If resale is a consideration when purchasing a motorcycle (ANY motorcycle), you should stay home.

thanks for reading and leaving a reply Wilson. Over the decades, I have found that riding well does not necessarily mean riding fast. Technique, dissecting the road, approaching each corner correctly, Setting up each turn to have the highest exit speed, getting on the brakes late as you dare, being in the right gear at the right RPM on the exit, that is actually more important than having access power you can’t use. I find that to be true on the street, and I found to be especially true during my road racing days during which I wonsix road racing championships, and two time national champion.. that was a long time ago, and I’ll be the first one to admit it I am a has been. But, Its better to be a has-been, than a never been.. It wasn’t high horsepower that helped me win those championships.. it was my race craft and experience. I raced 250s and 350s. But most of the time, the time elapsed from start to finish of my races was usually about 20 seconds shorter than the 750 and even the unlimited displacement races.. horsepower did not get them around the track any faster than me on my 250. when you hit the brakes on a 250, you can’t get the speed back as you exit a corner just by pulling the trigger. You have to maintain a higher momentum and get on the brakes a lot later. it’s all about momentum,It’s not all about horsepower. So when you say High horsepower is on page one of the man handbook, I never read that handbook, or needed it

I rode a 2005 Midnight RSV for 10 years. I have to say I agree with everything you said about the RSV. Great bike. I've had the new 2018 Star Transcontinental Venture for two years now (bought it 2019 with 1,550 miles) and it's a much different bike. The RSV loves the revs and the V-4 is quicker than the SVTC, but does not have near the low end torque. Both are great bikes, but I like the ride quality (suspension & handling) of the SVTC much better. It's got all the modern tech (i.e. cruise control, traction control, ABS, navigation, tire pressure monitors, CB, FM, AM, blue tooth, two ride modes, electronic windshield, heated seats, grips, forward assist, reverse, etc.) and is more comfortable.

@@gabbyhayes1568 The thing I like best about my royal star venture, and all of my 108 motorcycles so far. I paid cash for them. I’m one of those if i don’t have the money you don’t buy it guys.. I pretty much did that by flipping motorcycles. Every time I buy a bike, it’s for sale the next day, not advertised, but if someone wants to buy it, I’ll sell it, and move up to something better

took my carbs off in 10 minutes, i can also balance the carbs without the need to remove the tank

thanks GED from down under. If I was in your shoes, I would be panning for gold with most of my free time. I understand parts of Australia are littered with gold.. I had no idea Australia was so large. It is actually 1.2% larger than the continental 48 United States, not including Alaska… here in the USA, deer collisions are a factor. I have collided with four deer over the years, not counting, close calls, which number probably around 20. My wife has had three deer collisions, each of my two sons has had one .. two of my collisions or while riding motorcycles. 35 mph on my commute to work on my Honda pacific coast, the second was on my BMW K 1200 LT at 70 mph just after sunset .. I was lucky, I did not go down either time, but I quit riding at night, which used to be my favorite time. Favorite time to go if days ate too hot in the summer. Sometimes I would go out at 9 PM, and I would have all the highways to myself, getting home after 2 AM sometimes.. so, are kangaroos a collision hazard in Australia? I noticed that those overland truck trains have serious front bumpers.. Is that because of kangaroos?

Gold wings are perfect. I had one.. they are the smoothest. they are in a category by themselves actually.. it’s actually not an apples to apples fair comparison to compare anything else to a goldwing.. I just didn’t like working on them. Everything is buried or hidden or covered up. I figured it out, but I didn’t enjoyed working on the Goldwing. The one I had, I bought it 16 years old with only 13 K miles on it from the original owner. It still had the original tires on it. Yellow..

Yes I am a three time Yamaha Venture repeat buyer.. Now that Honda has announced they will no longer make gold wings, I wonder what’s going to happen to used big touring bike prices. It will be interesting

That’s surprising that a Honda has a glitch. Hondas are pretty much perfect. Goldwings are perfect,It’s just that it’s more time consuming for the mechanic to get at things.. as for gps. I used them every day in my company car, but I never turned them on until I was close to the area I was driving to. I hate hearing the GPS voices telling me which way to go for the first 90% of the ride. I just need to have exact details when I’m almost there.. I have three out of date Garmins.. two of them came on machines when I bought them used. my BMW K 1200 LT, and my 2002 Yamaha royal star venture…I ended up taking them off and putting them in my cupboard, they’re still in there. Don’t use them now that my phone has updated map programs for free. I actually prefer to use paper maps. When you have a big map, you can see where you are, and all the alternative routes, so when I’m just out for a ride with no real destination, I use the paper map to get a general feel for where I’m headed and all the different routes I can take.. like I said I’m surprised you’re having an issue with your Honda GPS. And the dealer can’t duplicate it. i’m not a gadget geek. But in my experience, most of the time, it’s operator problems..

Benezette pa..Home of the largest free roaming elk herd east of the Mississippi.. I have panned for gold near there in bradford pa.. that’s where I saw my first rattlesnake. I did not know we had rattlesnakes in Pennsylvania..I also saw my first forest fire in black moshannon national forest near there. I didn’t know we had forest fires in Pennsylvania..It’s dofferent when you get to that area along route 555, 120, it looks like a different planet. At least it did the last time I rode on ry 120 ,not far from Denny’s beer barrel pub, home of the largest hamburger in the world.. that’s also not far from the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon.. I stopped there one day with friends, it was very hot. I just wanted to takeoff my boots and socks and suck my feet in a creek up there. It was August. Even though it was summer, it was hot, and the snow had melted in those mountains months ago,that water in that creek was so cold, I could not put my feet in it.. I never stopped in benezette..What’s cooking in that place?

I had asked earlier in the post if a Ventura runs and rides as smoothly as a gl1800? My hands go numb if vibration is noticeable. Thanks in advance

Oh I totally agree gold wings are perfect, no doubt about it. They have the best suspension, they handle better especially at higher speeds,. Great seat, they’re as reliable as a sledgehammer, they are eerily smooth, as long as you’re not over 6 foot tall they are roomy enough, there are millions of trinkets available if you’d like that, they have no common problem areas (except for the four-way flasher control that sticks on, and cost hundreds of dollars to replace).. Gold wings are perfect. They’re as perfect as a Toyota Corolla. They run for hundreds of thousands of miles and nothing breaks. they are a Honda dealership service department’s dream when it comes to service.. no job is too small. There are not many jobs in service on a Goldwing it won’t cost you at least an hour labor which is $125 an hr ,maybe changing the oil and filter you might escape with a labor charge less than an hour labor or a throttle cable adjustment.. but when that mechanic has to start removing all those plastic panels, there are no simple jobs. They are the most complex compact motorcycles not only that I have ever owned, but that I have ever worked on as a mechanic. They make working on a Honda CBX for the Honda CX 500 & 650 turbos seem simple .. I have started all the way through to the finish of changing the topend ,including the camshaft which required pulling the engine on a Honda 350 twins faster than I could change the air filter on a Goldwing. I could pull the engine on a 750 Honda K1, replace the camshaft and the timing chain/timing chain tensioner, button it back up and have that bike running in less time than it took me to change the air filter on the Godwing… i’ve done both jobs.. I did some math. These gold wings are known to go over 200,000 miles 300,000 miles. OK so let’s say you do not do your own air filter changes on your Goldwing. You take it to the dealer every 25,000 miles for an air filter change. Just the labor cost of changing air filters every 25,000 miles for 200,000 miles, is going to cost the owner over $5000 in labor.. not including the cost of the air filters.. that’s just an example of how difficult and expensive it is to own a gold wing and service it.. I know there will be people that say that’s crazy, they could change an air filter in three hours on a Goldwing, but that’s not the way a Honda dealership charges , or any service department, they go buy a thing called the flat rate manual. They open the book and there is a schedule in there that shows how many hours labor to charge for particular jobs on most vehicles. changing the air filter on a gold wing is something like five or six hours labor.. if the dealership service department mechanic can change that air filter in three hours, In the business that’s called beating flat rate, that’s great for the service department and the mechanic, but they’re still gonna charge you what the flat rate manual says to charge. That’s how they make money enough to stay in business.. actually motorcycle dealerships are lucky to break even selling a new motorcycles. They might make a lot of money when bikes come in Brand New and if they sell them within the first 30 or 60 days. They will make a profit on that motorcycle. But the bikes that sit there for over six months or over a year, they’re paying 1% per month interest to the bank. The dealer does not own the bikes on the floor which is called the floorplan. But companies like Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, they will pay the interest on the floor plan for the dealer for the first six months, or if they take a bigger allotment of machines, they will pay that interest for as long as a year, and if they take a lot of bikes that are tough to sell, they will get those bikes at a lower cost, and, The factory will pay for radio ads and billboards if the dealer really takes a big chunk, that’s why you see dealerships far away advertising bikes at very very low prices, which hurts local dealers when faraway dealers to take a big floorplan to get those perks, just wants to unload those machines .. but with most dealers,the money they made on the bikes that sold fast, they loose paying interest on the bikes that have not sold fast. I’ve worked at dealerships that had bikes that sat for four years unsold. I’ve worked for dealerships that would sell a motorcycle like that at a loss because once they get a few years old it’s tough to sell them. A motorcycle that costs $8000 and he’s paying onepercent per month interest on that one machine for four years, that’s $960 a year for four years. I work for a dealership that had a motorcycle like that he ended up selling it for $5000. even though he had been paying interest on it all that time.. but it was four years old. Dealerships will sell motocross bikes pretty close to the cost because those guys are in every monday buying all the parts that they need from the hammering motocross bikes take. They always need tires, chains, sprockets, handlebars, plastic, air filters, pistons, rings, gaskets, clutches, oil, spark plugs, cables, the riders always need pants, boots, armor, gloves, helmets, that’s where you make your money selling parts, not bikes, but if you don’t give the bikes away, you don’t sell parts and accessories. So you have to give the bikes away in order to sell parts, and to have a service department that makes money for you.. you lose money on bikes, selling parts pays for your help, your rent, your utilities, your insurance, and the service department is your golden goose, and gold wings are a service departments dream.. I do all my own work, I can do the work, but I don’t want to work on a goldwing after owning and working on one..And I sure as hell am not gonna pay somebody to work on my machines.. Not only that, I like the feel and the roominess of my royal star venture over the gold wing. Gold wings are so smooth you cannot feel them running, my Venture is not as smooth, but it’s alive and I can feel it, I can feel that it has a pulse. It’s not a paint shaker vibration like some machines, it’s just that you know it’s alive, it’s a living breathing thing. It has adequate power, it’s just as reliable as A Goldwing, there are known for going hundreds of thousands of Miles trouble free and Venture looks like a motor cycle. You can actually see the motor which is the centerpiece of most motorcycles except for the gold wing.. I can’t even see the motor on that motorcycle/ goldwing.. it’s like having a Toyota Corolla. Can’t see the motor on that either. It’s so smooth that it’s boring like a Toyota corolla actually.. it’s like having a Toyota Corolla with a six cylinder engine. It will get you there, everything will work, and it will last for hundreds of thousands of miles. Just don’t Touch that four-way flasher button I guess the difficulty in servicing the Goldwing, and the fact that I was actually bored with it is the reason I went back to the not as perfect , but a snap to service Venture

@@Jodyrides I could change the air filter in my GL1800 in 2 hours...I do all my own work... sorry, the GL1800 is not as hard to work on as you are making it out to be.

