M61A1MECH

Yes , I was having that same thought, the crest of the thread may create fretting and point loading on the ID of the bushing, the other issue will be getting the threads through the bushings and spacers without damaging the bushings and such. The control arm does not have a very large range of motion, but depending on the road conditions, there may be a lot of high frequency oscillation. If I can fill the threads, I can most likely jig the rod up in my wood lathe and get a nice finish.

Thanks for the input. And I thought about all of that before making my decision. I may investigate a place to put a zerk fitting in, just not sure there is enough wall thickness to get sufficient thread engagement in the tube and no guarantee the grease will go where it needs to go, it is a2 foot long tube to fill up, that is a lot of grease. I plan on sealing the ends of the tubes with compliant spacers to keep moisture out, and will lube the bushings and tube prior to assembly, if needed I can easily remove the tension on the threaded rods and apply lube to the bushings and then re-tighten the whole affair. Just for clarification, the rod that came out is not stainless (based on my very crude magnet test) and it is only .310 in diameter. I looked at the rating of a carbon steel shaft in the McMasterr Carr web site it is 70,000 psi, the rating for 5/16 316 SS threaded rod is also 70,000 psi. The effective areas are different for a solid rod verse threaded rod. I calculated the tensile strength of the .310" steel rod to be approx. 5283 lbs, the 5/16 SS Threaded rod worked out to 4200 lbs, Using a basic rule of thumb that the shear force rating is .70 of the tensile the original steel rod worked out to be 3698 lbs in shear and the threaded rod to be 2940 in shear. So I think I may have lost about 20% of the safety factor. The loaded trailer probably weighs less than 500 pounds and each of the rods support 1/2 of that in a static condition, not sure what implied loading could be when the trailer hits a pot hole, but in my mind there is enough safety factor. But I agree with your hypothesis and would have gone with solid rod if I had a welder handy, but I do not, and cannot move the trailer without the rods being secured. If I find out my plan does not work, I could simply purchase the 5/16 solid rod later and tow the trailer to a local welder and have the all thread swapped out for solid rod and welded in place.

I have the trailer upside down, found out the wiring harness is threaded inside the tongue, so no taking the cargo box off to make this repair. The pins are removed, was not to bad once you figure the best way to do it. I took a dermal with a cut off blade and cut the welded ends off as close to the support plate as possible. I then ground down the residual weld until I could see the outline of the pin. Once both ends were done, I simply took a drift punch and hammer and knocked the pin out as far as possible , then pulled it out the rest of the way with some sturdy channel locks. On the side that was loose and making all the noise , there was nothing left of the bushings, on the other side that was still tight and quiet, the bushings came out in pieces. I have decided to forgo talking with Bushtec and I am going to replace the pins with 5/16" 316 stainless steel all thread, install some marine grade bronze flanged bushings from McMaster Carr and shim up the gaps with PTFE and 316 SS washers as needed to get a proper fit. The all thread will be kept in place with double heavy duty 316 SS nuts and a generous application of blue Locktite. I expect that I will need to re-size the locating holes in the frame to accept the 5/16" (.3125") all thread as the current holes are sized for a .310 rod, but that will come after I receive my threaded rod and check the fit. I am taking photos as I go, so if it all works out swimmingly I will post a DIY Bushtec Bushing repair manual. Attached are some photos of the disassembly.

Dion, look at this link this the same issue as I have, http://www.sheriart.net/honda/bushtec I am thinking that if the SS rod is a standard size that can be threaded I can skip the welding of the rod to the frame and make any future replacements easier.

OK, I did some more research over on the Goldwing site and then reinspected my trailer and here is what I found. What I originally thought were solid cold rolled rods with turned down ends running fore and aft parallel to the main frame tube are actually hollow tubes with a long "pin" running down the center, the pins are what go though the frame supports and are welded in place. There are supposed to be bushings in each end to locate the pin and tube relative to each other. Looks like the bushings on the left side of my trailer disintegrated and that allowed the tube and wheel to flop around. Evidently the fix is to remove the welds and remove the "pin", replace the pin with a new one and install new bushings and weld the pin back in place. I need to talk with Bushtec on Tuesday to see if I can purchase the parts I need to do both sides, also want to know if it is possible to thread the ends of the pins and secure them with nuts instead of welding. That would make future replacements much easier.

Not at the spindle, but at the aft end of the trailer where there is an L bracket where both left and right torsion (sway) bays are anchored. I pulled it home today from Spartanburg, SC to Edgewater, FL, 490ish miles. Set my mirrors so I could see the trailer and the left wheel for any funny stuff starting, no issues, ran at interstate speeds and checked it at every stop. Tomorrow I will take the cargo box off and photograph the issue. If I have room to get tools in the space I think I have a fix worked out, but still want to talk to Bushtec first, but they are not open again until Tuesday. More to come.

