StormRaven

The only song I can find with that title was done by REO Speedwagon.

Believe it or not...I did debate using that theme, but Learning to Fly had already been requested by Wingman and DragonRider during the discussion after the event.

The videos are out on their own thread...something about a real crash at Vogel or something or other.

And after all that work I just saw the blunder that the title says Tail of the Dragon 6 instead of 7...

Good evening ladies and gents, This is the moment that y'all've been waitin' fer. *clears throat* This is the video of my crash into a tree off the road on Blood Mountain. The video is meant to be taken as a lighthearted affirmation that neither man nor machine were critically injured in this event. Really. I only sustained a minor burn and some bruising. Bubba also made a special appearance and conducted a pre-recorded live interview on the scene at an undisclosed cabin at some point later on. The following link is to the live recording of Bubba's broadcast to BUBBA-TV:

The Problem that my wife (GAWildKat) is talking about that lead me to lay the blanket ban on allowing anyone with a machine with Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 in the house is the feature they label Wi-Fi Sense Password Sharing feature. Microsoft has enabled this "feature" by default in their operating system. With this feature active, when I give a friend the pre-shared key that allows access to my encrypted Wi-Fi connection, Wi-Fi sense will propagate that information to their contacts on Outlook.com, Skype, and (the real kicker) Facebook. While those that receive the information through this automatic sharing won't necessarily know that they have it, by extension they would get automatic access to my Wi-Fi if they ever visited my house, without ever having to be given the access credentials...thus reducing the control I have over who can use my network. Outlook.com and Skype would only allow direct contacts of my guest to receive the information, so that's a relatively minor thing to me, as the friend of my friend is usually a friend as well, who would also have the credentials given to him. No, the part that outright scares me is Facebook Sharing. Depending on how my friend has his profile set up this information could be spread to his direct Friends (possibly some overlap), "Friends of Friends" (same amount of overlap, but a greater percentage of people I have no idea who they are having access to my credentials), or "Public" (ever use facebook public information to play 6 degrees? Share stuff on the "public" channel and that info WILL get to some kind of predator.) What they also don't tell you is that as a function of most routers and access points, unless they have a special flag put in the SSID, will store address and location information that will get passed to Wi-Fi sense as part of the same header that stores the wi-fi credentials. The key to keeping Wi-Fi sense disabled on visitors' computers without having to dive into their settings to make sure it's disabled is to add the "_optout" flag to the SSID of the router/access point. Also, that bit about routers storing their location information? That's a function of Google. All it needs is an Android Smart Phone that connects to its Wi-Fi. The phone will use its GPS and Cell Tower location tracking information to mark the router/access point with an address that the router will store for easier access in the future, providing other cell phones in the area with another method to get their location. Cell phones don't actually have to log into the network to make use of the information. It's passed on automatically as part of the SSID broadcast that the router/AP will continually pass out in its beacon. Disabling the SSID broadcast in the router configuration will not stop the router from storing the location information either. The way to stop this security hole is to add "_nomap" to the SSID string. So if you normally name your router's SSID "ThisIsMyHome", to force disable Wi-Fi sense and Location services, you would have to name it "ThisIsMyHome_optout_nomap" Refference pages: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2951824/windows/how-to-disable-windows-10s-wi-fi-sense-password-sharing.html [Disable Wifi Sense] https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/1725632?hl=en [Disable Google Location Services]