@@frankward8003 you are correct frank. It wasn’t really that hard to work on my GL 1800, it was not one big job to change the air filter or to get the rear shock absorber off so I could change the spring to match the front fork springs I installed. It wasn’t one big job, it was dozens and dozens of little jobs. to put it in layman’s terms, it’s almost like having to remove the roof on your house to change the furnace in the basementThat’s a bit of an exaggeration but not far from the truth. if you don’t do your own work , you’re going to pay somebody in the dealers service department to do all those little jobs. lets look at it this way - The dealer mechanics can probably change that air filter on the GL 1800 in half the time the flat rate book says the Dealer should charge the customer. If the mechanic can do it in two hours like you say you can, the dealer is still going to shake the customer by the ankles for five hours labor. if you agree to pay someone $10,000 to put a new roof on your house that he figures it’s going to take him two days with four men, and he is able to do it in one day with four men, he’s not gonna charge you half price. I was a flat rate mechanic in four different shops. that’s how I made at least 18 hours pay a day in just seven hours, that’s the way it is for pretty much all mechanics. That’s called beating flat rate.. there were days that I could make 24 hours pay in just seven hours. I got really fast at changing the camshaft in those junk Honda CB 350 twins. I was the specialist at the one dealership I worked at that had seven full-time mechanics. I got all the 350 Honda’s… I could easily do two top ends on those machines in seven hours. and I got paid eight flat rate hours for each one.. The hardest part of that job was scraping the old head gasket off.. that’s assuming that the dealer had all the parts in stock which I hated to box up a motorcycle that the dealer didn’t stock all the parts… all mechanics hate that… but The fact that a mechanic can do a job in less than half the time the flat rate manual says it should take, that doesn’t save the customer any money because the mechanic is fast. The customer is still gonna pay for the time that the flat rate manual says.. it’s a lot like when a dealer pulls out that NADA, or kelly blue book to tell you how worthless your car is, trade-in value when you’re looking to buy a new vehicle. Car dealers go by the book, and service departments go by the flat rate book.. that’s just the way it is.. OK so now that we have established how dealerships charge in the service department of car truck, motorcycle service departments. keep in mind that right now labor is about $125 an hour.. at least that’s what it was last time I checked. So that’s what the person that does not work on their own motorcycle will pay per hour, and the flat rate manual says it’s five hours to change the air filter, labor. so that is $625 labor just to change the air filter on a GL 1800. That’s what people on the Internet are saying they paid, but they didn’t just have the air filter changed, they generally had the oil , Oil filter , Final drive oil, maybe they had the drive shaft splines lubed, at least they should, ECT.. so let’s say you keep your Goldwing for 200,000 miles which everyone says they will do with ease. And I believe that no problem so let’s say the person that doesn’t even change their own air filter , pays the dealer to change it every 25,000 miles on a GL 1800. That’s eight air filter changes in 200,000 miles. Times $625. that is $5000 just for the labor of changing the air filters that’s added on to every oil change for tire change or whatever. $5000.. that is more than I paid for my GL 1800 when I bought it used with 13,000 miles on it. That’s more than I paid for my current royal star venture that I bought with 30,000 miles on it, that’s more than I paid for my current 2019 Kawasaki Z 400 that I bought with 900 miles on it.. that’s how much I sold my 2007 Moto Guzzi Norge for last June, 2021.. that’s more than the cost of my homeowners insurance with $1 million umbrella policy, more than I paid for my ram hemi pick up and my wife’s Honda CRV, my Yamaha royal star venture, and my Kawasaki Z 400 full coverage insurance with $500,000 in liability coverage for the last three years combined.. that’s more than I have probably paid for shoes that I have bought over my entire life. when my wife and I go out to dinner to a place like Applebee’s, with a couple drinks it’s usually around $45 for both of us with a tip. That means my wife and I could have gone out to dinner over 100 times, that’s once a week for two years for the cost of eight air filter changes, just the labor, not counting the air filter.. so looking at it that way, that’s how much the unsuspecting GL 1800 owner is going to pay just to have the air filter changed eight times in 200,000 miles. Sheds a different light on it, doesn’t it? I do not criticize the dealer for charging that much because I myself was a mechanic full-time for two years, part time for I don’t know how many years until I got into sales of new motorcycles for 17 years part time, evenings and weekends January through May.. so I do not fault the dealer for charging that much because after doing the job, the first time I did it which was the last time I did it, A dealer charging $625 is about right..I don’t work for nothing, and I don’t expect anyone else to.. nothing is difficult when you know how to do it. I can do all this workOf course the first time was the hardest, keeping track of all those different size fairing fasteners and keeping track of which ones go exactly where. The only things I can’t do anymore is cylinder boring, or Kawasaki two stroke triple crankshaft rebuilding. I don’t have the jigs. Sometimes I have to go out and buy a new size seal driver when I buy A machine that has different diameter fork tubes when I change seals/bushings. But I can handle pretty much anything else, at least I have up until now, I did all my own tuning and maintenance and engine building when I road raced motorcycles, Winning six championships, and I was national champion two times on machines that i set up , tuned (mostly for altitude, air pressure, even humidity and temperature, there’s a big difference with a motorcycle that has carburetors when you’re at sea level or at 5000 feet above sea level) I learned to keep my machines totally stock, the factory knows more than we do,, so frank, that’s good that you can change your air filter in approximately two hours. By contrast, I could have my air cleaner housing off of my Venture, which doesn’t require moving any parts out of the way, or removing any fairing panels or the gas tank which is actually the gas tank. I could probably have each air cleaner housing off in under 30 seconds.. to put it another way. I could definitely have each air cleaner housing off of my machine while holding my breath.. that’s why I went back to a simple venture from a Goldwing. Because being an ex-mechanic, I have seen what can go wrong. Most motorcycles do not wear out, they are neglected to death. And my machines do not get neglected. But a motorcycle that is difficult to do basic maintenance on, absolutely positively gets neglected. when I bought my GL 1800 from the original owner with only 13,000 miles on it. It was 14 years old. It still had the original tires on it, original air cleaner, he never changed the brake fluid or the clutch fluid, or the final drive fluid, or the coolant.. when I asked him about the air cleaner, he said he never had it done because of the cost, so he kept putting it off year after year after year. it’s like several Ducati owners I know. They have Desmo ( no valve springs) valve systems.. A valve adjustment can cost over $4000 on a Ducati.. so the Ducati owners that I know have never had their valves adjusted, never… not even checked with a feeler gauge.. they can’t do the work themselves because it’s pretty sophisticated, and they won’t pay somebody to do it until something breaks. And that which ought to be done and isn’t ,is more expensive..

The slow speed handling and the looks are horrid on a goldwing.

@@frankward8003 two hours to change a air filter!!!? That is horrible.

thanks Lee.. I almost bought an ST 1300 just before I bought this Venture in 2021. I took it for a test drive on a hot day.. it was surprising how much heat comes off of that radiator on to the rider. Great bike. I know they are as reliable as a sledgehammer from what I read. but before I made a decision, this Venture popped up for sale, and that’s what I wanted, either a venture or a Kawasaki voyager four-cylinder.. I had just sold my gold wing and my Moto Guzzi Norge, which I had for 14 years, my fourth motor Guzzi since 1979. I just wanted a simple easy to service Stretched out rolling La-Z-Boy for an all day compfort ride, so I went for the Venture when it showed up on craigslist… and then I bought a Kawasaki Z 400 for those days when it’s too hot to be behind a fairing..

Your generation of Venture was definitely the fastest. I had an 86. Those machines had 35 mm carburetors, and they turned 12 second quarter mile times. The newer generation called the royal star venture’s have 31 mm carburetors, and they are in a milder state of tune (I think).. I miss not having the center stand the venture royale has.. yes that generation Venture royale you had would run without running with it…

John I was a builder/mechanic at a Yamaha shop part time in the late 70s and early 80s when the Venture V4 came out. I’m pretty sure the excess 1100 came out with a fairing and bags, dark dark blue and it was also called a venture.. yeah the slave cylinder on any motorcycle can fail. I used to carry the seal for the slave cylinder with me at all times. I probably still have it somewhere. But I never had any trouble with the brakes or the slave cylinders on any of my bikes because I always change the brake fluid every year and the clutch fluid.. Actually when I went to change the brake fluid and clutch fluid on my BMW K 1200 LT call me on my first experience with owning a BMW ever.. The Internet was full of warnings to never attempt to change the brake fluid myself because if I get air in the system, the brakes completely shut down in the machine needs to be taken to the dealer and have some thing in the computer reset, only at the BMW dealer. That sounds like something BMW would do, I know a BMW auto mechanic and he tells me that that is pretty much the way the cars are too.. so I was hesitant to change the brake fluid myself. I mean how hard can it be. Well those things have electric pumps on them on the BMW connected to the computer. And the reservoirs are so small, that you can suck one of those reservoirs for the brakes empty in probably less than three seconds because you have to have the key on. I bought the attachment to enlarge the master cylinders brake fluid capacity by about 10 times as much and I had no problem. But, when I called the dealer to ask if they would change my brake fluid. They said, three month wait, and it was $750 labor plus parts plus shop materials plus disposal fee.. I don’t like anybody touching my machines. In fact, I have never had anyone do any of the service on any of my 108 motorcycles so far. That’s counting dirt bikes, trails bikes, motocross bikes, quads, street bikes, race bikes.. as for the 1983 Venture. That was a 1200 cc. The only issues with that machine were, the water pump was upgraded in 1986, I don’t know why. I had a 1986 Venture. It was a 1300 cc engine displacement, it had The Vmax style diaphragm clutch upgrade in 1986, they changed the water pump, they changed the transmission oiling to increase the oil flow onto fifth gear and second gear. They made the saddlebags and trunk larger.. I liked the styling of the 1983 1984 1985 Venture’s better than the 86 through 92 ventures. I also have heard that the early model was actually the fastest one and the smoothest engine. But they did have a problematic second gear. That was common with some Yamaha‘s. All the triples had a bad second gear design also.. and so did the Yamaha FJ 1100.. there was a fix for the transmission at least there was a fix for the FG 1100, it required changing some spacing washers in the transmission for second gear. I did one of those transmission upgrades on a friends fj1100.. if you still have you’re 1983 Venture, you might want to consider changing the fork springs and the shock spring, and installing progressive suspension springs. It’s not a tough job, and you will never need to put air in your system again. I know as those systems age,, they have that on board compressor system, and they tend to develop air leaks.. you also have to change the packet of moisture absorbent for the onboard compressor to get the moisture out of the system.. I liked my 1986 Venture very much. It was all day comfortable. It was a bit warm if the temperature went over 85°. After I upgraded the suspension it handled pretty well. The only trouble I ever had with that machine was, the front brake light switch minded in the front brake perch on the handlebars failed, that made my cruise control stop working and I had no brake light, so I caught it that very day.. easy fix.. I put 138,000 miles on that machine. I picked up a spare engine they became available and I still have that spare engine for the 86 Yamaha venture.. A guy I knew through the shop I worked at had broken his cam chain on his 86 Venture. And the cost to replace the camshaft was more than it would cost to just buy an engine out of a salvage yard complete. So he bought an engine and I put the new engine in his venture. And I ended up with his engine with a broken rear cam chain. He told me he was abusing the bike when The cam chain failed.. I had to block off those vents inside your thighs on my Venture because the heat would leak through those vents on hot days. I would remove the covers I made to put on the inside to prevent the heat from coming out onto my legs when the weather got cool.. to get that battery warning light to go off on the dashboard of the Venture, if you install a 2000 ohm resistor in that line that goes to the battery probe detecting the fluid level, and run that wire with a 2000 0HM resistor to a 12 V source, you will get that light to go out on your dashboard and stop that warning system from telling you that there’s a problem with the battery fluid level.. I had my 86 Yamaha venture royale for16 years. I only sold it because it was getting old. I bought it used in 1988 with 6000 miles on it for $4100. I sold it 16 years later on eBay, for $4500.. I didn’t set the price, the bidding war did.. it still looked like a two year old motorcycle when I sold it. It never sat out overnight, and never sat in the sun, I always parked it on the center stand, I never pressure washed it, I never dropped it.. They are great bikes

I can tell by your accent That you may see kangaroos from time to time

@@Jodyrides...lol...

