83 Venture Rebuild/Restoration

[Patch]

The triangle at the bottom I used a light rubbing compound then waxed it. The top or panel piece I maintained with WD NO wax

 

 

[Geobob]

Bad news from the painter.  The one faring panel and one saddle bag lid needed touched up.  Well there is no such thing as touching up.  The two parts were going to cost 7-8 hundred dollars to repaint.  I said yes but then changed my mind.  They were not that bad so I am passing on that expense.  Money will get spent on another bike project.  My Vision needs some cams

 

[Geobob]

Who ever said the fuel filter was best ordered from Yamaha might be right.  I have now tried two different ones that were cross referenced to the correct ones and both were the wrong size.  I made the second one work with some rubber hose and electrical tape.  The first one was too big to fit into the clamp.  I suspect the clamp is not really needed but at least this one is in the clamp.  I assume it will flow enough. 

[Geobob]

And just a heads up.  There is a bolt swallowing void somewhere in the area.  I lost one of the bolts holding the fuel pump in place and for the life of me I could not find it.  I think I looked for 15 minutes or more with a light and magnet.  I looked real good in the exhaust because I suspect that will make some serious noise if that is where it ended up.

 

[saddlebum]

9 hours ago, Geobob said:

And just a heads up.  There is a bolt swallowing void somewhere in the area.  I lost one of the bolts holding the fuel pump in place and for the life of me I could not find it.  I think I looked for 15 minutes or more with a light and magnet.  I looked real good in the exhaust because I suspect that will make some serious noise if that is where it ended up.

 

Actually its the parallel universe. It causes other things  to disappear as well, like the wrench, screwdriver or hammer etc. that you  just had in your hand then magically reappear later.

[Johnnycyclone]

Finally was able to clean up the generator cover and get it painted. The two center plates for the generator cover and the clutch cover were shipped out to the platers last week. Looking forward to see how they look with some shiny chrome. I also worked on the side covers for the cylinders. Both turned out real nice. I ended up buying another wiring harness. The original one was to chopped up with a lot of wiring additions and modifications. I found a nice one that doesn't have any mods done to it. It looks like it just needs a little cleaning up and I can start putting it on. More to come later.

 

 

[cowpuc]

NICE!!!

[Johnnycyclone]

I know I must have read this at one time concerning the R6/R1 front brake caliper upgrade, but for some reason I guess it just didn't stick. If you go back in the thread a little bit you will see a pic of the front wheel with a set of R6 brake rotors on it. Well they look really good, but they are too big for the upgrade. The R6 rotors are 300mm and you need to have ones that are 282mm which are the same as the ones from a MKII Venture. I guess I missed that part. The R6 rotor seems to fit just fine on back and so I wanted to keep with the same hole pattern for the front rotors. The MKII rotors have the slots and so not a great match. I did some research and found out that rotors from a 96-99 Yamaha Virago XV1100 are 282mm and have the same hole pattern as the R6. Here is a couple of pics of the rotors prior to painting and installed. 

 

 

[Johnnycyclone]

Another pic from this afternoons work. Rebuilt the brake calipers and installed them with new pads. 

 

 

[Pasta Burner]

Awesome project!  If well prepared and a primary focus I think this could be done over winter.  Then again nothing ever plays out the way you dream it.  Plus my wife would never let me spend that much time in the garage unless maybe I also has a housecleaner and handyman on retainer to take care of the inside.  It inspires me to clean things up though, last year (it’s been less than a year since I knew what a venture was) the goal was to get her functioning and get out on the road to see if the touring bike life was one I wanted to pursue.  Little did I know that small love of labor would turn into a love of my MKII.  So my question to you is what are you using for a degreaser?  And how are you prepping for polish / paint?  I grew up spoiled in my dads shop with pretty much every comfort including a solvent tank.  “Anybody can do a job with the right tools.  Our job is to get it done with what we have” Is a motto at work.

