zagger

"In an eggshell, if somethings spinning around a fixed, unmovable axis in a perfect circle and the rotor has a heavy spot. How can the beads help?" Your bike wheels have a "fixed, unmovable axis"? How do you figure that? No suspension? zag

Think I'll join y'all. I'll be camping. zag

>>I do have a problem with one comment from that MCN test. They said:"Also, the weight of the beads added so close to the tire tread gave a noticeable increase in gyro stability, making the steering heavier" Some things are just so stupid ya gotta wonder. As I remember from my front end project, the entire front wheel with disks on my '83 Venture weighs 35 lbs. A new front tire all by itself weighs about 15 lbs. Adding 2 oz to the existing total of 560 oz or to 240 oz (if you just consider the tire) is only an addition of 0.3% to 0.8% depending on what total weight you use. Notice the gyroscopic effect? Sounds like the princess and the pea. Nevermind the obvious point that lead weights added to the rim create the same weighting effect since the job of balancing the wheel requires enough weight to offset the initial imbalance of the tire. Therefore, weights on the rim have to be larger than weights placed 3 or 4 inches further out (inside the tire) and would produce a similar gyro effect. Although it seems completely trivial, you may use more bead weight than is actually required for the balancing job. If you don't spin balance the wheel, you really can only guess on the weight of beads to add. You could certainly start with 1 oz and see what you think and add more if it seems necessary. I just put 2 oz in every tire since the effort of jacking up the bike (no center stand on my beast) outweighs the cost and hassle of just adding another oz of beads. If you wanted to be really precise, just have a new tire installed in a shop and have them spin balance and tell you what weight the machine calculates. Assuming they keep the machine calibrated (a big assumption) you can add the same weight in beads and skip the lead weights. The advantage of beads is that they continue to keep the tire balanced thoughout its life, regardless of wear. I guess motorcycle magazines must employ english majors to do the testing and analysis - they obviously are lost in the weeds or just enjoy making stuff up. Or maybe Innovative Balancing forgot to enclose a $20 bill with the beads shipped to the magazine! I should add to this discussion that getting the Dyna Beads down the valve stem can be a real pain. The '83 Venture valve stems must have an abnormally small inside diameter since the beads constantly jammed up and it took patience and the vibrating tip of an engraver (point ground off) to get the little buggers in. My Honda Saber was much easier and the 90 degree valve stem was actually the easiest since tapping on the outside of the curved stem just shot the beads right in. A better system to get them down the valve stem needs to be designed. BTW - don't bother ordering the filtered tire valves from Innovative Balancing. They are too long for motorcycle valve stems - at least that is true on my bikes. Although the risk of getting a bead caught in the tire valve (giving a big leak) seems pretty small since the beads will come to rest in a pile on the low side of the tire, I've decided that I will always position the valve on the low side and shoot in a little compressed air before checking tire pressure just to make sure that nothing is going to get caught in the valve. I guess that valve leaks must have happened since Innovative Balancing went to the trouble to source the filtered valves - I cannot add any actual experience to this issue. Now I will shut up. zag