Jeff. east is east and all that.. how about this.. you believe me- and i’ll believe you..

I’m not sure of what it takes to remove / replace the rear shock on a GL1800 but I remember hearing Max over At Traxxion Dynamics say they developed a process to remove it in very short order. I believe they can change out the complete front and rear suspension in 3 hours if not mistaken. You can take your bike in and hang out in the waiting room to have this done. When I need to replace suspension stuff on my wing, I will spend the $4k and have them do it. I look at it as an investment since my Wing will hopefully be the last motorcycle I buy. I am 62 On a side note: I bought my first Wing last June. It’s a pristine 08 that only had 26k miles on it and it was methodically cared for. I have a few videos on my channel.

@@wingandhog traction dynamics will upgrade the shock in three hours for $4000 wow. I did not even spend that much on my venture when I bought it in September 2021.. You are only 62? I wish I was 62 again. I don’t like spending that kind of money on my toys. I have never had loan for a motorcycle.. if I don’t have the cash, I don’t buy it, whether it’s a new truck or a new car for my wife or a motorcycle. And motorcycles are not necessities. They are a luxury toy, a hobby. And when I get bored with something, I sell it.. I actually enjoy working on motorcycles more than riding them it seems. Preventative work, not blowups or crashed bikes. I never buy them.. I collided with a deer at 70 miles an hour on my BMW K 1200 LT. $5500 damage, that was 2010 $5500 damage. Probably would be about $10,000 today. I did not want to do the work. I let the insurance company have it fixed. I didn’t go down, I just coasted to stop with no lights in the dark.. changing the shock on the goldwing i bought, wasn’t one big job, that’s not how I approach maintenance, it was about 70 little jobs just to get the shock absorber off, and the same to get it back on. Take this cover off, take the screws out, remove this bracket, keep track of these bolts, unplug this harness, unplug that harness, take the four bolts out to remove the seat, ECT,

@@Jodyrides thanks for your input Jody. I pay cash for everything to. I don’t borrow money. Especially for toys. If I can’t afford something, I don’t spend. Glad you were ok after hitting a deer. I lost a close friend a few years ago who hit a cow at night on one of the backroads here in NM. We have a lot of ranch land here. It was a fluke but he didn’t survive it.

@@wingandhog 1970 a buddy of mine was driving home from school for the weekend to see his girlfriend and he ran into a herd of cows in his Oldsmobile cutlass sideways. He was going to school to be a body man, and he fixed it himself. He was pissed off because it did not even knock one of the cows over.. i’ve actually collided with two deer while riding a motorcycle, 70 miles an hour and 30 miles an hour. I didn’t go down either time, but I’ve also collided with two deer while driving my cars, my wife collided with three deer so far, and my two sons of each collided with one deer.. my wife and I go through 200 pounds of corn for the deer every month. We have as many as 14 here at one time, but at least six a day, the turkeys love it too.. we expect three of the females to have babies any minute. My wife feeds them out of her hand.. deer have completely changed my attitude towards riding motorcycles. One of my favorite times to ride in the summer was when there was a full moon on a clear night. I live about 15 miles north of Pittsburgh, I would head out around 9 PM by myself and ride up to Lake Erie and back.. up interstate 79 during the week, I would have the highway all to myself. I would see deer crossing the road, and I always thought that they could see me because of the headlights.. after my second deer collision while riding motorcycles. I started putting deer whistles on my bikes. I was at my local post office one day , A postal truck driver that drives from post office to post office picking up and dropping off mail saw those whistles on my bike and said they do not work. He said he tried every type of whistle or even the electronic ones, he said if anything, the start of the deer and make them run in the direction they feel safe, which is sometimes across your path to get there. He said he has the record for Pennsylvania postal workers and deer collisions, 16.. So I completely quit riding at night and early morning. There are more deer in this country right now then when Columbus landed here. We’ve eliminated all their predators

My second motorcycle ever was a 305 super hawk.. my first one was a 305 scrambler. Not the same engine set up in those two machines. The super hawk and the 305 honda dream pistons both went up and down together. The difference between the superhawk and the dream was, the super hawk both pistons fired at the same time when they were both at TDC, the dream engine fired the Pistons 360° apart. The scrambler pistons were 180 apart.. leave it to Honda to get the most out of that design.. but then after those bikes Honda came up with that 350 parallel twin, and that motor was not that good. I was a mechanic at a dealership, and I was asked to be the 350 Honda specialist. Honda sent out a notice to all dealerships, to stock seven top end rebuild kits for every 10 350 Hondas the dealership sells, that engine was a camshaft eater, complicated by the fact that the engine had no oil filter, and all of that debris from the cam chewing into the aluminum bearing housings and destroying the thrust washers, all of that metal kept flowing through the engine with the oil. The aluminum supposedly did not do any damage, but those thrust washers did… did you have to replace the cam’s and do the oil upgrade kit on your VFR 1000 ? did your VFR pour a lot of heat on you? I had a Honda 700 saber with that V4 design. Mine had the CBX optional fairing and bags. That bike roasted me.. I didn’t keep it very long cause of the heat.. I would have guessed that you had done 1,000,000 miles on a BMW twin. Those BMW riders in those days were the ones that put the miles on. Too bad BMWs sure ain’t what they used to be… I never had one of those BMW boxer twins. I went for moto guzzis.. i’ve had four of them since 1979. I’ve always had a Moto Guzzi, one or the other since 1979 up until 2021 when I had a Norge.. how many deer have you hit while riding? I hit 2.. One and 35 miles an hour on my Honda Pacific coast and I was commuting to work on, I had that bike for 24 years. I think the Pacific coast is the most perfect well rounded motorcycle in the universe. it broke my heart to sell it, but it broke my heart more to see you’re just sitting there when I retired. my second year impact was riding my BMW K 1200 LT. That happened at 70 miles an hour. I will never buy another BMW because of the fact they are so flawed. I have a list of what was wrong about that BMW, but I won’t go into everything that list is too long.. but I will say one thing. When I hit that deer at 70 miles an hour right in the ribs broadside, that bike never moved. I just coasted to a stop in the dark with no lights left working.. $5500 damage, that was 2010 dollars… that’s when I quit riding at night.. I used to love to go out at 10 o’clock at night and ride till three or four in the morning by myself. I would have the whole road to myself no matter where I went. Especially when there was a full moon in the summer.. I would see deer but I thought they saw me and would avoid me.. most of my bikes were sport oriented. Yamaha RDs, Kawasaki triples, I especially like the 350 and 400 triples, I always upgraded the shocks and put low bars on those. I had three of the Honda CB 400 F bikes, I had the first year of the Kawasaki 903Z1, Honda CB 750 F withthe. com starwheels RZ 350, Yamaha 550 and 600 Seca, fj 1200, guzzi V11 sport- The most uncomfortable motorcycle in the history of the universe.. I couldn’t ride that machine for more than an hour at a time no matter what upgrades I made to the seat and bars and foot pegs.. especially to my knees which I never had trouble with till I bought that V 11 sport. You move around so much on the sport bikes, but something about that set up was just tough on the knees. I only had that bike for 5200 miles.. I put most of my miles on my first 1986 Venture. 138,000. I didn’t put a lot of miles on any one bike other than that one because I’ve always had three or four street bikes at the same time until I retired. Now I’m down to just two.. my current venture in the videos is my 108th motorcycle so far.That’s mostly because I can’t resist buying a bike and I’m interested in, then I ride it to find out if I like it. Anytime I buy a machine, it’s always for sale, at a slight profit.. Where do you live that you get to put that many miles on motorcycles over the decades? I mean is the grocery store 75 miles away. what tires do you get the best mileage out of, what do you do about a seat? ever been caught in a hailstorm? Ever had a tornado pass while you were riding? I had one cross the road race track during one of my road races. I didn’t see it, but it made the local papers…

