atlm
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Everything posted by atlm
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Harbor Freight has mirrors on a stick (the extension kind, like a car antenna) for about $2. That said, I used to do the wood-under-kickstand method, but it always made me a bit nervous. So, now I attach the Carbon One adapter to the bike, and raise the jack just enough to level and support the bike without lifting it. I'll be using the same method to level the bike to sync the carbs.
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Got mine yesterday. That's one rugged, nicely made tool! Thanks Gary!
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If the 2004 is painted black, that's when they started because the 2003 non-midnight (the red and gold one) was shiny. Don't know if the midnights are different, like their seats.
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Every winter, I get PMS (Parked Motorcycle Syndrome) bad, and end up buying bike stuff to try to satisfy the emptiness. So far this winter, I've bought: carb synchronizers (after endless questions here) risers and longer bolts all the hardware for the riser adapter doohickeys that hold the rubber fairing dampers in place a relay for my passing lights that I found wasn't installed a fuse block, since I'm getting too many wires coming off of the battery (Battery Tender, Stebel, passing lights, and I'm thinking about Gerbings gloves) vacuum brake bleeder (bought to synchronize the synchronizers, but will come in handy for brake bleeding, also) vacuum adapters and hose (also to synchronize the synchronizers) digital tach digital caliper (my analog caliper was fine until I saw the price of the digital unit on sale) 1" chrome 3-piece clamps and 1/8" x 1" aluminum stock for doing the crash bar reinforcement neck gaiter for colder weather bottom of a rollaway tool chest, to have near the bike when doing work 50mm bolts for the passing lights, to eliminate having them rest on the fender when splitting the fairing I've had the RSV on the Carbon One stand since around Thanksgiving. I think I need to take it down and go out for a ride the next time the sun comes out. I need a fix. This is nuts.
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I was in Harbor Freight Saturday buying stuff, and looked at the bracket on the Wolo horn. It still looks to me like the chrome Stebel, with a longer mount that doesn't need a spacer. Before you try to find a spacer, I'd recommend seeing if it fits as-is. Just trying to save you some $$ and time.
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I continue to ask to please stop the Al Gore bashing, as that is very political. It might seem light hearted to some, but it is not funny at all to many people.
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It couldn't have anything to do with the large money making factories, pollution, SUVs, etc. Just ask Fox "news".
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I'm with you on that one. When I want loud, I have my Stebel horn.
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Nice work! Definitely the higher, as the emblem draws your attention to the hinges in the lower position. With how beefy the back end of the bike looks, the beefier emblem seems to fill it in nicer. It might help to have a couple of pictures from slightly farther away, showing the whole back end. I still voted #3, though.
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There are brackets being sold in the classifieds to mount a driver's RSV seat to an RSTD. For a crazy low price, I might add. Don't know about the passenger seat, though. http://www.venturerider.org/classifieds/showproduct.php/product/2521/cat/7 My wife and I test drove an RSTD first, and didn't buy one because of how hard the back seat is. After she sat on an RSV, she said nothing else came close, including the GoldWing or the Harley Ultra. We did a few side by side tests at a Honda/Yamaha stealership and a Harley dealership that had a used 2008 RSV. All rears are different, of course, but your wife is not alone in her opinion and discomfort.
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My chrome Stebel did not have a plastic spacer. The metal bracket, though, is apparently as long as the old metal bracket plus the spacer, because everything fit perfectly. The Wolo looks the same as my Stebel. If you look at the length of the metal bracket on the Wolo, it's significantly longer than the metal bracket on the Stebel in the picture. I think it's the same as the bracket on the chrome stebel, and I'm guessing Larry's bracket should work fine. Did you try the bracket on the Wolo?
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Thanks for your replies! In the end, paranoia won, though. The stock setup (without risers) doesn't have very much thread holding things in place. I'm sure it's fine, and was engineered properly for the expected loads. But the 60mm bolts with the eBay risers result in even less thread (between 1/8" and 3/16" less), holding a setup with a longer torque arm, and that set off my "this doesn't feel right" alarm. I looked at the Barons website, and their risers ship with 65mm bolts, which equals just a bit more thread holding things in place than the stock bolts without risers. And that would make me feel much better. So, McMaster Carr just made a few dollars for 65mm stainless bolts. If anyone else with eBay risers is as nuts as me and decides they want longer bolts, I had to order a set of 10, so I'll have 6 left over. And right after placing the order I got an email from Barons that they're having a 25% off sale, almost like they were watching my whole thought process. oh yeah? Well mine are shinier!