On my way to WingDing I thought I heard some clunking frommy trailer, I did not see anything obvious and passed it off as the hitchclunking. Today when I stopped at Spartanburg, SC on the way home fromKnoxville, I grabbed the left wheel and it was "floppy", I found thetorsion bar is broken at the weld where it attaches to the frame. The trailerpulled fine all the way up to Knoxville and down here to Spartanburg, so now Ihave a couple of questions. 1) Has anyone else had this issue? If you did what did youdo to repair it? Looks like it could simply be welded back in place. 2) Any thoughts on how safe it is to tow this the 480 or somiles back home. Thanks for any thoughts and inputs.

So check out the read only technical section for the Royal Star Venture here on VR, here are two links for rear end maintenance. https://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?13263-Rear-Hub-Lubrication https://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?1705-Rear-End-Noise-Yamaha-TSB. Same as TSB M2005-015 If you do not have a copy of TSB M2005-017 PM me and we can work out how I can send you a copy. Update: Sorry I just noticed that this thread is in the GEN 1 forum, not Gen 2, my bad, but TSB M2005-017 applies to all shaft driven models from Yamaha.

Steven G has very good advice there, many of the Ventures have been known to have Regulator/Rectifier failures, they tend to fail in a manner that over charges the battery and then bad things can happen. That happened on my 2007 Venture, boiled the battery, swelled up to where I almost could not remove it from the bike. Charging voltage should be around 13 to 14 volts as I recall, ay more or less is cause for concern.

That should work nicely, and they are using POSI-LOC products to make the connections.

So just wondering how you made out with this idea? One problem you may run into is what I ran into when I first started building light bars for the2nd Gen Ventures. I used the same 4 LEDs on either side of the center LED as brake and turn signals, problem was if you held the brake lever back or used the foot pedal the brake the lights stayed on constant, the brake did not allow the LEDs to go out when the turn signal cycled. I tried to compensate for that by adding some dropping resistors in the brake circuit just before the LED light bar, that way you still got the brake signal to the light bar but at slightly less than full brightness, when the brakes and turns were both applied the affected 4 LEDs would cycle from full bright (turn signal power on) to reduced brightness (brake power applied) so there was still a turn indication working.

If you do tap in to the wiring please use these types of taps, http://www.cycleterminal.com/posi-lock-connectors.html. Those wretched Scotch-lok blue crimp on pieces of **** should never be used in my opinion.

Prayers up from Florida, heal fast.

grubsie Here is an issue had on my 98 Tour Classic, one turn signal was flashing fast, when you watched with the lens on it "appeared " to be working but flashing fast. I swapped bulbs left to right and the issue followed the bulb. When I watched them flash with out the lens I saw that the running light filament on the suspect bulb was actually flashing not the turn signal segment. Evidently there was some sort of back feed and the running light filament was seeing the voltage meant for the turn signal, it must have had less resistance than the turn signal filament which caused the high flash rate, once I changed out the bulb all went back to normal and I never had any more problems. Just some food for thought

Here is a thread from the tech section that shows you how to mod the OEM flasher to work with LEDs. If you replace the flasher with an after market unit designed for LEDs you may loose the self cancel feature on the turn signals. https://www.venturerider.org/forum/showthread.php?128835-LED-Turn-Signal-Mod The other option is to install load resistors to fool the flasher into thinking the OEM bulbs are installed.

I was looking at the troubleshooting guide for the Venture last night after reading your post. Based on your experiment I believe the electrical portion of the switch is working correctly so I leaning towards a mechanical issue of some sort. What you have done so far is correct according to the manual. Once you had it clean it worked properly dry and outside of the bike. But once it was submerged in oil for a period of time it started acting up again. It sounds to me like the float portion of the switch maybe filling with oil and sinking after a period of time. You could try to duplicate this out side the bike using a bucket of oil and putting the switch in it see if it sinks or inspecting the float for a pin hole, that is if it is hollow float like in a carb or toilet tank. If it is solid float maybe it has just gotten old and it is sucking up oil like a sponge over a short period of time and sinking. I have not seen an oil level switch in person so much of this is a guess. Also look at the electrical connectors to be sure the wires are not damaged.

Yeah as soon as the wife is done with the computer, I am going to reboot the thing and start from there, browser cache is supposed to clear every time I exit IE, but who knows with Windows.

Now this is interesting, the issue is specific to my desktop computer, I just checked here on my laptop it works fine with IE 11, but my desktop does not allow me to enter text in the message area and the area above the message field does not have the three rows of edit icons. Like the page does not load completely. There is something not set up correctly on that desktop because I also noted the random images that appear on the first page I always open run in a vertical line and not a horizontal line, that started after the switch to https, so must be something goofy with my computer.

I recall from years ago that Quaker State has a high paraffin content and it was rumored that the paraffin was the source of sludge found in engines using Quaker State.

Yes not to bad, and I have the first posts in the member vendor section. I was not able to post the adds using Windows 10 with IE 11, I had to use GOOGLE to be able to enter text in the add, but got it done.

So they are, I just looked at the new section, figuring the old one was gone, so much for assuming! Thanks

Any way to get a copy of what we had posted so we can easily duplicate the add in the new section?

Yes it was.

RedRider Thanks, but the bike has been pulled from Craig’s list, so I am sure it was sold to good of a deal to stay on the market very long.

David, Thanks, I have not been able to make contact with the seller yet, so if it does stretch out, I be in touch.