@@Jodyrides : jody, you're The Man

I think Yamaha nailed the styling on your machine and the stratoliner

You’re right Bill, they’re doing the same thing to cars and trucks.. traction control on my company Jeep one day, I was pulling out of the gas station, there was snow pushed to the sides of the road I was pulling out onto. Only an inch or two. There was a gasoline truck about 100 yards away, so I started to pull out of the gas station slowly. When traction control took over because of the snow under my back wheels, my Jeep stopped accelerating. It just shuttered and was moving about 1 ft./s. That gasoline truck was still coming at about 40 miles an hour.. my front end was on the road, my back wheels were still in the snow on the sides of the road. The truck driver gave me a blast with his horn, I nailed the gas, it didn’t do a thing. I was lucky that day because that truck was able to swerve over into the oncoming lane to go around me.. ever since that day, even when it rained I got into the habit of putting my seatbelt on and turning off the traction control first thing.. it’s a cure for a problem that doesn’t exist just like stability control. Placebos for idiots. I’d like to have been in the committee that decided to put ABS on motorcycles.. on my BMW K 1200 LT with ABS, I was going down a paved road that had gravel on it. When I touched the brakes, I had no breaks at all, nothing front or rear. That downhill section was about 200 or 300 feet long with a 90° turn at the bottom I was not going to make. Luckily I ran into the grass at the bottom of the hill and into a cyclone wire fence around an auto salvage yard to stop.. The only damage was a broken front fender.. I remember one of the magazines complaining about ABS on the Suzuki V Strom 1000. at that time I had a V Strom 1000non-ABS..The complaint was that it could not be turned off so you will actually have brakes when riding on fire roads or muddy dirt roads or slippery surfaces, I’ve ridden home from work several times in the snow on street bikes, once in 6 inches of snow. I made it, but if I had a BS, I would never have even got out of the parking lot at work.. my last Moto Guzzi, Norge, had a BS that I could turn the ABS brakes off at the push of a button, which I often did so I would have conventional brakes.. my BMW did not have that option to turn the ABS off. I suppose they will be installing automatic braking systems on motorcycles that brake all by themselves if you get too close to the car in front of you. Won’t that be fun if that happens while you’re in a corner not expecting the brakes to apply, or in the rain in a corner.. my son helped a friend put brakes on his car here in 2023. After they were done the car would not go over 45 miles an hour. I think it was a Buick..It seems that the car Hass to go to the dealer to have the computer reset after working on brakes, of course there is a fee for that, and you probably have to make an appointment.. and they probably won’t just push the button and you send you on your way because they would be liable if there was something not done correctly on the brake pad install.. no wonder Broncos and pick up trucks in beautiful shape from the 70s and 80s are going for over $100,000 on those television auctions these days. Cars you can understand and work on.. that’s the only reason I sold my perfect Goldwing. The gold wing definitely handles better than a Venture, it had better brakes for sure, it had a smoother engine, it definitely handled better once moving.. but motorcycles just like any other vehicle need to be maintained. Vehicles don’t wear out, they are neglected to death. And if they’re hard to work on, they’re gonna get a lot of neglect. That’s why I went back to a venture when one showed up for sale in such good condition and low miles.. besides, I like motorcycles that you can actually see the engine, which is the centerpiece of any motorcycle. After all they are called motor- cycles.. I don’t know what they’re gonna be called when they have electric motors. A buddy of mine had a Brahma electric motorcycle. That was the brand that has a manual clutch and manual six speed transmission. and that is a weird sensation because, you don’t have to pull the clutch in when you stop, and you don’t have to be in first gear to pull out, you can leave it in sixth gear all day and never touch the clutch lever or the shifter.. my friend took the advice of someone on a blog, and left the key on for a few days to completely drain the battery, in hopes that the battery would take more of a charge and give the motorcycle more range.. at least that’s what the blogger is suggested would happen…that was the worst advice anyone could give and it absolutely killed the lithium ion battery. When he called the factory they actually told him to get that vehicle out of his building because it is in danger of self igniting into flames.. my friend asked the factory engineer he had on the phone how much is a new battery then.. he was told that the battery pack has seven batteries in it, each battery is $6000, times 7 batteries= $42,000 for the battery he needed for his electric motorcycle. He explained that a brand new Brahma is only $21,000 that comes with a battery. The engineer said he doesn’t set the price. My friend ended up selling the bike on eBay for parts .. it looks like that might even be the future of motorcycles, someday. The only problem with someday is- Someday is a day you will never find on any calendar.. 1981 I was selling new motorcycles part-time January through May, those were the good old days before the Harley tariff destroyed the motorcycle market in the United States which still has not recovered from that tariff.. I was selling Yamaha‘s in 1981 but in 1982 I was selling Honda, suzuki, Kawasaki.. my best friend that I worked at my regular daylight job with actually bought a Honda CX 500 turbo from me, $4999.. i’m guessing that your Honda was the interstate that came with full fairing bags and trunk.. there were different options packages on Honda Goldwing‘s then. They didn’t come with the radio in the intercom and CB right out of the crate unless you ordered one of the loaded models.. 1983 is when Yamaha introduced the Venture. That also had an options package, you could buy it without a radio system. But in 86, all the options were standard pretty much.. Those gold wings were bulletproof. Occasionally, owners would install too many Christmas tree lights and blow the alternator or voltage regulator. Very high mileage ones had an issue with wearing the splines on the driveshaft if they didn’t have them greased every couple years.. that was around the time when tubeless tires and water cooling and fuel injection and electronic ignition and color matched fairing bags and trunk, and turbo chargers, and in-line fours, V4’s, in-line six cylinder, triples, upgraded suspensions with single sided swing arms, even engines that ran on the same oil as the transmission had just shown up in the late 70s with Suzuki which then ended up in all Japanese motorcycles. That The only bad design to come out in those days was the 16 inch front wheel on sport bikes.. but that only lasted for a couple years till they got it figured out..that was the golden age of development. When I sold Hondas in 1982. We gave out decks of cards to customers. I have a few of them still today. The reason Honda was giving out decks of cards was, they actually had 52 different models .. A different model on each card..

I have a heritage 114. It’ very refined compared to older Harleys. I also like bikes with no covers and unnecessary plastic parts. Never got the gold wing thing.

I'd rethink that idea.

@@jeffreycash3662 I didn’t know goldwings got such poor fuel economy that’s enough reason for me with fuel cost like they are now my venture averages Around 50 mpg’s

The thing about getting a gold wing is that you never work on it. Believe me, I own one. It will be the best bike you ever own, the most reliable bike that you ever own, the most comfortable bike that you ever own. And if you do take a wifey or girlfriend with you on trips, they will love it more than any other bike that you ever own. When you get 250,000 mi on it, sell it before you have to do anything to it,and get you another one. And I get 44 mpg on hwy.

Yeah mike. Goldwings are perfect. But they’re Tough to work on.. five or six hours labor charge to buy a Honda dealership to change the air filter I thought was ridiculous until I did the job myself. And to tell you the truth, charging the customer forfive or six hours labor is fair. I don’t work for nothing, and I don’t expect them to work for nothing.. funny thing. I always found it easier to work on someone else’s bike than my own bikes.. it took me over six hours to change the air cleaner the first time I ever tried it on my Goldwing, but now that I’ve done it. I could probably do it in about five hours,, especially now that I know to keep all of those screws in order that must be removed when removing the large engine cover that looks like a gas tank I hope you mouse proofed your air cleaner intake trumpets.. I have a video under my other screen name from my old phone showing how to mouse proof the trumpets. The title of the video is three words Goldwing made mouseproof that’s my yellow gold wing that I show the mouse bedding I found in the original air cleaner of that motorcycle that was in that machine since new 16 years earlier.. my Goldwing was a 2002. I bought it from the original owner with 13 K miles on it in 2018. It still had the original tires on it too.. I suppose it was one of those impulse buys.

I really like the Kawasaki 1200 Voyager. I think that’s the one I like, I think they were last made in 1992?? four-cylinder, loaded, Turing machine. I found a really clean one of those that didn’t have all kinds of junk on it. I drove about 120 miles to test drive it.. I took it for a ride and fell in love with it by the time I got into fifth gear… I have a little rule I impose upon myself. I never never never do an impulse buy. I always go home and think about it, and sleep on it. If I still want it the next day, then I make an offer. The problem with the Kawasaki voyager was, …it sold that night while i was thinking about it… The one that got away..

you might be right about the fact that there may have been a problem with my Goldwing on the getting low 30s for gas mileage. But no codes or warning lights..my plugs came out gray, not black when I changed them and they were all the same color… if there was a problem with the oxygen sensor or the mass airflow sensor, if there is one, the plugs would’ve been black, or even wet.. I put a new air cleaner in first thing, because the original owner told me he had never done that and he was not gonna pay the shop for six hours labor just to change the air cleaner.. I thought that was ridiculous when I heard that, until I did the job myself. Six hours is just about right. A pro mechanic that has done the job. A few times could probably do it in under four hours… I think I could’ve done it in around four hours having done the job once already I did see a video of a guy that put a piece of carpet down and laid his Goldwing 1800 over on its side to get the rear wheel out. That’s fine, but I don’t understand why he had to do that if he had a center stand. I removed that panel between the saddlebags where the license plate is attached, I unbolted the rear wheel, and it rolled right out from between the saddlebags. I thought that was very slick. With the way Honda designed that. On my venture, I have to remove both saddlebags to get the rear axle out and the brake caliper off to remove the wheel. Now it only takes a couple minutes to remove each saddlebag once you have them empty on the venture, four screws hold each bag on, no lights , no wiring, no electric remote control blocks on the venture bags, simple.. but I do have to remove both bags to get the rear wheel off the machine.. and I have to use a scissor, jack that I have videos of him on KZfaq to hold the machine up since the venture does not have a center stand. I don’t know why they did that because my first venture had a center stand… My Goldwing was perfect. When I was done, fresh, fork, springs, bushings and seals in the forks, fresh air cleaner, new, spark plugs, flushed the clutch fluid, and the brake fluid, change the coolant, change the final drive oil, change the motor oil and oil filter., changed the rear shock spring to match the fork springs, new OEM vented stock windshield.. I bought all new brake pads for the front and the rear in anticipation of it needing them, but I discovered after I pulled the wheels to put new Dunlop elite four tires on, that the brake pads were fine after 16 years. The machine only had 13 K miles on it when I bought it from the original owner, so I gave the guy I sold it to the two new oil filters I bought for it and the new brake pads that I never used.. I drove past the guy that bought my Goldwing house, and he still has it as of November 2023. I sold it to him in 2021… That was a perfect bike when I sold it. I just didn’t like it.

Congratulations. I still have never seen one of these machines you just got on the street or in a dealer showroom

Show room , went to prince edward Island and back about 4000 km from us performing excellently so comfortable a powerful bike up hill also loaded up no problem !

George thanks for your service. Friends of mine bought their brand new Hondas in Yokohama when they got leave. If they had been on a carrier, they could’ve brought cars back.. The old BMWs that got them they’re great reputation, I believe we’re pretty damn good. Do caddies in those days had problems with their bevel cam drive.. working part time selling motorcycles in the evenings for 17 years at several different shops. The last shop I worked in had a Yamaha FZR 750 - R… The “R”was more or less a street legal production racer. The engine had many different components to the street bike like lighter pistons, skinnier piston rings, very adjustable suspension. You could buy a brand new FZ 750 R for around $7000, but this machine this price was $14,000. It was a 1988 brand new, and it was not selling. The bike to have for production Road racing in those days was the Suzuki GSXR 750.. so the dealer I worked for was paying 1% per month interest on that machine for three years. I believe it was something like $120 a month. He lost his ass on that machine. But the ones that so quickly make up for it so it evens out.. A guy finally was interested in that machine because of how special it was just for street riding. I sold it to him for $8000. The thing that made up his mind though was, he was either going to buy this Yamaha or a Ducati.. The Ducati dealer almost had him convinced until he said “ i’ll even do the first valve adjustment service for only $3000”…

That was very low miles. I love finding machines with low miles like that

I dig what you’re saying about back pain. Actually the goldwing i bought sold to buy this Venture, it actually hurt my back when I used the Honda backrest. That was surprising. On the flipside of that, the back rest on this Venture I have now is no problem.. my favorite motorcycle out of 108 I’ve had so far, was my Moto Guzzi Norge..My fourth Guzzi since 1979.. I love to go look, I loved the gear ratios wide and well spaced, I loved the motor. It had a pulse, it was alive. It was a little lite,Yeah it had fantastic breaks, I actually had a BS that could be turned off, and if there was a problem with the ABS they automatically reverted to conventional breaks... it would display fault codes on the computer display on the dashboard if anything feels like an oxygen sensor, but nothing ever did fail.. to adjust the valves took about 30 minutes, I didn’t even have to remove the fuel tank.. Bad motorcycle had a soul… it was a 2007, I sold it in 2021 because, I could not ride it for more than two hours. The riding position was just too cramped for my legs… and that is the one unforgivable thing about any vehicle, if you are not comfortable on it, what good is it..

