that time, we completely removed the front forks and dumped the oil.

Well, most of you know that my job requires a decent amount of travel. I probably use somewhere between $800.00 and $1,000.00 most months just in my work car. I really don't keep up with how much my wife uses. Not much though because she doesn't work outside the home. She probably uses between 100-150 most months. Of course I would have to add vacations and etc. to that and it can get expensive during those times. Luckily, my company provides the company car, insurance, etc. and reimburses me for the gas, tolls, etc.

Welcome back Lewis. I'm glad that you and Charlene had a good time. Good find on the shirt, I KNOW you needed another one.