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Tying into battery - How?
atlm replied to Dave77459's topic in Royal Star and Royal Star Tour Deluxe Tech Talk
Thanks for the tip on where to find an affordable blade-type fuse block! I had looked in 3 stores, including my local Advance Auto, and couldn't find one, so I went back to Advance and mentioned that someone here said they had them. He sent me to a bigger Advance store 5 miles away, who had them. ah ha! With my Battery Tender and Stebel, I have 2 connections to the battery. After reading here about the passing lights and relay, I found that my (dealer installed for the previous owner) passing lights did not have one, so I bought the relay and need another connection for that. And I'm thinking about Gerbings heated gloves, so that would be 4. When does it ever end? -
For those of you who have installed the shiny handlebar risers from eBay, did you use the bolts that came with them? They're a bit shorter than the stock bolts plus the riser length, meaning they'll have less threads engaged than the stock bolts. I'm wondering if they're fine, or if I need to order longer bolts from somewhere. Or for anyone with Barons risers, do you know what length bolts ship with those? The ones from eBay are 60mm (thread length). The risers are beautiful, btw. wowza.
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No offense to anyone, but the V-Strom is a dual-sport, the Magna is a cruiser, and the Sabre started as a standard and ended up a cruiser. After my test ride of a Pacific Coast a long time ago, I'll totally agree with the reviews that categorize it as a scooter pretending to be a motorcycle, or tupperware on wheels. These are not sport tourers. Can they be great bikes for the right person? Sure. But they're still not sport tourers. I would guess that if your son just came off of a 300lb Ninja 250 (great beginner bike, my wife had one), he's not going to feel comfortable on a bike with over 4x the displacement and over double the weight, unless he's a really big guy. There are a number of articles about transforming sportbikes into sport tourers. That would bring him up to a 450lb bike, about the same seat height and feel of the little Ninja, but with more usable power and better suspension. The CBR600 F4i makes a great touring bike, when set up with bags and a better windshield. It's fuel injected, with modern suspension, and one with low miles that's been pampered can be had for cheap ($3k - $4k) if you look hard. What's the budget, btw? $1000 or $10,000? It makes a big difference in the options.
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Patrick46, The V-Strom 650 was the first bike I bought for mostly 2-up riding. Almost all of my (16) street bikes before it were sportbikes and what are now called "standards". The stock V-Strom seat is horrible. For driver comfort, that was the only thing that absolutely had to be changed. With the Sargent seat, I could go a lot of miles. The issue we could not overcome on it was long distance (over 120 miles) passenger comfort. With the stock seat, we couldn't go more than about 40 miles at a time, and after about 100 she was done for the day. With the Sargent seat, we could go about 60 on the first stint, and then about 60 more (total for the day) before the discomfort outweighed the fun for her. We tried everything we could think of, including sheepskin, beads, and a Butt Buffer, which was the best of the 3, and gave us a max daily range of about 150 miles. Since the North GA mountains (where we like to ride) are about 70 miles away, I ended up buying a trailer, and trailering the bike to the mountains, riding, and trailering it back. The issue on that bike for the passenger isn't so much the seat as it is the seating position. The passenger sits straight up, with all their weight on their "sitting bones" as we called them, and almost no room to change position. Also, the passenger has footpegs, with no other place to move their feet. So they're stuck in 1 position the whole ride. Since the entire reason I sold my sportbikes to buy the V-Strom was for 2-up riding, we decided to try the RSV, which she LOVES. We've done 350+ mile days with no complaints. From a driver's perspective, my biggest complaint about the V-Strom was its cheap suspension. I've been spoiled by modern sportbikes with high end suspension, and the V-Strom felt vague when pushed somewhat hard, sapping rider confidence. If I had bought the bike to ride solo, I could have upgraded the suspension, but it would cost a lot and with it's relatively skinny forks and thin rear swingarm, it still wouldn't be up to sportbike standards. Not that the 2nd gen RSV has great suspension or handling. It's worse in the corners than the V-Strom. But my wife is happy on the back and it's super comfy, so it serves its current purpose well. I used to think that one day I'd find the "perfect bike". I finally realized that all bikes are a compromise, and do some things well and some things not so well. You have to determine the primary purpose of the bike and know your own riding style, and then you can choose the best bike for you for that purpose.