So what bike did you find to be more comfortable than a Venture Charles?

that makes two of us. The worst car my wife and I ever had right when we first got married was a brand new VW rabbit. Valve guide seals, electrical issues, the only clutch I ever had to replace in any of our vehicles ever, two clutch cables broke, in traffic.. there was a recall that made the car hesitate and Buck when starting out, that caused the exhaust header to break, they were all breaking because they were on backorder and salvage yards didn’t even have any left. I sold the car to my best friend they just wanted basic transportation to keep his Trans Am out of the salt and snow here in the winter., nobody knew that the antenna on those cars leaked water into the car and kept the floor saturated under the carpeting. My buddy had the car less than two years and it ended up breaking in a half straight down from the windshield because the floor was rusty/week.. that same buddy later became a big fan of BMW convertibles. He has had three of them so far that he buys that are returned leases.. he is a sucker for those warranties they sell you. $155 a month.. radiator sensor failed, not covered The automatic transmission selector arm that you could put into manual mode and shift like it was a standard shift broke, parts on back order, they were all breaking, not covered passenger power seat frame broke, not covered passenger power Window Control Center, Broke , not covered convertible top refused to go up, three dealers could not fix it, not covered, it turned out that the control module was in the lowest part of the trunk, submerged in water because the convertible top leaked my friend over the nine years he had those BMW convertibles paid over $18,000 just for the warranty coverage that did not cover major things his out-of-pocket costs to do the repairs that were not covered was over $12,000.. that’s $30,000 combined for repairs that were not covered and for warranty coverage that wasn’t worth it.. my friend is one of those people that doesn’t even change his own oil in his cars or his motorcycles, but he could make you a rolltop desk from scratch.. my son has a friend that is a BMW dealership mechanic. He loves BMWs. They are always having problems.. I know a guy that was a BMW motorcycle dealer mechanic. When I had my K 1200 LT, I had a question for him so I stopped in to see him at the shop. He had a bike like mine on the lift with the entire back of the bike removed all the way up to the flywheel. I asked him what is going on with this bike. He said the slave cylinder leaked on the clutch ruining it. I said what’s that gonna cost the owner. now this was in 2010, with 2010 prices. he said it’s gonna cost about $4500 to replace the clutch and slave cylinder on that BMW K 1200 LT motorcycle.. I guess here in 2023, that that same job would probably cost $6000 or more here 13 years later.. I agree with you. I ain’t never going out on that German vehicle limb again

I think the 1500 gold wings or the most beautiful of all the gold wings including the new 2024s.. when I was shopping for a used Goldwing in 2018, I was actually shopping for the 1500 Goldwing. I wanted a wine berry color/cherry red one. They always look like 1 million bucks to me. But the 2002 that I ended up buying showed up on craigslist., with only 13 K miles on it for sale by the original owner. He just lost interest and wanted to buy a 4 x 4 quad for hunting. He had never had anything but the oil changes done to it. So I had my work cut out everything from fork, seals, fork, springs, fork, oil, final drive oil, rear, shocks, spring, tires, clutch and brake fluid, air filter., Spark plugs, cables, lubed, all pivots, greased, and I had to Mouse proof the airbox. When I opened up the air cleaner box, I could see that mice were living in there, that is very common… I actually put a video on KZfaq of how I mouse proofed my air box. It’s on KZfaq under my other screen name that I started making videos with. But I don’t use that name anymore. The title of the video is three words.” Goldwing made mouseproof”… That’s my yellow gold wing taken apart in that short video showing how to put metal quarter inch screening over the intake trumpets on the airbox.. when I was done, I thought that machine was perfect, except for the four-way flasher module, which was a problem for many many people, when you would push the button in front of your left knee, the you couldn’t turn the four ways off.. I ended up, driving home, almost 100 miles with my four ways on at night. I stopped by the side of the road, call of nature, and I put my four ways on, when I headed back home I couldn’t turn them off, so I had to ride all the way home with my four-way is flashing… when I started doing research online, it turns out that is a common problem with that particular item on the 1800s around that year. That thing ain’t cheap either that unit costs hundreds of dollars used on eBay… I think that module new is over $600, at least it was back in 2018.. other than that, I thought the machine handled very well, had exceptional brakes, it was eerily smooth, it shifted like butter even though the shifter was a bit sloppy, because when I bought the machine, it had aftermarket floorboards on it, which can be a big problem, because, it says, in the owners manual to never put floorboards on a Goldwing. If you have transmission problems on a Goldwing in a year that the manual says not to put floorboards on, they will not cover it under warranty because they told you in the manual not to put the floorboards On… After I put the new fork and shock spring on the bike, so very light on its feet. It rotated like a machine to Weighed half that much… I did find it a bit cramped, it felt like the dashboard was right there in my face, practically, and I couldn’t move back as much as I wanted to, but it really wasn’t a problem. I’m only 5‘11“ tall. But for someone that’s over 6 foot, that would be cramped… The bike was perfect. I really didn’t have any complaints, but the thought of working on it for something serious, like I had to pull the engine and split the cases, or if I had electrical issues with that mass of cables under the engine, cover, and under the seat and going through the right saddlebag to all the lighting in the back, mounted in the trunk, and in all the bodywork and in the saddlebags. There was nothing simple about it. That’s what I Was avoiding, major problems, that I didn’t want to have to sort out on such a complex machine. That’s the only reason I sold it, there was nothing wrong with that bike, it was perfect, as long as I didn’t use the four-way flashers.

you are the first goldwing rider to agree with me about how difficult the gold wings are to work on. They are better than the Venture’s. They are smoother, more powerful, I think the brakes are more powerful, they handle better. They are more refined, that they are a bear to work on. That is the only reason I pulled the plug on owning my perfect Goldwing. Anxiety about having a problem with it. Just like Jay Leno, and the reason he does not own any Ferraris at all. I put a video on KZfaq here last month. It’s the only one I have of riding my GL 1800. It was then that I got my first GoPro camera that my kids bought me. I might add the camera to my helmet and turned it on. And that was the video that I have on KZfaq now of my yellow 2002, GL 1800 .. I spotted it one day sitting in a driveway for sale in my travels. I had just sold my BMW K 1200 LT, because I experienced what really happens with a motorcycle that has ABS brakes.--- Nothing. You have no brakes at all once that ABS takes over. my last Moto Guzzi had ABS brakes, the difference was, you can push a button to turn the ABS off for those times when you are on mud, gravel, wet grass, snow, which I have had to ride home from work several times in surprise, snowstorms, once in 6 inches of snow. I made it home, lots of wheelspin, but, I would not have made it out of the parking lot at work If my machine had ABS brakes.. Anyway, that’s why I bought a 16-year-old Goldwing with only 13 K miles on it that had never had any major maintenance done to it. Because it did not have ABS brakes.

i’ll give you a mini List of just SOME of the reasons I gave up on my BMW after trying for two years to fall in love with it.. keep in mind, I do all my own work. I used to be a motorcycle mechanic at three different dealerships. I’ve always been able to take the little screws and bolts apart, and put things back together with no parts left over… I was my own mechanic when I roadraced motorcycles, winning six championships in eight years, two time national champion, I can tell you, that was not fun.. so I had a Venture 16 years, I bought another venture, had that 4 years, I decided I should have the best sometime in my life so I bought the BMW K 1200 LT Nice ride, gorgeous bike, I didn’t care about the six cd changer in the left saddle bag, I didn’t care about reverse, I never turned the radio on any of my machines with radios or the intercom or the CB …They just need to be able to carry everything I need, weather, protection, and a good seat. The BMW had all the basics I want .. when I parked that machine on the side stand, it would pour oil smoke out the exhaust like a Kawasaki 500 cc two stroke triple when i restarted ..The dealer said that’s normal. Don’t worry about it. The back brakes screamed like metal on metal so badly, that I resisted using the back brake.. it was head turning loud.. I am not going to correct the spelling on the word break or breaks because I am dictating this. I’m not typing it. The windshield on that motorcycle I had to look through because I’m 5 foot 10. I could not look over it. It was the most distorted windshield ever. The dealer said he could get me an aftermarket windshield, but there was no recall on the windshield. It had a security system built-in that was controlled by the key fob. Every time I stopped for gas. I had to dig that key fob out of my pocket and disarm the system so the bike would start. a pain every time I stopped, because I don’t let my keys or key fobs dangle on a key ring, beating the hell out of the dashboard. there were warnings on the Internet to change the clutch fluid and brake fluid at least every two years because the system had electric powered servos that applied brake pressure to the calipers. I was going to do the work myself, but for kicks I asked the dealer while I was there buying an oil filter how much it cost to have the brake fluid flush. This is the 2009 price, $750, plus parts, plus shop materials. , Plus disposal fee, plus tax.. I bought the attachment for the master cylinder, so the system would not be sucked dry by accident while bleeding the brakes. I did the job myself and under 90 minutes the first time for less than $60.. I was going down a country road covered with fly ash on a downhill section. About 100 yards long. I touched the brakes just to get a feel, and I had no breaks, nothing front or rear. The ABS system took over, detected wheel slippage, and it would not give me anything. At the bottom of the hill was a right turn I was not going to make it that speed. So I ran straight through the grass at the bottom and ran into a wire fence around an auto salvage yard to stop on that 900 pound sled with no brakes. i felt lucky only breaking my front fender… that got me thinking. What if I had run out onto a four-lane highway because of the brake system on this machine. that got me thinking about selling it. Later : I was out for an evening ride just before sunset. I was in the middle of nowhere, there was a traffic light about two seconds ahead that had just turned yellow. There was no one waiting at the intersection roads, so I pulled the trigger and got through the intersection before it went to red on the lights. That increased my speed from 50 to 70. About five seconds later, a deer ran right across my path. I hit it right in the ribs with my headlight area. I pulled the clutch in, I did not touch the brakes, I coasted to a stop on the side of the road… I called the police because I needed a police report for the insurance. But they don’t do reports on vehicles that are drivable. So the lady cop gave me her business card with notes on the back and I could call her if I needed someone to verify that it was a deer strike. that impact caused the pop off mirrors to pop off and go straight to China. I never saw them again. They are just mirrors in plastic shrouds. They were not remote controlled, they were not heated. When I saw the estimate, in 2009, those mirrors were $492 each. That’s a piece of glass inside a plastic shroud. it was 14 or 15 years ago, those mirrors are probably $800 apiece now or more.. when I got my machine back from the repair shop. It was just like new, it was just a rotisserie replacement of the fairing and the fairing support and the mirrors and turn signals and headlight bucket etc.. so I’m online reading a review in rider magazine I think it was. Some guy was on a two week ride on a BMW K 1200 LT going back home to Tennessee to visit his parents. He was a writer for the magazine. On that trip, the final drive failed. He had to wait many days for the parts to come in to the BMW dealer that was doing the repairs. because the parts were on backorder due to numerous failures.. there were also pictures on the internet of a BMW GS with another failed final drive, the picture showed the final drive with a chunk missing out of the side of it and the gear lube was in flames. That was a report about final drive failures on BMWs. I brought this up to my dealer and asked if there was a recall. He said no that only happens on machines that are overloaded or pulling a trailer. That turned out to be not true about the overloading or pulling a trailer. That was happening on machines that just a single rider was on many times… Then there was the story of two guys riding in the iron butt rally Together on identical BMWs. That way they only needed to carry one spare part they could fit both machines just in case. One of the spares they were caring was a complete replacement final drive. That thing had to weigh 40 or 50 pounds… but they felt that it was absolutely necessary to carry that. What did they know? so I find myself not using the back brake at slow speeds, I velcrowed my key fob to my dashboard so I didn’t have to keep taking off my gloves to dig out the key fob. Every time I got gas so I could turn off the security system starting the bike. I did not use my side stand because the bike would blow oil all over the place out the exhaust on the restart. And. The second reason I used the center stand instead of the side stand was, every time I got gas, I got down on my knees and shook the back wheel checking the rear final drive bearings.. I never could get it out of my mind how those ABS brakes did not work at all on that slippery surface when I was on those cinders. I have been caught at work many times commuting on motorcycles like I did over 40 years now,and I would come out of work and get caught in the snow sometimes. One time I came out there were 6 inches of snow on the ground. I was on my Honda CB 400 F. I made it home here in hilly pittsburgh. But if I had a BMW with ABS brakes. I would not have made it out of the parking lot at work in the snow.. More and more I was not riding that machine on trips. I would ride one of my other machines and the BMW stayed home in the garage. I decided after all of those changes I had to make to my Riding habits , Owning that machine was a worry, I just didn’t trust it, and that oil filter I bought at the dealer was $26 back in 2009. How much are they today, probably 50 bucks. And by the way, I had three BMW dealerships within an hour of my home back in 2009/2010, all three of them are out of business today. I do not wonder why. that BMW did have a good faring, it had the best seat, thin, and shaped like a horse saddle. That machine was happy on the interstate type roads. But that front end that did not compress while breaking. When you hit the brakes when you hit a bump, that energy goes into the springs.. And the oil in the shock or forks, controls the spring. On that BMW, K 1200 LT with that weird for an end that no other company even attempted to copy, and those grabby electric no feel breaks., and all the weight, I never got comfortable with that machine because of the electric servo powered brakes, I had to not use the back brakes because of the screeching, grinding noise they made. It was Head turning when I would use those brakes. The dealer said he would fix that for $750 by replacing the rotor and pads with aftermarket items. add a bike night gathering, I saw a group of guys riding BMWs. I was talking to three of them that had the same model I had. I told them that I had dropped my machine twice in slow speed parking lots because of the way, the brakes in the front grab in the energy doesn’t go into the fork springs because of the anti-dive system. It just makes the bike a handful, and if you have the bars, turned, you better have strong legs. So I told him yeah I dropped it twice and I haven’t dropped the bike for over 30 years. they started laughing, and said, get used to it, everybody drops them, and they showed me their mirrors. They were telling the truth, everyone of those guys had dropped their K 1200 LT‘s because their mirrors were all scarred up… I had had enough. I didn’t trust the final drive, I didn’t like the brakes, I didn’t like how it smoked oil on the exhaust. If I use the side stand, I didn’t like the price of parts, I didn’t like that I had to buy special tools to do simple jobs like bleed the clutch. I sold it. That was my first and my last BMW.