I have been wrestling with front end shaking in one of my bikes. I put on a new tire, had it spin balanced the usual way and the problem got better for awhile and then gradually became worse and worse. I tinkered with the lead weights with little effect and began to believe that the tire must be out of round. Even though I had quite a bit of tread remaining, I ordered a new front tire and decided to experiment with the old one before taking it off. Somewhere I came across the Innovative Balancing Dyna Bead product and did my "due diligence" online in various forums. The posts on Venture Rider nearly convinced me that the beads were useless but based on my experience with a similar idea for balancing wooden airplane props (beads and oil inside of a metal tubular assembly), I decided to give the Dyna Beads a try. I put 2 oz of beads into the troublesome front tire, removed all lead weights, and hit the road. All I can say is "WOW"! Smooth as silk, all shaking gone, bike corners much better without all the shimmy and shake. I decided to keep the old tire on and use up the remaining tread before installing the new one I bought. After this experience I replaced the worn out rear tire and skipped the spin balance and went straight to using the beads. Super smooth ride with zero shaking. I distrust all forum BS endorsements like the one I just wrote since the writer is often prejudiced by the fact that they just spent money on something and will swear it is wonderful no matter what. As a physicist I wanted a good explanation for why the beads actually do work. I came across a nice explanation on the Practical Machinist website which I have edited for your enjoyment. Explanation: Try the following thought experiment: take a wheel that has serious imbalance - let us say that the true center of mass is 3 inches from the geometric center of the wheel. If this tire is spun freely (lets say by tossing it into the air and spinning it) it will rotate about its center of mass. That point is a point displaced 3 inches TOWARDS the heavy side of the wheel. Therefore the heavy side describes a radius 3 inches less than the light side. It is just like the Moon orbiting the Earth. They actually orbit each other about the common center of mass, with the heavier Earth traveling a much shorter radius than the lighter Moon. Now mount the wheel on a very light, very loosely sprung axle. The spinning wheel will try to spin just as is did before - about its center of mass - forcing the axle to to move in a 3 inch circular path. Note that the heavy side of the wheel is still traveling a shorter radius than the light side. Now stiffen up the springs holding the axle in place. Things get a lot more complicated because it depends on how stiff the springs are, the relative mass of the components, damping factors etc. -BUT- the center of rotation is still displaced towards the heavy side of the wheel. It will be somewhere along the line between the axle center and the original center of mass of the wheel. And the heavy side will still describe the shorter radius. Going back to our wheel spinning freely in space, add some ball bearings inside. They are constrained only to lie somewhere on the circumference of the tire. They will congregate towards the largest radius, that being their lowest energy state in the free body system. In doing so they will change the center of mass of the system (and its center of rotation), if they are heavy enough they will distribute themselves in such a way that there is no larger radius to flee to - and your wheel is balanced about its geometric center. Note that this depends on the tire being round - if it is out of round (so the axle is not at the geometric center of the circle) then the wheel will not balance as we define the term. Hopefully this is an adequate response to the folks who wonder how the beads "know where to go" in order to balance the wheel. They are just moving to the lowest energy state, like a ball "knows" to roll to the bottom of a hill. I rarely post and I have never recommended trying anything to other riders. However, I have come to the conclusion that a lot of handling problems we all experience from time to time may be caused by out of balance tires. Even tires that have received a professional balancing job seem to get out of balance as they wear - and who goes through the trouble of taking them off to balance multiple times? The shop I go to told me that the beads are junk and don't work and they "know" because they tried a wheel with beads on their spin balancer. Unfortunately, this test will give the wrong answer. Spin balancers are designed to rotate the wheel as slowly as possible (for safety reasons) for as short a time as possible (for economic reasons). The slow rotating speed and short time means that the beads do not have time to move out to the balanced condition. Everytime the wheel stops, the beads end up in a pile at the bottom of the tire. When you ride off, it takes a perhaps a few seconds for the beads to orient themselves properly to balance the wheel. You cannot feel this happening because the tire rotation is too slow to cause shaking. By the time you get up to speed the balance has been achieved and everything feels fine. The spin balancer test is done too quickly to establish the balanced condition and both my shop and the motorcycle magazine mentioned in earlier posts came to the wrong conclusion. I will now go quiet again. Over and out. zag

Good sloppy joes and coleslaw! And beans! Thanks for the invite, enjoyed it. Glad I saw the windshield vent installation, not so sure I'm doing it. But then, I do want a vent. zag

Y'all got a chroming tank? I'm thinking of converting from flat black to chrome and sparkles! zag

"Be easy to spot a dead cylinder with those......." Dead cylinder? I don't think so! You wound me sir! I don't think I've got any way to record audio that would sound like much of anything. The four mufflers do have baffles so it has a deep rumble sort of sound but it is not excessively loud. I built the four pipes by sand bending the tubing by eye and making the mufflers from scratch. I have rotating washers inside the end of the mufflers to adjust the backpressure - this works quite well. At cruising speeds it quiets right down and is not annoying at all. But, honestly, I'm not much into the sound of bikes since loud and fast are rarely the same. zag PS: I might end up in your driveway if I ride this down to the NC Smokeout next year! I had thought of going last weekend but had some front brake issues that had to be solved and I missed the chance.

" Do you sport a Mohawk " No. I am Mohawk. But you would rather look at my friend. Zag

"It looks like you got rid of the overflow tank." You mean the radiator overflow? I moved it, but you can see it in the pictures. How was setting up those carbs with the pods? That must have been a bear to get right. Frankly, it was not easy. I finally bought an air/fuel mixture gauge so that I could see what was going on. After that, it was quickly resolved. I had a serious issue with carb venting. Venting is WAY more important than anyone seems to think it is. The vent lines (carb overflow) establish the reference pressure for the CV carbs and changes in the reference pressure have a huge effect on the gas mixture. I wrestled with this a couple of years ago and I learned lots about how this stuff works. zag

"Same place it is on a 1st gen., below the seat. Lower center of gravity." Yup - you are correct, this is an '83 venture and the stock gas tank is under the seat. Low cg is a wonderful thing. I even moved the battery under the transmission just to keep the cg as low as possible. Cornering stability and low cg go together. zag