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Without knowing more about your son and his riding style, we'd all be shooting in the dark. What was it specifically about the Ninja 250 that your son has outgrown? How much does he weigh? Does he like acceleration and speed, or is he more laid back? I sold my V-Strom 650 when I bought my RSV. It's a great bike and makes a great tourer, but with its 19" front wheel and cheap suspension, it's not a sport tourer. With the right rider, it can hustle through corners. But with the same rider on a true sport tourer, those corners can be taken much faster with less pucker factor. There's a lot of fun friendly debate in this forum about new bikes versus old bikes, but I'll also throw out that, as far as sport and sport touring bikes go, they get better every year. If you want to spend your time with your son riding instead of tinkering and fixing, I'd get something recent, with fuel injection. Just like all of us, your son has to like his bike. If he's like 99% of young people, he'll want something that is "cool" to his friends. That means he'll likely want a sportbike, not some "old persons" bike. (my wife and I affectionately call our RSV our GeezerGlide). The good thing is that almost all modern sportbikes can be easily modified for touring use, with handlebar risers, a slightly larger windshield, and bags, which can quickly be removed when not touring.
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I'll throw out a completely different opinion. It totally depends on what it will be used for. For most homeowners, who will be doing only basic voltage and resistance measurements on home circuits and on their vehicles, a basic cheap multimeter is absolutely fine. You can find them at Harbor Freight on sale for $2.99. If you're going to be repairing and troubleshooting electronics and need more advanced features and very high levels of accuracy, you will need to spend a lot more to get it. When I used to do component level repair of avionics electronics, I needed a whole array of very expensive equipment. When I did process control and electrical maintenance in a factory, I needed a high end Fluke, as well as an oscilloscope. For home and garage use, I always use my small, cheap digital multimeter. The only function missing from the very cheap multimeters is a clamp on ammeter. However, what I've found is that most of the time, blown fuses will show which component is faulty. Again, if you have an advanced electrical knowledge, and know you're going to be doing more advanced work, like troubleshooting bad components in alternators, you might want to spend a bit more for extra features. But if you're like most folks, just looking at volts and resistance, save your money and try the least expensive option first. Just my 2 cents.
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I've got the Yamaha short/wide shield. I can see over it no problem and don't get any buffeting. My wife gets a bit more airflow than with the stock shield, but it's clean air, with no buffeting. As long as I keep it mostly under 85 (indicated), she's happy. I doubt I'd ever go back to the stock shield. I don't like looking through them, either.
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Accuracy is just making sure the gauges all read the same for the same level of vacuum. You can check the accuracy of any setup by connecting all 4 gauges to the same vacuum source simultaneously, via a 4 into 1 manifold. You can make a "calibration manifold" from 3 vacuum Tees. If they're the same, it's accurate. If they're off, you can calibrate the gauges (if they can be calibrated) or make note of the difference and use that when calibrating your carbs. Let us know how it turns out. If they're accurate, that's a great setup at a great price, and folks will want to know where you got the gauges and the valves.
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PayPal sent. Thanks Gary!
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The base unit only balances 2 vacuum sources at a time. The "4 carb kit" is just an overpriced 4-to-2 hose adapter, which would balance the left and right pairs. So, to use this unit, you'd need to hook it up to one side and balance those 2 carbs, then move it to the other side and balance those 2, then hook it up to all four and balance the left and right pairs. At $130 for the two parts, plus shipping, there are better tools out there for less money. Just my 2 cents.
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I would highly recommend running Spybot on your computer to find and remove any malware. It's free and works like a charm.