Nine dollars a gallon for gasoline? Is death Valley in California? i dont know, i am in another country - pennsylvania..

@@Jodyrides Sure is

goldwings are just about perfect..the gl1800 6 series had a 30 yr run.1988 - 2017..plenty of time to work bugs out,although in the years you & i owned goldwings, they had that little glitch with the 4-way flasher unit, and that assembly alone cost to replace was not cheap..many videos on youtube with different home made fix’s can be found on youtube..my 4-way switch “stuck on” and i could not get the flashers to turn off one day..i rode home 3 hrs with the stuck on flashers flashing..when i finally got home, disassemble the left side of the fairing panel& got to that assembly, i was able to cycle the switch off..searching for the “fix” on youtube.. i was a bit surprized to learn that was a common problem.. --While typing this response, I just went on ebay to see how much those four-way flasher assemblies are selling for..$198.And the part is not OEM Honda they are selling on eBay, and that seller has already sold almost 300 of those units.. so that common problem is still common..So I’m gonna make a wild uneducated guess, and I’m going to guess that if you take your Honda Goldwing to the dealer to have that unit replaced. I’m guessing that’s gonna be around $600 to $800 parts/ labor/shop materials/ disposal fee/ tax.. not a difficult job for the technician. but it’s probably gonna be two or three hours labor at $125 an hour, which is industry standard now,Just have to remove that panel in front of your knee on the left next to your shock absorber preload adjustment panel.. i’m pretty sure the technicians have done it many times and they know exactly how to do it with their eyes closed..by the way on a Venture, the four-way switch is on the right handlebar switch housing .. I also checked for those on eBay. They only had used ones listed today, and many of them, the whole housing cost is anywhere from $12, to $54. that was the cost for the entire switch assembly that also has the Killswitch, all the buttons to control the cruise control, and the four-way flasher switch.. i’m guessing with inflation that the switch alone in that housing if you go to the dealer’s gonna be 50 bucks at the most, even though it looks like it should probably sell for under 20 bucks, after all, it is a simple on off switch.The venture flasher itself was separate standard universal plug-in flasher, $14, not an electronic module on the ventures, just old school proven stuff, probably interchangeable and available at any auto parts store, at least that’s what it looked like to me in the pictures.. that just is not something honda would take lightly..yet- that problem persisted year after year, many GW owners on youtube warn “ never” touch the 4-way flasher push button on goldwings.. now that I think about it, that is a BIG safety issue and maybe they should be recalled by the national highway safety dept..because you only use your four ways/emergency flashers, when you stop somewhere that is not really the safest place sometimes.. four-way flashers are a worldwide recognized signal that there may be an emergency situation you must be made aware of while approaching a vehicle with it’s four ways on.. I remember putting my four ways on in my SAAB sonnet one night back in the 1970s when I came upon three bodies on the road..11:pm..I was the first one on the scene. A carload of young kids, struck a tree--as the car was spinning the bodies were coming out the doors and the car rolled over them as it tumbled. Two of them were brothers. The Ironic part of that was, the driver was not injured.. I blocked both lanes with my car, put my four ways on, told my girlfriend, now my wife, to stay in the car. she was practically screaming..I jumped out of my car with a blanket, and I covered up the first body, I could see he was dead. The driver was babbling in shock” I only had eight beers, I only had eight beers, I only had eight beers..” he kept saying that over and over and over. I grabbed him and screamed at him -“snap out of it and shut up”..tell the police one of the other kids was driving”. ..When the police got there, 5 minutes later,the first thing he told them. That he was driving and he only had eight beers..it was a dark tree lined Road, and my four ways were the only lights approaching cars could see besides the thousands of shattered glass particles scattered across the road, twinkling like diamonds in the glaring headlights… I had already checked the three bodies, one of them was halfway under the car.. No pulse, no blood flowing from the open wounds.. I just got in my car, I turned off the four ways and took my emotionally shattered girlfriend home.. that was one of our first dates and when she went into the house her parents thought I had done something to her.. so I’d say four-way flashers are pretty important… I never touched my goldwing 4 way switch again after i finally got it unstuck at home.. that’s the only “problem “I had with my gold wing and it turned out to be not uncommon.. I can’t say that my first venture was totally without problems. My cruise control was not working one day. I kept riding without it. When I got into a small town, a driver behind me beeped his horn.. I pulled over, and he stopped beside me to tell me that my brake lights were not working. The lightbulb went off in my head, that’s why my cruise control is not working. It turned out that the little front brake light switch in the front brake handlebar perch .. the wires to that switch were melted at the switch.. the switch probably just stuck on internally, the spring or plastic mechanism failed..I think it cost me under $15 for a new switch at the time, and maybe 10 minutes to replace just using a number two Phillips screwdriver.. simple.. that’s the difference in a nutshell.

@@Jodyrides Wow, that's quite a story...can't add much to that. I will say the switches on the Wing are not very well made and last about 10 years maximum. It seems the grease Honda used internally hardens over time and once it starts, nothing can help permanently. I had to change both side switches some 10 years ago as well as the left side consule switch on my 2003 (which I still ride today). As I remember, they were about $125 each side back then and I can't remember what the consule switch replacement cost. Once I did that back 10 years ago, they have now started doing the same thing again in 2022. There appear to be two solutions. Rince the switches periodically with contact cleaner and exercise them repeatedly until the grease loosens up and the switch starts to work again. I have kept the problems at bay by periodically "exercising" the switches every time I go out for a ride...reverse, mute and 4 way flasher being the trouble makers. I have found if one sticks on, use a hair dryer and heat up the switch until the grease becomes fluid again, after which "exercise" the switch many times to ensure its still not sticking (at least for a little while anyway) That's about the only defect the Wing has which is pretty much nothing. Back when I was touring a lot (65 years on a bike), I was always afraid of coming out one morning in some small "blink stop" and getting stuck in reverse miles from anywhere. So it was worth the money. However, now that I'm 80, my trips are shorter and only day type trips as my wife is an invalid and I am her primary care provider.. So caution is the order of the day for me. My Venture in 360,000 kms of driving cost me two rear ends and four drive shafts, but the engine itself was like new when I sold it. A person can't go wrong with either bike; however, I had to buy a $1000 seat from Wingsoft to take the drivers seat back 3 inches to fit my legs. Every bike needs some customization to fit the driver but I don't hold that against Honda.

