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JohnT

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Everything posted by JohnT

  1. JohnT
    OK, I'm a first Gen rookie, just a few months and about 4000 miles. I bought my 1986 with just 23,000 on the clock. Only 7000 of which came in the last 20 years. I did run into a bit of a carburetor problem at first. Sitting in the garage under a cover + ethanol fuel = . And I had to replace the frictions and steels. Plus I had a PO induced electrical issue. A bad switch that was added cost me a battery. All this was done in the first few hundred miles. Now, I put gas in it, check it over a bit, change the oil as needed and ride it. And clean it. And wax it. My wife and Mom and a few friends laugh at me. I take more pains with this bike than anything I have owned in the last 20 years. It's worth every minute. Most folks don 't realize my ride is 26 years old. It doesn't look, ride, or handle like it is. I'm 5' 11" and about 215. My knees are a bit close to the fairing mounted bags. With the back rest on I will run out of gas before ever feel the need to stop. I have found out the floor boards serve fine double duty as lean angle feelers. With no funny handling quirks. It out handles my GS 1100 E. It will pull 100 MPH in fourth gear well before red line. Rumor has it. Not me, not ever . Keep yours, get the first Gen and the newer one. He who dies with the most Yamahas, wins.
  2. JohnT
    Gonna side with the "less is more" crowd on this one. As a recovering tech geek / former system tech-network manager-administrator-general whipping post there is no need to over buy or over build. Hard to go wrong now with "off the rack" from Tiger Direct. Unless you are a hard core gamer, multi tasking multi monitor business fanatic, or CAD user excess RAM and processor power is a waste of money. Then add in the cooling and other extra expense and it makes no sense. UNLESS you REALLY use it. I am still using my last build. 2.8 gig dual core processor (AMD BTW) and 4 gig of DDR 3 RAM, vid card with 1 gig DDR 3 and serial ATA drives. It must be 4 years old now at least. AN AMD 5600+ was one step removed from bleeding edge at the time. It still pulls a Windows Experience Index of 5.7. The minimum hold back factor are the years old SATA hard disks. Everything else runs in the low to mid 6 range. I chose well at the time. The main board I have is still sold and used. At least it was early this year when I needed to buy a new main board driver CD. If the PC did what you wanted it to do well enough to make you satisfied, put a new hard drive in it. A stomping big one and the fastest you current bus will utilize. And get another few years from it and spend money where it is important. Beer and bikes. Getting off the :soapbox:now.
  3. JohnT
    Prayers and best wishes. I'm not sure how well I would take it if something happened to my wife. It has taken 32 years but we have finally gotten used to one another.
  4. JohnT
    :sign outstanding:Ya gotta love attractive, smart, sharp witted ladies that ride. A buddy has a saying / comeback that have filed in memory for repeated future use. "That's a very nice (insert object in question here). Does it come in a mens style?" Unfortunately he was referring to the sweater I was wearing at the time. I then shot back that women love this sweater and comment on it all the time. His reply? "Of course they mention it, they want to borrow it."
  5. JohnT
    Roughly 1300 fee5t above sea level. Can't see it being high enough to cause a problem/ Unless you're tuned for the Rockies.