[Patch]

So @Johnnycyclone I have 3ish projects in my shop a 745i and at easily 2 bike projects in the go. What's say you come pick one and make it yours? HMM

[Johnnycyclone]

Pasta Burner, it would be nice to finish this up over the winter, but there is just to much to do. My wife doesn't mind me spending time in the garage, but as I get older I am less inclined to spend a lot of time working on projects. I tend to get burned out much quicker than before. I like to try to keep a steady pace and work at least on something each week. For polishing the aluminum I bought a kit several years ago from Eastwood. It came with several buffing wheels and an assortment of rouge. I bought the smaller wheels that I use on my small bench grinder. It works pretty good and makes quick work of the project. For the painting so far I just clean up the parts, sand them with some 400 grit and then apply the paint. The plastic body panels will involve a little more than just sanding and painting. For degreasing it's just carb cleaner, nothing special. I would love a solvent tank cleaner but I just don't do enough work or the space for one. That's pretty much my motto also use what you have. Thanks for taking a look at the project. I am pretty confident we might have it done by late fall, at least that's the goal.

[Johnnycyclone]

3 hours ago, Patch said:

So @Johnnycyclone I have 3ish projects in my shop a 745i and at easily 2 bike projects in the go. What's say you come pick one and make it yours? HMM

I'm not sure if you are kidding or being serious Patch. I'm leaning towards you are kidding. Haha! I also have another project in the garage so one of yours would make 3. My wife is a great supporter of my fun, but she draws the line at 2 at one time. I mentioned adding another one before and it didn't go over very well. Haha! But thanks for the offer! What year is your 745i?

[Geobob]

Don't ask me why after 10 mg of zolpiden/ambian and a couple of oz of run I would want to share what I managed to get to get done today.

Please excuse the pile of photos, they all dumped in at once as zip file from Icloud photos.  I will try and explain what each photo documents

The first shows how I glued one of the pins back on.  I have done this before but it did not last.  This time I wrapped some fiberglass around the epoxy and later sanded things down to a better shape.  I think of it as bandaid.  The next is just a shot of the oil filter cover after sand blasting and painting, then a coat of black paint on the black plastic covers.  I put some velcro behind the headlight cover since something is missing that keeps it snug.  A body man and painter made some other repairs about 6 years ago that are holding up well.  He did the same thing with epoxy and fiberglass.  So far I have had good results with the fiberglass backing on the epoxy.  Pretty much everywhere I have just used the epoxy the repair eventually failed.

I dropped the bike a couple of years ago and got the upper fairing damage that is so prevalent on most bikes.  I repaired all of the contact points and sanded this scratch down for the painter.  As I mentioned the painting was so expensive that I decided to leave it.  I am now looking for the chrome corner covers you see on most of these bikes. 

The saddle bag cover finally flew off a year ago but fortunately it only got superficial scratches.  As with the fairing it was just too expensive to repaint.  I may sand the scratchs down with some 1000 or 1500 paper but only rubbed them out for now.  I guess I am scared to take sand paper to the painted surface even if its very fine grit.

The one larger repair on the fairing that might show is going to get some fingernail polish.  The painter suggested that pearl white is difficult to paint and expensive so he often recommends shopping for touch up paint in the drugstore.

I got most of the clear coated parts off and polished.  While I really like the black paint job that John is doing, since I am not painting the block that option would not look right.

I had to repair many of the holes in the dash panel on the right side since the crashes over the years have opened all of them up.  I did the same thing with the epoxy backed up by a small section of fiberglass.  I tried to level off the glue in the holes with super glue but it did not work as good as I would have liked.  Looking at it now I think it could have just leveled the holes off with epoxy and drilled them down a ways and then put the mounting hole right down the center.  I don't ever expect to find the caps that went in the holes but I am not that concerned. 

Hopefully today I get time to put the left side dash back together and mount up some running lights.  I would love to get it all back together today but I suspect that is just wishful thinking.  Especially on Valentines day.

 

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by Geobob
Added photos

[saddlebum]

won't even open on my laptop. Just get an error message that say's file can't be found.

[Johnnycyclone]

No earth shattering progress this week, but I have a couple of pics to share. I did work on the new wiring harness I purchased.  I spent an evening re-wrapping it only to find out it's for an 84-85 model year. So I decided to stick with the one I have. I worked on fixing the issues with it this afternoon and started to re-wrap it. I am also working on putting the generator coil back in the engine cover. The should be back together this weekend. Here are the two pics for tonight. I'm told it's in the details so even though these are small they needed to be freshened up a little. Not perfect when up close, but much better than before. This is the before and after pic. More to come this weekend. 