The Second generation, as far as I can figure, is 86 through 91 or 92. That’s when the engines became 1300 cc. 83, 84,85 had a 1200 cc engine. with the 86 models on, they had upgraded water pump, upgraded second gear and oiling forfourth or fifth gear, the top load saddlebags, which are much roomier and easier to load over those clamshell bags.. I have heard that the 1200 engine is smoother and more powerful. I never rode one of those .. but I can tell you that the 83 through 91 ventures were rocket ships compared to the royal star venture‘s. They had much bigger carburetors. And after all, an internal combustion engine is just an air pump. And if you can give it more air, it stands to reason that it can make more power… I was working in the shops in those days. Yamaha had a problem with second gear, failures on many different bikes. The FJ 1100, the Yamaha XS 750 and 850 triples, even the 1200 cc ventures… for that reason, I have always always babied second gear. I do that by not winding first gear up past 3000 or 4000 RPMs, and then slamming into second. If I make sure that I shift quickly to get the dog completely engaged. I also never never rest my foot on the shifter, and I completely remove my foot from the shift lever after every shift.. it’s not just Yamaha that had second gear failures. Second gear is the most susceptible gear to failing I’m just about any motorcycle with a sequential transmission.. Second your failures were not comment back when bikes didn’t make a lot of power, and they didn’t have a lot of weight.. if you watch any of my videos, you will notice that I short shift quickly into second gear. If I want to hot rod along, I don’t do that, until after I am in second gear, then I will wind the tach up starting in second year, not First. There’s too much mass, too much torque, those transmission shafts are spinning too fast to slam them into second gear, and make them stop dead with all of that inertia and torque behind it… carburetor synchronization: every multicarbureted or multi fuel, injected engine, must be approached the same way. After you’ve adjusted the valve clearance is the best time to sync your carbs. Because if you change your valve clearances, you change when the valves open which changes your carb sink. you have to look at a set of carburetors this way, or you will go nuts trying to synchronize the carburetors you have to realize that you have four carburetors, but there are two sets of carburetors at the same time. The two carburetors for the front cylinders, and then the two carburetors for the back cylinders.. you have to do it this way with your vacuum gauges, attached, you synchronize the front two carburetors together. Then forget about them. then you synchronize the two back carburetors together. There are screws on the linkage between the two sets of carburetors/bell cranks.. Bell cranks are so much better than individual cables. You can never get motorcycles with four separate cables going to four different carburetors synchronized perfectly. It can’t be done. The original 1979 Honda, CB 750 with sand cast cases. I could never get those perfect. I would sit there with a fan blowing on the engine, adjusting those cables, then I would blip the throttle, one time, and the gauges would all be all over the place again. so you have adjusted the two front carburetors and you have them both very close. And then you did the two back carburetors by adjusting the Bell crank linkage between the two front and the two rear carburetors.. don’t touch those adjustments again you are done with the front two and the back to carburetors at that point.. there is a third adjustment point in the center of the linkage between the two sets of carburetors. That is the final adjustment point. You cannot adjust that one first you will never get it set correctly. That’s the last thing you touch. You synchronize The front pair of carburetors, to the rear pair of carburetors at that Center, Union of the bell crank linkage. Then you’re done. it’s the same with an in-line for bank of carburetors. You adjust the two carbs on the right linkage first. The screw between the two right carburetors. Then you do the bell crank adjustment linkage adjustment on the two lift carburetors. It’s between the two carburetors. The final adjustment is at the center of the two pairs of carburetors. You are balancing the two right carburetors to the two left carburetors at the center point on that bell crank linkage. It should take you two or three minutes once you realize the sequence of adjustments… sorry for oversimplifying are going on and on about how to do that. You should try it on a cbx six cylinder. You need six vacuum gauges, but it can be done with just three gauges, you synchronize the three right side, carburetors, then you synchronize the three left side carburetors, then was just two gauges. One hooked up to the left Bank one hooked up to the right bank, then you adjust the center adjustment on the bell crank linkage… I use mercury gauge is called carb sticks.. The next time you see a walk behind, push, lawnmower, sitting out for the trash, get the gas tank off of it. That way, you can remove your fuel tank to get at the carburetors , and you can supply fuel for the carb sync with a small quart size fuel tank.. while you’re at it, throw in a new set of NGK spark plugs. Don’t buy them on eBay, they will probably be counterfeit spark plugs. Buy them at your dealer or you can get them at advance auto parts. They stock them. Don’t forget to blow the dirt away from the base of the spark plug before you take it out of each cylinder to keep that dirt out of there… while you’re at advance, auto getting spark plugs, get a tube of silicone, grease, clean and coat, your spark, plug wires from the coil, all the way down to the boot to waterproof it, and help preserve it. Those spark plug wires are in a very hostile hot environment. They’re constantly getting baked. while you’re at the carburetors, pull out on the choke lever and put white lithium grease on those four brass rods, then open up the enriching circuit when you pull the choke lever. That’s not actually a choke.. that is what is known as an enriching circuit. Those four rods that come up out of the float bowl, merely open up another passage for gasoline to be sucked into the carburetor for start up… I like to have minimum throttle cable play at the twist grip.. just so it’s snapshot when you let go is the only thing I worry about. A sloppy throttle cable makes for sloppy downshifts… Ask for your transmission. There is no place on any motorcycle that is tougher on oil van the transmission. Once you feel that it is more difficult to shift, or it’s tougher to find neutral. That’s the first signs that your oil is worn out. Your shift drum is having trouble rotating, your shift forks are not sliding on the drum like they used to if the oil is old and worn and here’s the Key point, the oil is sheared.. The molecules in the oil have been pulverized by the gears meshing under power.. motorcycle oil has higher levels of zinc and phosphorus, which gives the oil a high film strength to resist years shearing through the oil to make metal to metal contact. Car oil does not have the increased levels of zinc and phosphorus. You must use motorcycle or oil made for motorcycles. I use just whatever is on sale by the gallon on eBay from Honda, Yamaha, suzuki, Kawasaki. I don’t insist on full synthetic oil. If it’s good enough for those guys, it’s good enough for me.

@jodyfresnack4758 Thanks for the information. I could not find the oil I wanted, so I looked into the manual, and it said 10w40. so I used pennzoil platinum Euro full synthetic, Same as for my 03VW Passat. excellent specs. Shifting is lighting fast, and the engine runs well. But I was wondering about the gears you mentioned. When I go to Winnipeg next week, maybe get some Yamalube and replace it for a quiet valve train noise. naybe missing some adjustments somewhere. 2bd gear is never a problem on the 90 motor I wonder if a valve shim kit is available anywhere. I changed fork oil to ATF, and wow, what an improvenent. Night and day better.. Still a bit of stiction and looking into better no friction seals, but handling is excellent otherwise.

just got around to reading, replies, and comments on the Venture/Goldwing comparison I made. you mentioned you don’t trust the belt final drive on the Venture? Venture I’m talking about was the royal star venture with shaft drive. They made that Venture from around 2000 until 2013. It has a V4 engine. The new ventures are called star ventures, and they have an air cold V twin with belt drive. I should have clarified that my video was about the V 4 Venture, with that long time i n production engine, that V4 that they used in the ventures, and the Vmax, and they still use it in the Vmax here in 2023 I agree with you about belt drive. Chain and belt final drives are equal in efficiency. They are both approximately 98% efficient. The best drive shaft systems lose about 15 to 18% of the power between the engine and the ground due to the power, making a right hand turn at the final drive gears. If they make the power change direction 90° twice, as in an in-line 4 with shaft drive, the efficiency drops even further. Not to Forget the burden that massive final drive places on the rear suspension. You will just never ever see a MotoGP bike or a motocross bike with shaft drive that is competitive against machines with chain drive… belts have an Achilles’ heel. They are vulnerable to rocks/stones/pebbles. My riding buddy that I have been riding with just sold his FJR. He went down n weight 11:50 to a Kawasaki Z650. I can’t even get him to try riding my Venture, yet he puts up with sore butt, sore wrists, stiff, shoulders, stiff neck..

@jodyfresnack4758 that's great explanation. You know more than me on that particular model. FJR is great bike ,the only problem I see is, the manufacturer should consider to add a reverse gear like goldwing, and yamaha venture, it is heavy to push back with 2 feet, it's weight is 650 to 700 lbs depending on the accessories added. Any shaft drive they should make reverse as standard feature. Thanks for your reply

I like the looks of the GL 1500 better than the GL 1800. when I first decided that I wanted to try a Goldwing, I was actually hoping to find a GL 1500, but that GL 1800 I ended up buying only had 13,000 miles on it when I found it. Still have the original tires on it, and unfortunately the original air cleaner even though the motorcycle was 16 yrs old when i found it.. The only thing new on it when I found it for sale was the battery..Obviously , if you could change your air filter in under an hour on your 1500 Goldwing,Honda could have designed access to the air filter on the 1800 to be more user-friendly..

@@Jodyrides I don't think Honda does ANYTHING easy in the service department. On the positive side, they run forever.

Don’t you like Longboards?

don’t feel sorry for me because I made the mistake of not listening to people that have had K bikes from BMW when they told me they ain’t what they used to be.. I had to try one because i never had a BMW before that.. here are just a few issues I had with that bike, that weird front end that no one other manufacturer has copied. When you hit the brakes on a motorcycle. That energy of the motorcycle rolling at speed has to go somewhere. It goes into the brake rotors as heat, and into the fork springs on a normal telescopic front end…On the BMW, with their TELE, lever front end, the energy doesn’t go into the fork spring. It makes the bike feel extremely heavy if you have the front wheel turned at Low speeds, i’m talking about parking lot speeds. That’s a 900 pound motorcycle. You tap the brakes ,the energy does not go into compressing the front end. It goes into making that thing feel like a wheelbarrow filled with 900 pounds of dirt. As a matter of fact, the handlebars on that bike are a lot like the handlebars on a Rototiller, they are long and awkward for wrestling with that heavy motorcycle that has a front end that does not absorb kinetic energy into the fork springs… that bike is the most awkward motorcycle I have ever ridden at low speeds in parking lots or just pulling into a gas station. I actually pulled about 6 feet away from the gas pump when I would pull into a gas station, so the bike wouldn’t fall on me trapping me between the gas pump and the bike.. it was that awkward when I would park that machine on the side stand , and restart it , it would pour white smoke out the exhaust pipe like the old Kawasaki five hundred triple two strokes did . the dealer said that’s normal I got out of the habit of using the front brakes because of the weird front end, and I consciously had to make the switch over to using just the back brake at low speed in parking lots. The problem with that was, the rear brakes made a head turning screeching noise. The dealer said that’s normal but, I can get rid of the noise if I buy an aftermarket rotor and brake pads, $750.. then there’s the ABS brakes that do not work on gravel. zero brakes..I was going down a paved road that was covered with fly ash and gravel searching for a campground where my friends were waiting. I went down that hill and I tapped the brakes to maintain my speed, I had no brake pressure in the front or rear. I ran into a cyclone fence at the bottom of the hill to stop breaking the front fender.. The windshield was the most distorted windshield I ever sat behind. And that was a problem on that machine because you have to look through it. At the cost of that motorcycle, that windshield should have been as clear as any motorcycle out of India or China at least then there was the issue with the final drives failing. That story was going across the country and around the world in the late 2000s. Even two guys that rode two BMWs in the iron butt rally, they rode BMWs, and they carried a spare final drive. If you know how big and heavy a final drive is, you know what a pain in the butt that was to carry that thing for that distance, but obviously they felt that it was necessary to carry that as a spare. What does that tell you.. I do all my own maintenance. But everything I read on changing the brake and clutch fluid on that machine on the Internet so don’t even think of doing this job yourself because if you get air in the system by accident, the entire breaking system front and rear shuts down and you have to transport the bike to the dealer on a trailer because you won’t have any brakes until the dealer does a computer reset. So I asked the dealer how much it was to do the brake fluid change. Now I change the brake fluid on all my machines every year and it usually takes me less than an hour to do the brakes and the clutch fluid every year. The BMW dealer said that that is a $750 labor charge just to do the brake fluid change, Plus parts, plus shop materials, plus disposal fee, plus tax.. I bought the aftermarket attachment for the master cylinders to increase the capacity of the brake fluid so that the system would not get sucked dry when I turn the key on and crack the bleeder to bleed the brakes.. but the main reason I got rid of that BMW. When I bought that BMW I had already heen riding about 600,000 miles behind bars.But I felt like a beginner on that bike every time I pulled up to a stop sign or a red light or into a gas station. It was just so awkward with that front end, those grabby electric brakes, and that screeching rear break, and then the embarrassment of every time I use the side stand, it poured out white smoke on the restart. for the kind of money that machine cost me, none of those things should have been an issue. They are not good enough, not even close to the japanese .. I should have listened to the BMW riders that I know that said, the BMWs ain’t what they used to be when all they had were the air cooled twins that made them world-famous for reliability and long distance touring.. they were right. I learned the hard way.. It did have a nice highway ride, I thought it was a nice looking ,mine was a black one.. it had a great all day seat, The reverse came in handy with all that weight, I loved the heated seat and heated grips. But it was too flawed.. I just could not get used to it. I tried for two years.. so don’t feel sorry for me. I actually sold it for more than I paid for it two years earlier.. and I bought the bike I should’ve bought in the first place, my first GL 1800 Goldwing.. perfect bike, but the thought of having to do something serious like replace the clutch made me have second thoughts, just trying to change the air cleaner. I could not believe how difficult that was, on the Goldwing, just changing the air cleaner. I thought, if changing the air cleaner is that complex, I sure don’t want to get stuck having to change the transmission or having to pull the engine for some reason. The Goldwing is a perfect motorcycle, but the thought of having to do a serious surgical procedure on it scared me away. And I went right back to a venture, my third venture.. not as smooth as a Goldwing, not as fast as a Goldwing, but I hell of a lot easier to work on, and about 12 miles per gallon better gas mileage with my ventures.. that’s about 70 miles further per tank full of gas, and ventures have a petcock with a reserve position the gold wings do not… ventures and gold wings both are known for going over 200,000 miles.. goldwing i bought is much smoother but I like the much much roomier venture, and I think the Venture has a smooth ride even though the gold wing is a better handling machine, and has more powerful brakes.. they’re both great bikes, it’s just that the venture is a lot simpler. and the Venture actually looks like a motor cycle. The motor is the centerpiece of the machine when you look at it. You can’t even see the engine on a Goldwing, just the valve covers.. I think a motorcycle should look like a motorcycle. I mean I think you really should be able to see the motor on a motor cycle..