  6. JohnT
    I just used a 2 part epoxy type repair medium called G Flex. I bought mine through NRS (Northwest River Supply). Now I used it on one of my whitewater kayaks, not my saddle bags. Yet. But I am going to. It will bond ABS and as the name implies it is flexible. My Junkson Super Fun developed a 12 inch crack just under the cock pit rim. I call the Jackson boat a Junkson now due to the fact the molding SUCKED. A white water boat takes no abuse or even much flex in that area. Unless you are being pounded by water under a ledge or water fall. The crack had 2 radiating cracks off the main crack. I did drill 1/8 inch holes at the end of all cracks to stop further stress cracking. Then I sanded the area about 3/4 inch either side of the crack. In as much as my boats take the usual rock pounding and I don't need a leaking crack when stuck in a "hole" I did reinforce the repair with fiberglass cloth. This step is optional. Some plastics respond well to a heat treating of the repair area. You use a propane torch, running the blue tip of the flame along the sides of the repair area. The speed / timing of the torch movement is 1 foot per second. Once the repair area is sanded and prepped simply mix the resin and hardener 50 / 50 and apply. It has a 70 minute working time limit at 70 F. It hardens in 6 hours and is fully cured in 24. I have stress tested the rerpaired baot twice and am happy to report that G Flex is amazing. I have no hesitation using it on my ABS bags. It is listed as one of the many many materials the stuff will repair. It ain't cheap to buy. The small kit I bought was $30. However, I only sued about 15% of it at most. I did get the thicker of the types available. The thinner version might be nice if you really need it to flow. Oh yeah, it's sand able and paint able. The directions are clear and simple. The lawyer part. Objects may be closer than they appear, results may or may not be typical, your mileage may vary. Not to be taken internally. I;m not sure how soon I will be getting to my bags. The riding weather is nice right now. But once I do, I will post up the results.
  7. JohnT
    My cousin had a 2000 Ultra Classic that he put 160,000 mils on before he traded it last year. Nothing outside of regular maintenance, 1 oil pump, and it still had the 1000 mile check plugs in it when he traded it. That's got to be unusual, but it ran smooth as silk. Well a vibrating HD V Twin kind of silk.
  8. JohnT
    Hey there everyone. While all is not over yet, Terry has been lifted from the induced coma, his spleen is history, the kidneys "should be fine" (one is still suspect), and although the shoulder required surgery all in all he is on the mend. Thank God. He can't remember what happened. All seems to be lost from some point prior to the accident. He basically remembers getting on the bike then waking up in the hospital. Thanks to all the well wishes. Yer a great bunch of folks.
  9. JohnT
    Mike, I'm not seeing any gas poling or dripping. It has now "cooled off" to only the 80's and I am idling a bit lower (1000) and not smelling gas. Hopefully my car has now stopped costing me money that should be spent on bike toys and tools. In the last month I have put in wheel bearings, rotors, calipers, pads, and lower control arms. Geez! Like to get carb tune stuff. One less thing to go to the $repair shop$ for. Don't even have a vacum gauge any more. Remember when you would hook a vacuum gauge to your car, rip off most of the smog stuff, tune for good vacuum, and get great mileage and performance? I need to find a "good old days" icon. That was easy.
  10. JohnT
    Yesterday I fired the VR to go to my DOT physical. She settled into an idle at about 1200 rpm when the norm has been more like 800 or 900. Later that day, after say 100 miles of running errands (I may have taken the long way, all day) it now seems to smell very rich, real gassy. As in gasoline, not gassy like me after Mexican food. And it may have a slight stumble on one cylinder. It ran fine when I shut it off the previous time it ran. I ran it Sunday, went to work Monday till Wednesday night and got on her Thursday morning. It just sat in the shed from the time it ran fine till it now runs differently. And not in a good way. I had the carbs cleaned and tuned after I bought it. I run ethanol treatment religiously and have sea foamed it regularly. Any suggestions? Maybe the diaphragms or one of them, went bad?
  11. JohnT
    I hate "stupid loud". But I do like a low tone rumble. Mellow, understated, low tone rumble. Amd oddly enough my collector is starting to sound like a maraca at certain rpm's and I just recently acquired a set of RK pipes.
  12. JohnT
    You just find the bestest people in here.
  13. JohnT
    :sign outstanding:Heck yeah! If every non felony convicted adult in this country were allowed to carry concealed (if they chose to) crime would take a big down turn. I firmly believe the second amendment is clear and this is a good example for it to be there. Now if only some of our politicians would get some reading comprehension skills and take another look at that amendment things would improve.
