zagger

"But I never felt the rumble of the engine, never had a sound from the pipes that hinted at the massive power of the engine. I wonder if this is even coming across right through my fingertips...I hope so. " Sorry, but I'm guessing that you will find it to be heavy and slow - not much massive power. I've rented new Harley's two times to ride down Highway 1 on the California coast (sorry, don't remember the model). Both times I was left wishing that it was possible to rent some other type of bike with more zip. If you are actually wondering about your purchase plans, I'd suggest finding a rental and try it out on a short trip. I haven't investigated this recently, but Harley's used to be the only brand of bike that could be rented from a dealer. zag

Hmmm. Better get a gun! I'm having a hard time seeing how computer operated cars could actually operate on our icy roads, especially in the more rural areas. The dip**** computer designers living in California cannot even keep computers operating 100% of the time when they sit in a heated and air conditioned home. My wife is currently struggling with intermittent problems in her iMac. It partially loses its mind on some days and not on other days. Can you imagine this type of control actually operating a moving hunk of steel? I'd move the vehicle software guys from Sunnyvale CA to someplace in the upper Midwest - that might snap them out of their self confident BS. zag

Wow. Totally crazy. A gun! What's next? Some ammo? zag

Yesterday we got around 8" of heavy wet snow. Today it is sunny and 50F. Although I had to dig out the driveway and walkways this morning, it is currently starting to look more like spring. At least that is the delusional baloney that I tell myself! zag

McMaster Carr has everything. Spacers: https://www.mcmaster.com/#unthreaded-spacers/=1cgcuui Hope this helps. zag

Looks like you guys got dumped on with new snow yesterday (April 15). Green Bay got 2 FEET of snow. Do you guess that this will all melt off in the next 3 weeks? Around Madison we got about 6 inches of snow yesterday but we are supposed to get another 5-8 inches on Wednesday. Looks like winter all over again. zag

No spring around here (near Madison WI, April 15). Still snowing hard with about 6 inches on the ground. Looking at the radar it seems like it might start letting up and I will head out to shovel. Not my idea of spring riding weather! zag

Thanks for all of the great pictures! Hard to imagine the slaughter back then. zag

There is no point in getting into a dispute with a car or truck. Just use the right wrist to leave the situation behind. No way to win that one. zag

Hey CL, I got my 83 simply because of the under-seat gas tank. Moving that weight down low really reduces the overall feeling of bike weight. Although my venture is actually heavier than another cruiser that I own, it feels lighter. zag

The Slimey Crud Run happens in the spring and fall - kind of the beginning of the biking season and the end. http://www.slimeycrudrun.com/ Everything about it is very informal: just head to Pine Bluff WI in the morning and, whenever you feel like it, ride up to Leland WI and hang out there. Most people spend the time checking out all of the bikes. Although the website mentions returning back to Pine Bluff, I don't think that anyone actually does that. It is pretty hard to guess the number of bikes - probably 1000 to 2000 - and some riders only go to one end or the other of the route. It isn't a mass ride, you are free to come and go as you like and you ride with your friends following any route you choose. Both towns, the surrounding roads, and some of the nearby fields completely fill up with bikes. Both towns have bars that serve food and drinks. Cops usually park nearby in both towns to prevent lunatics from ripping through crowds of people doing wheelies - but overall their presence is pretty low key. Someone posted this video on YouTube a few years ago - my venture appears just after 2 minutes: BTW, the Slimey Cruds actually exist and I happen to be a member. We meet at a bar every week for drinks and talk - a nice bunch of guys. zag PS I forgot to mention that there is always a motorcycle movie on the evening before the Crud Run. This year (May 5) it will be Easy Rider. Tickets cost only $1: 6:30pm Barrymore Theater, 2090 Atwood Ave in Madison. https://www.facebook.com/SlimeyCrudCafeRacerRun