Got a new issue with my Venture today. Well, I guess it's been a week in the making or so. This past week just after one of the many rains when I tried to start her up first thing in the morning, the starter became intermittent. I'd hit the starter button and the headlight and dash lights would turn off as well as I'd hear the audible click of the relay every time. First thought: Did I hit a dead-spot in the starter I just installed last year (replaced a dragging 2-brush with a 4-brush that I got from Skydoc)? Then the starter woke up and did not have any of the telltale drag of a burned brush that the previous starter had. It was at that point I decided I was going to clean and re-secure contacts this weekend as a first step. It did the same one other day that week, wasting the 10 minute lead time I had that morning with trying to get the starter to catch. Fast forward to today where I cleaned the contacts (found the retaining bolt on the ground screw was loose) and tightened down the bolts. Went up, turned on all the switches, had her up on the center stand, clicked the starter once, and then that thing decided that it was going to power the bike from then on. I hit the stop switch, turned off the key, pulled what I thought was the main fuse (upon closer inspection of the wiring traces... it wasn't) and nothing would stop that thing from trying to crank the engine. I seriously think it'd try to power the venture down the driveway if I let it. Well, the only way I could get the starter to die was pulling the negative lead off the battery terminal. For now, I've left it this way as what was going to be a single 5 minute job inevitably turned into another 3 hour round of hunt the gremlin; a game I have too many other projects to have time for... Before I let it get that far, I'm hoping that one of y'all would have a critical piece of insight that would save me a ton of time: I'd like to know, where are the starter relay and/or solenoid mounted so I can go straight to them and verify if they are burned out or otherwise damaged. Or, there's the other possibility that I am completely barking up the wrong tree with this path of attack and the gentle guidance of my more experienced betters would be greatly appreciated before I put time into yet another project that will be a herring marked with red.

Great news! She's buttoned up and in the clear. They're waking her up in the OR and then they'll move her into recovery. The next update will most likely be coming from her directly.

Thanks for the best wishes. So far so good. They're about halfway through her surgery now, and they said it'd be about another hour to hour and a half.

Hey All, This is a running thread about the condition of GAWildkat as she goes through her adventures in Gastric Bypass. We got here about 7:30 and they performed all the standard pre-op stuff they do up here. She was just taken back to the OR at 10:50 and I'm told that it'll be about two and a half hours for her to be done. So...next step in the waiting game.

Well, I changed out the main fuse, but now there's a new problem. When I hit the start button it starts making a nose like "clug clug clug clug clug" and if I turn the handle it seems to scream out "mmooOOOOOOOVVVVvvvve.... MOOOOOOOOOOOVVVvvve!" In all seriousness, he's running great and I'm about to take it out for the first time in a month to refuel and make sure nothing shakes loose before I come back and pick up gawildkat for her belated birthday ride

I think you misunderstood, Condor. I've got no power anywhere on the bike, except for aux lights. The bike behaves as if the ignition key is in the off positron at all times. The CLASS does not activate in the acc position, and none of the lights will come on in the run position. Cb and radio will not turn on or operate, and the starter will not click no matter what the switches are set to. Switches tested include kickstand, brakes (front and rear), clutch, neutral, high/low beam, start/kill, starter button, cruise controls, turn indicators, and hazards. Nothing is working.

Tested all of that when the engine went down with all the electronics. None of the switches brought the electronics back to life, and starter would not kick over whatever position any of the switches were in. Battery Ground is good. I get 12.3 volts reading from positive term to the frame. All the additional accessory electronics installed by PO that weren't wired through the central block or ignition accessory switch, such as the Cigarette Lighter, auxiliary lights and accessory circuit for GPS/Radar Detector, also still work. Also the battery was tested under load and gave a read of 515 CCA, which is enough to turn over my Caprice or Traverse without a problem (I wouldn't actually do that ), though I wouldn't trust it on the Van. Haven't tried the main fuse yet, positive cable routes back under the fairing where I can't reach it easily. Going to try that tomorrow when there's more light. PO has done the box upgrade so I have all bladed fuses there. All of those fuses tested good, and I've reseat every one of those. Battery Cables are clean and as tight as the driver can get them without rounding off the corners. I also just confirmed that the CLASS system will not come on when the ignition is in the Acc position.

I'll try that next. One note, after the complete "death," I did try hooking it up to an external battery jumper pack that is capable of turning over my van with a 350 v8, and got a read of 12.68 to the frame. Still couldn't wake the bike from the dead though.