  14. JohnT
    And as an added bonus feature I will have access to his "bad" cluster to practice finding the jumpers for my HID headlight conversion. foot note; In the above post the word "bad" was originally "junk" as in trash. But there was NO WAY I was going to put in print that "I would have access to his junk",,,,,,:rotf:Not on this forum.
  15. JohnT
    Thanks. I will run both options past Tim today when we go to lunch. That one looks to be mint.3 or 4 bikes are going to Lake Placid area to try the "Tail Of The Pup" today. I am trying to convince Tim of the value of joining this motley crew of bikers. Man, I have gotten $12 worth of laughs alone. And a return many times over in useful information and help. This may just do it.
  16. JohnT
    Oh man, that would ROCK! We are near Watertown so a trip down that way is not a big deal. Especially since I am kind of planning on getting to Lock 32 to go paddling at some point soon. There is a white water park there. Or it's just not to far to take a ride for a free speedometer. The red light for cruise? His doesn't have cruise but that shouldn't matter.
  17. JohnT
    Oh, Lord above! Tim in a speedo! Where is the "I wanna wash my mind's eye with bleach to purge that mental image" icon?!
  18. JohnT
    It's quite funny, for my buddies, when I can't start my bike and come to find I have hit the kill switch. It happens only rarely on my GS. But so regularly on the VR that it is finally first instinct when I thumb the button and get nothing. Also causing momentary panic for a bit was the fact that my cruise button is in the exact same place / relationship to my thumb, as the start button on the GS I have driven forever. Turn on the key, thumb the button, and nothing. Check this that and the other and thumb it again and it starts. (Now that I am looking at and hitting the right button.) I just happened to look down and see my problem the last time the VR "wouldn't start". But through this I have never thought of disabling the kill button. I may need it someday.
  19. JohnT
    Hope this is the right forum. I sold my 84 to a good friend and he has been unable to fix the speedo. Does anyone have a working speedometer? Or an entire cluster? It appears the drive broke where the cable goes in. Which approach should he take? It seems to me changing the entire cluster would be easiest. Thanks in advance.
  20. JohnT
    Last Friday my friend Terry went down. No one knows how or why yet. It appears that a very experienced long term rider simply veered off the road and crashed hard. (we do live in serious deer territory) He has a broken leg and collar bone as well as a ruptured spleen and serious kidney damage. He is being kept in a medically induced coma for now. Please folks, be safe out there. As was so rightly pointed out, prayers are better.
  21. JohnT
    Man, I wish I had found out about this before this week. I'm only 6 +/- hours away whether I travel through Ontario or New York. And I want to get started on my Canadian map. Not to mention meet some of the odd individuals I read on here.
  22. JohnT
    I kind of felt the same way at first. When I first started riding my VR I was a bit intimidated. One big son of a motorcycle. Oh but the comfort now that I am accustomed to her. it's always been true that it doesn't matter what you ride, as long as you ride. I do keep having this thought of finding a Venture that has crappy bags / plastic or what not and stripping it to the bare necessities. Although I have found I REALLY like being behind a fairing and screen,,,,,,,,
  23. JohnT
    I caught wind of the event just a little too late. I have just found / started listening to 96.3 FM out of Kingston. Their studio is "just down the street from the peeler bar, well that's where it is,,," Of course I didn't realize it was that big an event. I would have been a bit surprised upon arrival I guess.
  24. JohnT
    :sign yeah that:I got my money back the first week. Easily. And have been making bank on that investment every week. Not to mention the laughs I get every now and then.
  25. JohnT
    Venturous, once I run it to the point that I "run out" and have to turn to reserve I may just do that.That way I can learn my range and characteristics of the fuel gauge. As I mentioned earlier, 1 bar on different fill ups was 3.25 to 3.75 gallons. 1/2 gallon being almost 20 miles can be a long walk. I may even carry a gallon of gas and run reserve out. Just for grins and giggles. I've only had my VR a month and a half and only put 2000 miles on her. Haven't gotten to know her properly yet. I keep calling her "her". I may actually have to name her. I did the boats I really liked.
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