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by Johnnycyclone

[Geobob]

You are definetly getting down to the details.  I did see one that had all the lettering on the dash redone.  It looked good and really made them look brand new.  I made some progress over the last few weeks but also slow.  I have had a nagging air leak on the front tire probably ever since the local shop put the tire on.  I have always changed my own tires but thought I would give the shop some work.  It ended up costing $200 by the time I was done and it was apparent that they did not clean up the rim before putting the tire on.  I have always done that and never had a tire leak around the rim.  This one was and the rim was a mess.  It was probably a little more of a mess because I tired so fix a flat out of desperation last summer.  I spent a little time and cleaned it up to a really nice shinny finish and so far no leaks.  I also bead blasted the rotor bolts and took them to the wire wheel before putting them back on.  I am finally getting close.  Put a new head light plug after buying a new pair of lights from Supperbright.  Turns out I did not need a new light let alone a pair.  I just needed a new plug.  I also wired up a pair of 2 inch led running lights.  I will have to send some photos of that.  They fit under the highway pegs/boards nicely. 

[Geobob]

Got close to putting the last parts on and found an old repair had failed.  My headlight cover had one of the fastening locations repaired with a small section of sheet metal glued to the back of the plastic with the clip on it.  Decided to go with epoxy this time instead of the Gorilla glue.  Sanded the plastic back side and bead blasted the metal.  We will have to see if it holds.  I thought the clamping of the glued part in place was rather cleaver.  There are a lot of plastic repairs on this bike.  Maybe a backing of more epoxy and fiberglass would help this one stay in place

[Johnnycyclone]

Here is a before picture of the clutch cover plate and the generator cover plate. I sent them out to be stripped and chromed. They turned out really nice, and look great on the black engine. 

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Johnnycyclone

[Johnnycyclone]

Finished up the repairs to the wiring harness and put a fresh wrap on it. Now to get everything back on and connected!

 

 

[Geobob]

Dam that is looking way to nice

[Geobob]

I managed to get mine all back together a couple of weeks ago and got most of the bugs worked out.  It does not look as good as yours is going to look but there is only so much detail I can manage.  It always has me saying "dam I love the way this bike rides" when I get on it.  Along with appreciating the look even after all these years, this bike is not going anywhere soon.  Maybe someday they will be worth more but I am not holding my breath.  I think I will be dead by then.

[Johnnycyclone]

Time to revive an old thread. I spent the last summer working on plastics and they are about 80% ready for paint. I tried hard to find plastics that didn't have any cracks which is near impossible. I went as far as buying 3 different right side saddle bags where the sellers said they were crack free. I even pointed out to them where to look for cracks before I purchased them and they still had cracks. So I gave up on finding any that didn't have cracks and settled for pieces that had minimal cracking. So those will be getting some paint next spring/summer.

Now on to what has been done recently. 

First up is a set of Barnet clutch plates and springs, along with a re-chromed clutch cover. I also installed the rear clutch master cylinder and a new braided stainless steel brake line. I just need to come up with a plug for the front brake line since I am delinking the brakes. 

[Johnnycyclone]

On 4/1/2021 at 10:21 PM, Geobob said:

I managed to get mine all back together a couple of weeks ago and got most of the bugs worked out.  It does not look as good as yours is going to look but there is only so much detail I can manage.  It always has me saying "dam I love the way this bike rides" when I get on it.  Along with appreciating the look even after all these years, this bike is not going anywhere soon.  Maybe someday they will be worth more but I am not holding my breath.  I think I will be dead by then.

Geobob - thanks for the compliment, but don't sell yourself short. You have a beautiful bike there. You can always make small improvements as you go. The bike you have is just like the one I saw in the parking lot at work that got me interested in the Yamaha Venture, until that first look I didn't even know they existed. Thanks for sharing the pics of yours, it looks great!

[Johnnycyclone]

This weekends project was the fuel tank. At first I wasn't going to do anything with it because is looked pretty good, only a few scratches. But once I had it installed it looked a little worse than when it was out on it's own. So I sanded down the tank and sprayed on some old satin black paint I had leftover from another project. Not the gloss black as before, but it turned out real nice. Here is a before and after pic.