I finally got all the parts together to get the exhaust system assembled (too long to wait for 2 copper gaskets), put everything together, did a 30 second test, fixed the front headers back in their seat, did another 30 second test, got a small leak where the #1 header pipe meets the header...adapter? Nothing major, probably need a new gasket there too since both sections of pipe look in great condition. Got all the plastic back on the bike, did an electrical test to make sure the lights were all working, did another crank just to see if it was ready to be taken off its center stand and off on a test drive / refuel after being down a month. It cranked up and ran for 3/4 of a second...and then the whole thing went dead. No Dash, No headlights, no tail lights, no signals, no vroom. Not a thing. Tested the battery: 12.28 volts across the posts, tested all the fuses, Short circuit tone on every one from fuse post to fuse post(this is a good thing in this case). Switched on the aux lights that are wired to battery and they were nice and bright. Finally at the suggestion of Wes0778, I verified that there's voltage from positive terminal to Frame, 12.31 volts. My first inclination is that this is an ignition switch issue. My wife thought it may be the stator, but would that cause all electrical to go out in an instant or would that be more of a thing where the engine would run until the battery had no more juice to give? Please someone let me know where to go from here because I'm stumped with what to test for next and I'm none too happy that it looks like another 2 weeks at a minimum before I can get to riding SaberWIng again. This after being already a month without it, and a new problem cropping up in the same instant a bear of a project came to fruition. Needless to say...none too happy right now . Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[ATTACH]84744[/ATTACH][ATTACH]84744[/ATTACH] The 10 am sun doesn't help with getting decent pictures of dark areas, but here's what I could do in the parking lot at work. The pipe is completely sheared in front of the clamp in front of the muffler. The muffler is being held on by a single bolt. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Not a hole. The right pipe is completely detached in front of the muffler. Heat shield masked how bad it was. The muffler is being held on to the bike, but at the moment it's useless. I like the sound but it could use a little bit of baffling at a minimum; and I'm glad that both sides aren't straight pipes right now. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Out of all the shots that were taken at the event, these are my best. I'll edit more of them to get down to VRO's requirements on file size and upload as time allows.

Got the starter in, filled the crank case with oil, turned her over and boy what a beautiful sound that starter makes. No dragging, smooth as glass, and strong as an Ox. I still have to see how he does cranking while the engine is hot, but so far I like it. Tomorrow I plan on flushing the cooling system and filling it up with fresh Anti-Freeze. The big thing about the starter replacement, 100% self done. Didn't need any guidance from the supervisor(Kat) or any documents, aside from the service manual about how to operate the drain spigot (it was not in the correct position to begin with so I needed to see what position it needed to be in to drain out the plug properly). Only one minor injury later, and it was done!

Got the carbs sync'd to the point where 26cmHg was the high bounce and 25.5cmHg was the low bounce on all Cylinders. Took it out for a test ride and...WOW what a difference in ride. No more surging idle at the stop lights, no more light popping on decel, smooth as glass takeoffs and landings without a jitter. Cruises nicely at 95 and holds airspeed quite well at 10,000 feet. I downloaded Kbran's instruction PDF and drove myself batty for half an hour trying to find the screws it was talking about (came to the gentle realization that the images were of a 2nd Gen and the screws are probably different on my 1st Gen Mk2. I need a new rubber mallet:starz:). At that point I figured, what the heck, I see the one screw on the left, and two screws on the right that look just like it in shape, and the idle screw hanging down. I tied in the hoses of the carb tune to the designated vacuum ports on the engine (dampers didn't fit in and not my tune so I'm not forcing it. I'll just make due...which turned out just fine in the end), cranked him up and let it get to just a bit below operating temp. At that point I started fiddling with the screw on the left with the idea of "What's the worst that could happen? I blow the engine?" and saw the changes on the tune for cyls 1 and 2. I got those evened out at 24cmHg, then went to work on the right side. Tried turning the back right screw first, and saw that it was making the adjustments on 3&4. Lucky, I chose the right one. Got those two sync'd at 26cmHg, then I started working on the right front and evened all of them at about 25cmHg. Gave it a few quick revs....and when they settled back, 3 was down to about 20cmHg with 4 staying at the 26 line and 1&2 were even at 27-28. Well..took about an hour of doing, but I eventually got all four settling down at 26cmHg and sounding better than he ever had (I think the problem may be a stuck float in 3 that finally worked itself loose). It was just about 10 minutes before killing the engine for cleanup and reassembly that GAWildKat told me what Dan posted about which screws did what...which I did backwards to what Dan apparently said...but it worked, so I'm happy. And one final note: I attached the Cylinders to read left to right 1,2,3,4 on the carb tune so you can tell which cylinder is reading what in Kat's pictures above. She did not get a picture of the final read.