I have an old Saturn station wagon with an entirely plastic outer body, except for the engine hood. After nearly 200,000 miles on the snowy and salty roads of Wisconsin, the only places that have a little bit of rust are on the edges of the door sills under the two rear doors. Basically, the car looks as good as new and still runs great. Of course, the Saturn brand was closed down in 2009. I have to wonder if the designs simply lasted too long and cut into profits that might be made on new vehicles. I don't know, but I am suspicious. I originally bought the car to haul my kids to school - but the kids are now grown up and I'm still driving it. I care much more about bikes and I just want my cars to keep running. zag

Keith, I have to wonder if things like car doors, which may have nylon hinge components and grease at the hinges and latches, would be too electrically isolated from the rest of the body and wouldn't be protected. Any idea how often the sacrificial pieces need to be replaced? zag

Pretty interesting. I read through their website and it isn't super clear what you should expect to see. I would guess that the little rectangular metal pieces are sacrificial electrodes which will gradually be consumed - making a regular replacement necessary. But that is mostly a guess. https://www.marineinsight.com/tech/understanding-sacrificial-anodes-on-ships/ zag

I agree. Some things seem pretty intimidating but once you get started, it is surprising how quickly it goes. Quite a few years ago I wanted to build an addition on my house. I needed 104 ft. of trench dug down about 5 ft. and 2 ft. wide - mostly through hard clay soil. I called a bunch of different excavator companies, but since it was spring they were busy and would either put me off or just fail to show up. One day after work I was so irritated at the lack of progress that I just grabbed a shovel and started digging. I sharpened the shovel to a knife edge to cut through the clay. In one week of evenings after work, I managed to dig the entire thing with a shovel. Just as I was finishing, an excavator guy showed up to take a look at the job and give me a quote. I told him that I didn't need a quote anymore since it was done. He asked who I got to do the job. I told him, "Just me and this shovel." He looked at me like I was completely nuts! On the other hand, the job got done pretty quickly and the price was right! zag

Very much an amateur mechanic - just a hobby. If you start taking things apart, it is usually pretty obvious how they come apart and go back together. I was just trying to suggest ways to keep all of the bits and pieces organized so that when it is time to reassemble everything, it isn't just a confusing jumble of parts. I don't think that getting into the gears is very simple at all - however, it is possible and probably takes less time and effort than you imagine. Of course, you do need tools and need to be willing to buy whatever special tools that you think might be helpful. Sometimes you might be able to post a question and actually get an answer from someone. However, if the question is a bit unusual, the answers you get a likely to be wrong and you will be forced to just use your own logic and common sense. I recently went through this with my other bike. It had a strange electrical problem which caused the battery to gradually lose voltage. I posted this online, and other riders felt that I was nuts to worry about such a small loss of voltage on every ride. I kept searching for an answer and eventually found a burned connector and also found that I had slightly overloaded the system with two extra lights. I cut out the bad connector and replaced the extra bulbs with LED versions to reduce the current drain. Now, everything seems to be good to go. The reality was that it took quite a bit of riding with a voltmeter to determine that I still had a problem which needed fixing. I even bought a small jump-start battery just to save me if the bike battery died when I was out on the road someplace. Not everything is simple or easy! I guess that you might just try riding around without using 2nd gear and see if that works ok for you. Might make sense to tackle a big project like this over the winter months so that you don't miss out on riding during the summer. It would probably make sense to contact the previous owner and find out if 2nd gear was slipping/skipping or whatever. If it was, I suppose that the gear teeth might be damaged enough to prevent it from being used - just a guess. On my bike, the gears hadn't actually lost contact and I just needed to replace the little rings to bring everything back into alignment. zag

