1988 Venture Royale

Just bought it, has 43,00 miles and I have a couple of questions.

The temp gage is not working, neither is the cruise. Found some good info on the sight

regarding the cruise. Also the previous owner tells me he's never had any valve shim work done

and was wondering if that should be done. The bike rides a bit rough and the gas mileage is around 30 mpg. I think it should be closer to 45, but not sure. Have to race the engine a bit to get going.

I also own a 1982 CB900C that runs really smooth and almost takes off in 1st without giving any throttle (that's in high with the 10 speed trans).

Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks guys.

Ed,

The temperature gauge sender is underneath the right side fairing lower. Remove the lower and near the the top of the opening you will see a 2 prong plug hooked to the sender. The single wire switch right next to it switches on the cooling fan. If you take a jumper OR a pair of needle nose pliers and short out the 2 pins (with the wires connected to the sender), the heat gauge should go to the top (key on run). If it does, you have a bad sender.

Yes, 30 MPG is low. I ran my 89 about 102 miles 2 up today, some expressway, some stop and go when the expressway came to a stop, some city driving, and some 55 mph highway driving---it gave me 44.8 MPG. Usually when the mileage is as low as 30, you have a dead cylinder. Is your bike running on all 4? On a cold start, carefully touch all 4 exhaust pipes and see if one is cold. If it's running on all 4, you probably have carb problems (high floats, bad diaphrams, idle set real rich, etc.)

Frank D.

Frank,

Thanks for your help , do you know anything about cruise controls.

Ed

What is your cruise doing/not doing.

Any symptoms you can give will help narrow down solutions.

Gary

When I got my 89 last year it had cruise issues. Lights all came on but nothing happened. Found out that there is a cruise switch on the end of your clutch cable assembly. Pulled off the electrical connection cleaned it up with dielectric cleaner, added some dielectric grease and made sure it was hooked on properly, everything worked fine after that.

Good luck.

Norm

All the lights come on when you turn it on, some shut off in a second or two, don't remember which ones. Press set and it doesn't engage. Really haven't torn into anything.

There was a really good post I found that had some simple diagnostics , but I can't find it now.

Thanks for all your help, guys.