I love the center stand on my first gen most of the time. Only problem I have with it is if I park it with only a half to quarter tank of fuel in the garage, instead of rocking off the stand, it goes for a walk across the painted floor. Wouldn't have a problem if it were bare concrete...but no. Roomie has to have it painted. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

Let's see if I can come out of left field and kill the thread ninja assassin style. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

The cluster has gone just about completely out now, but now I can control when it comes back on, which is a semi-good thing. What's not a good thing is that the bike is not driveable when all the switches are in the proper positions. Cluster is on with all of the following switches in the following conditions: Turn Signals: Off Brakes: Off Kickstand: Down (This is what makes the bike undriveable, obviously) Ignition: On (This is normal) Run Switch: On (Engine can be running but not required) Transmission: Any gear but neutral. If any one or multiple switch is in a different position from that which is listed above, the cluster is off, which means no indicators on the LCD Screen, no Warning light, no fuel gauge(this is the 2nd most important thing to me out of the whole situation though I can gauge that after 110 miles on a tank it's time to fill up.), no clock, no gear indicator, no neutral light, no turn signal indicators, battery gauge drops to 0, temp gauge drops to 0(another one I monitor closely), no RPM gauge, and (most important to me) NO TURN SIGNALS or BRAKE LIGHTS. What still works are the Speedometer (at least SOMETHING is mechanical on the cluster), HighBeam light indicator, and the Headlight failure indicator). Which brings me to the rant part of this post... What Kind of MONKEYS wire in the legally important lighting system in the same circuit as the helpful but not necessarily important computer cluster???? If my cluster goes I expect to at least still be able to have working break lights and turn signals! Haven't these people heard of redundant systems??? Good grief, I love how she rides and like how she runs(once I get the plugs changed I think I'll get closer to loving it), but I don't like having to take my hands off the controls right before going into a velocity change to signal my intent... I can handle and control 1,500 lbs without much trouble, but I prefer being able to keep both hands on the bars leading up to the moments when I do it. And no, I don't signal through the change but just before it. I just can't be sure that the morons behind me understood what my signal meant since it's not common knowledge anymore (not that it shouldn't be). Okay... End Rant. :225: On the other side of the issue: I managed to get the headlight back to where it's supposed to be on adjustablity. The mechanic that did my forks didn't put the spring loaded piece on the headlight assembly into the groove of the adjustment plate that rides the adjusting screw, so it popped out and was essentially ineffective. After muscling it in, it works now. Easy fix here.

I have a strange issue with the cluster on my '87 Venture Royale. Not every time, but sometimes under acceleration, doesn't seem to matter if it's easy or hard acceleration, the cluster will go out. It can also happen when I shift gears, pretty much anything that changes the rate of acceleration. It has yet to happen on deceleration. I'll lose the Temp Gague, Batt Gague, RPM, and everything on the LCD. I also lose the Neutral indicator bulb and the ability to activate blinkers. I'm only assuming I'm also losing break lights as well as it's not easy to tell in daylight without a spotter. The only things that still appear to work are the indicator Lights and tail light, Headlight, high beam indicator bulb, and Spedo/Odo. The length of time on the failure tends to be about 30 seconds at this point. When I first noticed it yesterday morning, it only lasted for about 5, and only happened twice on the way to work. Today, it's happened several times both going and coming. Only one time on deceleration did the cluster go out, and that was at the same time I hit the blinker to turn onto my street tonight. Wanted to know if anyone had any insight as to where to start troubleshooting first. Also, I wanted to know how to raise the headlight on the Adjustment screw. After I dropped it off for service on the fork seals, when I got it back the Headlight was shooting very low making it so I cant see farther than 3 - 6 feet in front of the bike at night unless I'm using brights, and it's at the very limit on the adjustment screw and wont go any higher.

actually, I was thinking of rigging up hydrolic stabilizers (like an excavator) that has steps that pop up. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk 2