My continuing project is now complete. I built a long travel leading link front suspension just to see if I could. Bought a milling machine to make the parts and spent lots of time learning to machine steel and figure out how to make the necessary parts. Just finished my test run down the road and I'm still alive! The front wheel is moved ahead 4 inches to shorten the trail so the handling is quite good. Cannot think of anything else to do - so I guess it is done!

ok, I give up. zag

Tried a couple of times to post more pics of my friend bree. If this one dies, I give up and disappear for another couple of years. zag

You may have noticed my new forks that I'm working on. This is an old design that goes back to early BMW's and beyond. zag

So - my friend eagleeye stopped by and told me that you guys were interested in multilated ventures. It has been awhile since I posted but I paid my $12 and relogged in. It has been a few years but I am still hacking on the beast. Here are a few pics. zag

It is my experience that non-Harley riders spend way more time and energy dissing Harley riders than the reverse. Harley guys just "know" they ride the "best", are the only "true" american riders, and spend zero time thinking about the alternatives. Most have zero experience on other machines. Ok - who cares. Frankly, I am just happy that they all ride from Harley store to Harley store and sit around in the parking lot. The small roads of Wisconsin are almost completely Harley-free since there isn't anyone out there to notice the sound or lifestyle. I am happy for that. Just be happy with your own thing and forget those beret and tassle dudes. I cannot join their club since I would feel like I was dressing up like a cowboy without having a ranch or cows. zag

Your little half washers looked about like mine! Now don't you feel better? zag

I've got 880's on two bikes without any problems. My slightly modified '83 has only got 3k or 4k miles with them. My Honda Sabre has 12k. Who knows - but I have not seen any problems. Seems ok to me. zag

I have a pair and use them all the time on cool days or mornings. Gives just enough protection without all the bulk of full chaps. Easily taken off and stowed as the day warms up. I never use my full chaps anymore. zag

Hi, My chopped 83 has a manual vboost and straight intakes with individual filters. Had some trouble with tuning initially until I finally discovered the problem. As everyone has noted, removing the airbox cover causes problems - but not for the reasons that I have heard explained. Decreasing the pressure drop on the intakes effectively increases the overall operating pressure inside the carbs. The float bowls are vented to the atmosphere so the increased pressure inside the carb venturi effectively decreases the gas flow into the venturi. The increased overall air pressure inside the carbs mean that gas pickup tubes have less of a pressure difference to move the gas into the carb. You can change to other filter schemes but you do need to keep the filter pressure drop similar to the stock airbox to prevent the engine running too lean. Another aspect which gave me problems for quite awhile is the routing of the carb vent/overflow lines. The air pressure at the ends of these lines has a HUGE effect on the gas flow into the carbs. My chopped venture was running too lean until I realized that the vent tube location (the stock routing) was effectively reducing the air pressure inside the float bowl. The tubes were terminated down low behind the engine but the lack of fairings (my guess) meant that this area was at a slightly reduced pressure when moving at 60mph or so. I changed the vent tube locations and found that the fuel air mixture went from lean to perfect. If you don't believe this, simply try blowing (rich) or sucking (lean) on the vent tube when the engine is running. You will find that very little pressure change makes a huge difference. I now have an Innovate wide band air/fuel gauge so I now know exactly what is happening and can see these effects easily. If you want some more details on converting to individual filters, just PM me. zag

[quote name= Well, there was one exception: the BEAST was there, and looking GREAT!!!!!!! Steve F'n A dude! I'm holding the first gen venture torch now! How sick is that? zag

Other than the obvious hassle of getting the engine out, turned upside down and opening up the guts - the only step which caused me some consternation was compressing that big nasty spring to get at the washer. I made a contraption too lethal to show here but it was done in a few minutes - after saying goodbye to everyone I knew and might miss me! zag

Painted my garage floor a month ago using menards epoxy package. I didn't use the color chips but I did sprinkle sand (the white silica sand sold in bags) on the wet paint and then rollered the paint a second time. My floor used to be very slippery when wet but is now very non-skid. Pretty hard to control the amount of sand so you do tend to sprinkle it somewhat heavier than would be ideal. This epoxy paint doesn't have much smell to it but it does take quite awhile to cure. You cannot drive on it for a week. I did half of the floor (so my bikes would have someplace to be), waited a week, did the other half, waited another week. zag

Ditto on the volumetric efficiency: gotta multiply your result by 0.8 or 0.85, no precise way to know the correct value. Out of curiosity, why do you care? Thinking of switching to some other carb? zag

"So the 1st Gen looks like a Honda" Really! zag