Snaggletooth

Depending on what you do.... not that hard. Just pay attention to detail. But the project can get pricey.

Yep.

Good luck. They do show up on fleaBay now and then. I got lucky and got mine for $75.00 I think it was. Just make sure they send ya all the pieces. In the third pic I don't know if the blocks on the lift arms were original or not. The PO had fabricated a rubber flap between them. I suppose it was intended to work as a lower mud flap below the fender to keep road spray of the ball hitch plate. I have the rear light bar on mine so it wasn't needed.

These are the connecting points for the MKI hitch. As you can see it would take some fabricating to create a new way to tie it all together. I'd guess the rear hitch plate may be the same but don't know if the pull bars would be the same length and the front angles are reversed. Then you would have to fab up the lift bars for the subframe attachment point. But if you're creative......... stranger things have been done.

I don't know how many times I've been asked "What year is your Goldwing?" I guess it's because it's gold. Gotta keep educationg them.

When I bought the '84, I got it from the son of the first and original owner. I'm the second. The son wanted a HD. I asked him why not just keep the Venture and spend a few bucks and fix it up. It really didn't need all that much. He said he wanted a reliable and comfortable bike to ride. It's been over six years now since I brought it home and almost 69,000 miles on it now. I still stop and visit with his son now and then. He's on his 3rd HD since I got the Venture. When I stop by his place to see him we sit and he talks about the Venture. His HD buddies stop in and he tells them about the Venture. When I ask how their bikes are holding up they laugh and ask "which one?" They are loyal to the brand but admit to the problems, and the shop time involved. I was asked once "How far have you been into the motor?" Well, I did put in new valve cover gaskets. And upgraded the clutch. They don't give me a lot of grief about the old girl anymore. They quit trying to pass me all the time to. That don't work. Good bunch of guys even if they are HD folks. If I ever need to find a trailer I know who to call.

Hummmm...... been reading up on this stuff so I ended up with 9 correct. Looks like I got a lot more to read.

Gonna ask a silly question but it may apply. Did you fuel up anywhere while the stations underground tanks were being filled? From my time in transportation we found most of the "instant" fuel problems the drivers encountered were right after fueling when the stations tanks were being filled from tankers. The high flow from the fill lines seemed to stir up everything in the tanks and a lot of crap made it's way to the customers tanks. I've seen vehicles stall with a few blocks of where they filled at. With the higher pickup level on the "Run" side of the petcock you may have been lucky enough to have the water resettle below that point and only had a problem with the "reserve" setting which is almost at the bottom of they tank. Or if you hadn't been on "reserve" for a while you may have had water building up for a while. Just thinking about that much water in there... Mike

Depends on what you're reading. Like "1984" or maybe anything by Glenn Beck. :rotf: But there is an interesting point. My manual is for the 1983-1984 models. 1st Edition, second printing. (1985) So who knows what they did in following years. Wasn't somebody keeping track of how many typos were in the manuals at one point?

Ya know, I thought I had that right, but it's been 6 years or more since I looked at mine. So I did the next best thing. I pulled the manual. Section 1.1. It states left side neck for VIN and right side rear case for engine serial number. I guess looking at the pics they are standing on the passenger side of the bike. :rotf: Must be from being on the other side of the planet. Excuse me while I go pull my head out of my tailpipe.

Don't press those folks at the DMV. They work real hard for us.

Dang. I thought I deleted that. The VIN is on the triple tree neck, where the forks attach, on the left side. The engine serial number is stamped in the case on the right side. NOTE* Learning this may vary with the model year.

That is a lot of water! I'd have to go with your thought on catching a bad load of gas on the trip.

Nope they don't. BUT.... will need to make some spacers for the mounting to fit right. No biggie. Hardware store fix.

There is always hope right

You know you will need to swap out the crash bars from your '84 to the MKII crash bars right. Need the mounting tabs for the chin that is on them. The chins aren't to hard to find on eBay. Getting a decent set of crash bars was the hard part.

I've called it the lower cowling chin. But by the book it's called: NL-28385-00-EM COVER, LOWER I'm using one off an '86 on my '84 to protect the filter.

And the club got some good hype there also.

Ummmm ..... I'm gonna hold off on that for a while. I got plans.

For some reason I feel like watching Mad Max again.

Ummm..... how many parts you missing? Hey! It's black!!

A lot of experimenting in the beginning. I think I had the valve off 5 or 6 times trying different stuff. Then a member from the Ventureres actually took his working valve off his bike and broke it down to see what was in there and how it went in. Then I knew what I needed and how to reassmeble it. Without his help it would probably still be a "no spool" setup. Or bypassed to split by now. I had pics on file of everything I found but they were on my old hardrive when it crashed. No backups. D'oh!

Looking don't always help either. The rear brakes on mine when I bought it were pretty much in a state of chaos. The POs son had removed a lot of parts to rebuild and left them in a box in pieces. The proportioning valve and been opened and parts removed. The parts looked fine but with no breakdown and or kits available there was a general lack of information on how it was supposed to go back together. Took a bit of experimenting and a few parts from another valve to get it to work the way it was supposed to. There is only one way that spool valve and cup will work, but a couple of ways it will go together. As long as you're the first one in you're golden. An unknown attempt before you and it's time.

When the valve works correctly it provide 70% pressure to the left front brake and 30% pressure to the rear. As you apply pressure to the foot brake the valve begings to open slowing applying pressure to the rear brake first then opening more to allow flow to the front left side until it it hits the 70/30 split. If you remove the spool valve from the inside of the proportioning valve you end up with a 50/50 split on pressure. Workable..... sure. I rode mine like that for about a year until I got the parts I needed to make the valve work correctly. Why take it apart? When there is a fluid flow problem the proportioning valve is suspect due to the internal porting and the moving parts inside. Sometimes ya gotta look to be sure.

In my experience with a couple of engage failures..... yeah it will get to the point where it will not catch at all. I put up with mine the first time until I was draining the battery and having to push start it. I did a rebuild with a used engage body and installed new springs and rollers. That failed also after one season. Probably my fault on that one. Two things there. I did not replace the 72 tooth ring gear and I'm sure I did not get the alignment of the engage body into the rotor set as close as I should have. That can be critical to the rollers hitting the boss correctly. Dano does all the hard part with his mod. He machines new mounting points. 6 instead of 3. He installs the engage into the reworked rotor with a plug that alingns the engage in the correct position. The upgrade engage is 19 (I think) elipital prawls instead of 3 roller bearings and ball point pen springs but instead a SS compession spring to set the prawls in place. He supplies a new 72 tooth ring gear that is different from the OEM issue gear. Do I sound in flavor of Danos work? I suppose. I used my bike for work and that included sometimes 20 or more starts a day, 7 days a week for about 3 years. Never a skip, bang or slip. It's dependable. As far as what Dano has one hand, you'll need to PM or call him on that. I don't know what the current parts situatioin is. And there are no Yamaha parts involved in his upgrade as far as I know. Now if you decide to do an upgrade, send me a PM. I have something here to help speed you along. Mike