Not crazy at all. I've never been paid to work on bikes or anything else. For quite a few years, I would spend the long winter months tinkering on bikes and then spend the summer riding them. Right now, I have two bikes, they both run great, and I'm not very excited to start any new projects. Not having winter bike projects has kinda left a hole that needs to be filled with something, but not sure what. Last summer I did have a complicated and strange electrical problem with my Honda Sabre, but I believe that I got that sorted out and I'm planning on a long trip with it this summer with an old riding buddy who moved to Kansas City. We used to go on rides every weekend when he lived nearby and when he moved away I was surprised by how much I missed having a riding companion. Although I've been on rides with a couple other folks, most of the time they were more of a struggle than companionship. I did join a motorcycle Meetup group and went on a ride every month, but most of the riders were pretty inexperienced and dangerous to be around - really made me stay on the alert for crazy stuff. Maybe things will change this summer. While looking up pictures of the work I did on my venture, I was sort of surprised to realize that the first cutting and welding was done in the winter of 2007 - eleven freak'n years ago! I remember my wife commenting that at least she knew where to find me (in my basement shop). I enjoyed customizing my venture - as compared to simply fixing stock stuff on bikes that I had been doing for over 40 years. But now that I've done one, I don't think I'll ever get fired up enough to do another. A good friend of mine has built a Triumph Bonneville (650cc) to set the world speed record in that class. I'm going out to Speed Week to help him - and then his lifetime dream will be complete. Then, he will be like me, wondering what to do next! zag

I suggest that making notes on pieces of masking tape that can be stuck onto parts and even taking pictures (with a smart phone?) would help you reassemble everything. If you run into bolts of different lengths, make a little diagram and number each bolt with a piece of tape so that you know where everything goes. A few minutes spent organizing your thoughts will save a lot of confusion when you put it back together. My lasting impression was that most things were more easily torn down and reassembled than I was imagining. I think that the only thing which required making a special tool was replacing the two little rings on the transmission shaft. As you can see in the picture I posted, I just rigged up something with two brick carriers (the yellow things) and a cheap hand operated hydraulic lift. I'm sure that something similar could be rigged up with wooden supports. The entire 2nd gear split ring replacement probably only took a couple of minutes after the shaft was out. It is hard for me to even remember anything about it since it really didn't take much time. zag

Yup - those are the parts - I have all three pieces in my workshop's hanging mobile of engineering disasters! They are included with other things like a Suzuki intake valve that broke in half (totaling the engine) and a water supply splitter for my laundry sink and washing machine that broke in two and flooded my house. Oh, the memories! I really cannot understand skipping 2nd gear while riding around since the fix will probably only consume one weekend. And the parts are cheap. As I remember, it went pretty quickly without any major complications. Relieving the spring pressure on the shaft was the only part that required some extra screwing around. My old venture has all gears and is quite fast. I forgot to mention that I also installed the Vmax boost valves on the intakes - operated by a 5-click bicycle shifter on the left handlebar grip. Turned out that it really wasn't practical to quickly hand operate the boost valves at high rpm's but the engine really likes running with all of the valves open "one click" on the shifter lever (just a little bit) and I leave them in that position at all times. zag

I have forward controls and the shift pattern would have been reversed - except that I added a little rotating linkage to make it go back to normal. zag

The press is needed to simply relieve the spring pressure on the split ring. Once the split ring isn't under pressure, you can pick out the two halves and stick in the new ones. They are just sitting there loosely if the spring is compressed a little. It has been many years since I did this and I don't remember the part numbers. I vaguely recall that Yamabond was used to seal the case halves - but that is just my fading memory. You don't have to do anything with the engine - nothing on the crankshaft or whatever. The shaft is part of the transmission. You do need something to compress the spring and relieve pressure on the retainer ring. I have a small arbor press, but the shaft was much too long to fit. Perhaps there are very large presses which can hold the shaft (standing on one end), but I'm not sure if a regular machine shop would have one that big. Plus you do need to allow the end of the shaft to move as the spring is compressed - so a plate of some sort is needed on the end which has a hole through it. If you find the exploded picture of the transmission in the service manual, you will be able to see the small retainer which is formed by two half circle pieces. The manual that I have doesn't really give a good idea of how all of the parts fit together, so don't drive yourself crazy if it doesn't really make sense. Quite a few venture owners have done this fix and there may be other step-by-step posts which help understand the process. I'm guessing that this little fix would be very expensive if you tried to hire it done. Doing it yourself is probably the only sensible approach. zag

Yeah, it isn't the easiest job. Rigging up something to press on the big spring to relieve pressure on the split ring requires some ingenuity. My setup used some odds and ends that I happened to have - and surprisingly, I wasn't immediately killed. zag

Do you know if the 2nd gear fix was done on your bikes? There is a little split washer which wasn't properly hardened and will gradually wear down until it allows 2nd gear to slip. The first thing I did on my bike was to pull the engine, take apart the transmission, and replace that little ring. A lot of work for such a tiny part. Unfortunately, the alternative isn't very nice and I prefer to have all of my gears functional. zag

Funny thing, the early mad max movies used pretty much stock bikes, mostly dirt bikes. But the impression was so crazy, most people think that they remember crazy bikes. Lots of people call my chopped venture "the mad max bike" but it is way more customized than what was seen on the early movies. I've kinda forgotten the later mad max sequels. I like the old ventures because of the low cg - which is mostly the result of the under-seat gas tank and fairly flat engine. They can be quite fast - a few years ago I was riding by myself on twisty roads in western Wisconsin and came up on a long line of harleys. I followed for a little while but got really tired of the pace and so I started passing. By the time I got to the front of the long line, my bike was still accelerating hard and I was going 120mph - I never saw them again. Probably the only problem I have had over the last 10 years is with cops. My bike attracts their attention and they start following. My most recent ticket involved the lighting. I designed the lights to have "low beams" which were lights mounted a bit lower on the frame and "high beams" which were in the normal front light position but with very bright bulbs. The high beams were great for spotting deer on rural roads at night. But a cop in town didn't like this arrangement, and I got a ticket for not having headlights. Deviating just a little from the norm can be a problem. Since then, I installed the lowest wattage bulbs that fit into those lights and angled the lights toward the side of the road. Can't see a darned thing out in the hills, but in town I should be good. Who knows - sometimes stupid is best. zag

To get the carb tuning correct, I had to temporarily install an air/fuel sensor and display made by Innovate Motorsports. Replacing the airbox (which has a pretty small hole for air to enter) with the pod filters caused the carbs to operate much too lean. I had to machine air restrictors (basically disks with a hole) which are mounted under each filter. Once the carbs got back into their proper operating range, the air/fuel ratio on the display went into the normal range. The air/fuel sensor does require a threaded port welded into the exhaust pipes. I moved the battery down below the transmission just to help keep the cg on the bike as low as possible. I built a hinged rack which the sealed battery rests on. Taking out a couple of bolts allows the rack to swing downward so that the battery can be removed. I originally bought an 83 venture (one that had been wrecked) because it has an under-seat gas tank. Keeping as many heavy things sitting low in the bike as possible really gives good handling. The bike feels much lighter that it actually is - simply by having the weight sit very low. Since much of the stock wiring is concealed behind plastic covers, I put in all new wiring which I routed to follow the frame that remained. I junked anything that wasn't actually required for the bike's operation. The stock wiring was quite a big pile of wires. Yeah, the overflow tank had to sit on a little metal shelf and is held in place with a big zip tie (the kind which has a push button clip) so that it can be easily removed. Since the stock radiator was quite short and wide (hidden in all the plastic stuff), I put in a new radiator (some Honda one as I recall) which is tall and narrow. The radiator had to be mounted upside down to get the hose connections in approximately in the right place. I cut the frame to allow the front forks to be raked forward and I installed longer fork tubes to give it a chopper look. But with the straight forks, the trail dimension was very long and the handling was very slow. So I built the current leading link type forks which actually moved the front wheel even more forward, but shortened the trail dimension down to about 3 inches - about what a sport bike has. Handling now is very good and, oddly enough, there is zero "flop" on the front wheel when the bike is parked. The front wheel just sits there. Pretty weird. Good luck with your project, zag