I thought Harleys had this scientifically termed “thermal efficiency “as far as gas mileage goes. Meaning, they get very good gas mileage. That’s surprising that Goldwing gets better mileage than your Harley.. as far as taking your bike to traction dynamics. I did the forks on my GL 1800 Goldwing as far as upgrading the springs, changing the bushings and the fork oil and the fork seals. That was pretty straightforward easy stuff, and it was not hard to get the forks off either..But when you upgrade the forks you have to put a matching spring rate shock spring on the machine at the same time.. The GL 1800 I bought was a 2002 with only 13,000 miles on it from the original owner. That bike still had the original16 yr old tires on it, the original brake fluid and clutch fluid, the original air filter filled with mice bedding.. I actually put a video on KZfaq under my other screen name with these three words as the title showing the mice bedding and how I mouse proofed my air filter. The title of that video on KZfaq is three words- goldwing made mouseproof-That’s my yellow 2002 Goldwing in the video. The original owner of my Goldwing did nothing to it. As a matter of fact I asked him how long the oil had been in it-he said he doesn’t remember..That’s what happens a lot of times. Motorcycles don’t wear out, they are neglected to death. When I got my Goldwing from that guy. The suspension was shot because it was never on the center stand all those years just sitting. It felt like it had flat tires on it The suspension was just dead.. would you happen to know the elevation in the part of Arizona you were riding through? Elevation has a great deal to do with gas mileage. The closer you are to sea level the better your mileage.. there’s more air in the air at sea level. formula One cars that race in Mexico City when they have the event there, lose around 100 hp because Mexico City is more than a mile above sea level.. when it comes to being charged in a Honda dealership for changing the air filter, for those who don’t do their own work, flat rate manual is what they go by as far as charging the customer for the time it takes. And the time is either five or six hours, no matter how quickly the mechanic can do it. The customer gets charged the “flat rate”.. when I was a motorcycle mechanic in three different dealerships. I don’t think there was a single day that I didn’t make at least 12 hours pay in seven hours which is all that I worked, when you are a flat rate mechanic, you only get paid when you’re working on something. If the parts department didn’t stock the basics, you had to put the parts in a box and put that aside and work on something else. Mechanics hate that.. I worked in one shop as a salesman, family owned Yamaha/Kawasaki dealer. They would run out of the basic things like spark plugs and oil filters. They did not want to put any money in parts inventory. Even though companies like Honda and Yamaha will give you a 30/60/90 day list of things to stock. They tell you what parts you’re going to sell every 30 days, every 60 days, and every 90 days.. you better stock the stuff they tell you are on the 30 day list like oil.. with the Internet today and fast shipping and competition. Dealerships have it very tough. from where I live north of Pittsburgh, there were 17 japanese motorcycle dealerships within an hour of me. Now there are only two, and those two are owned by the family, they own the building, and they are in long-term since the 50s or 60s .. Like I told my kids many times when they were growing up, it’s rough out there..

@@Jodyrides ... I DID see that video with the mouse infested air filter. That's what prompted me to open mine up and check it since i only owned my Wing about a month at that time. The previous owner is an engineer and very methodical in his maintenance process. The air filter was in great shape, but I replaced it anyway since I had everything apart. I am not sure what the elevation is in Phoenix but we passed through a series of mountain passes to get there from Albuquerque. I know each dealership is different. I do my best to stay out of them if I can avoid it. Harley and Honda. I'm not a professional mechanic or even an expert at it but I have learned to do what I can to save those fees

@@wingandhog someone that watched my video about the swingarm on the Venture sent me a memo that that is not normal to have end play..Side to side movement at the swingarm pivot, which mine has, somewhere around a 16th “… stuff like that bugs me. I can’t let it go. So I am in the process of taking the bags, pipes, final drive, rear wheel, and finally the swing arm off. I suspect that the original owner did the swingarm Grease job, because my shock linkage was well greased when I took it apart. But I think he didn’t use a torque wrench to torque down the fasteners that the swingarm bearings ride on. I don’t think that is harmful to have a 16th play, but I’m going to rip it apart and go through the motions and the torque sequence, 57 on one side for the stub, then 72 on both nuts..Good time to lube the drive shaft splines, and I’m even gonna change the oil in the shock.. I changed the oil in my 2002 RS Venture shock by removing the Schrader valve in the air hose and letting it drain overnight. Then I replaced the amount of oil I got out of a shock with fresh oil. The oil that came out was black. But after putting fresh oil in, I could feel no difference. I know shock absorber and Fork oil gets cooked. When I road raced.. guys I knew ran endurance races that were five and six and 24 hours. They change the shock oil after each event and the fork oil. It gets hot. So hot you can’t hold your hand on a shock absorber at times.. that cooks the oil.. Anyway, it’s noon and I am going to get after it. I hope to have it done in less than three hours

You know in all the motorcycles I’ve had over the decades. Even on my road racing machines,Or especially on my Honda Pacific Coast which I commuted on for 24 years. I have never had to do surgery on any of my clutches

@@Jodyrides that was a problem area on the Cavalcade. Grabby juddery clutch. Had it worked on at dealer with some improvement but I just put up with it. Probably same layout as original Ventures; clutch under right cover, stator under the left. Took 20 minutes to replace each spark plug. They all have their servicing issues.

@@Jodyrides same goes for electronic ignition. The Cavalcade had carburetors but if the battery had an internal short, it could be jump started but would barely run after disconnecting the jumper cable.

Well I just learned where are the clutches on the gold wings, at least the newer Goldwing after 2018. The reason I learned this from videos on KZfaq that owners of the newer machines clutches are failing, and of course clutches are not covered under warranty. Clutches, bulbs, tires, brake pads, and I think belts are what are known as consumables. I don’t think any manufacturer covers clutches but I was just a little sympathetic for the owner of a Goldwing with a automatic transmission set up. I forget what it’s called. But, this Goldwing on her of a newer Goldwing clutch failed two times. Wanda did replace it the first time, but not the second time in the motorcycle has very low miles.. The reason Honda told him the clutch was failing is. He was practicing slow speed maneuvers in parking lots quite often. The clutch slips in those automatics at very low speed, parking lot speeds in the gold wings, and they are prone to failing when driving slow apparently.. I remember Honda made a CB 750 in the 1970s with an automatic transmission, they also made one in the CM400, Suzuki also made an automatic transmission motorcycle, I believe it was a 300 cc twin based on its GS 400/425/500 motor.. I don’t remember Yamaha or Kawasaki ever making an automatic street bike, I know they all make scooters that are automatic, and Honda had the smaller bikes that were singles, and the best selling motorcycle of all time that’s sold more than 100 million motorcycles The Honda cub is an automatic/semi automatic, they may quads that are semi automatic, Moto Guzzi made the version called a convert which was bulletproof. You could leave it in low all day up to 70 miles an hour, you could leave it in high all day also up to whatever top speed was. It had a different set up with a SACHS torque converter. I have never heard of one of those failing , and I have been a moto guzzi owners club member and I’ve had 4 guzzi’s for just under 300,000 combined miles 1979 to 2021zx but all of mine were standard shift.. come to think of it. I have never had a clutch fill in any motorcycle I ever owned or raced. My race bike that I won six championships on and two national championships still has the original clutch in it. That clutch has well over 200 merciless second gear launches on it.. I understand using the wrong oils, like oils designed for cars with “friction modifier’s “can cause clutch slippage if you put them in some motorcycles.. for getting back to the point. I did see how you change the clutch on the newer goldwing With the semi automatic transmission. I was very surprised to see that you change the clutch from under the engine, almost like just pulling the oil pan and reaching up in there to get to the clutch.. that actually is a relief if, that is also how you change the clutch on the standard non-semi automatic transmission Goldwing. I thought for sure you would have to pull the transmission off of the back of the engine to get to the clutch like on a BMW K bike which happens to be more than $5000 to change the clutch on one of those. I had a K 1200 LT. I had an acquaintance that was a BMW dealership mechanic. I stopped in to ask him a question and he had a K bike up on the lift with the back and off of the machine. And I could see the back of the engine where the clutch is. I asked him what’s up with this. He said the slave cylinder leaked on the clutch. I said what’s that gonna set the owner back. He said $4500. That was the 2010 price. You know it’s over $5000 here in 2023 so my curiosity has been satisfied about possibly changing the clutch on a GL 1800 manual transmission .. it looks like servicing the bands for the valve body on a General Motors automatic transmission in a automobile through the oil pan..Not as bad as I thought it would be

I love those Kawasaki voyager’s. I went to buy one, I took it for a test drive, I fell in love with it, but the guy would not budge on the price. So I drove home two hours away, and when I got home, I could not drop it from my mind. I decided to sleep on it. I had trouble sleeping. I called the guy the next day and told him I’ll take it at his price. But it already sold. I believe it was the last year they made them, 2003..

@@Jodyrides yep that’s why I not even look at gold wings every time I see one I just think in all the pain and suffering for maintenance plus very costly in just the air filter my voyager have only 39458 original miles and have a very extended new oem parts to keep it running for many years to come . There are there if you want one check the American voyager association from time to time I’ve seen good bikes for sale but remember we all keep our bikes in top. shape good luck 👍

motorcycles, cars, houses, don’t wear out, they are neglected to death. Check the service records, smell the oil, stick your nose down there, where you put the oil in the engine and smell it. If it smells like gasoline, pass on that one, take the bike for a ride, at least an hour. Get the bike in second gear, leave it in 2nd.. hit the gas and let off Excelerator and let off completely. You are checking to see if it jumps out of gear. Second gear is the gear that is going to fail first on most motorcycles. And if it jumps out of gear when you do that, pass on that bike.. these bikes, do not idle smoothly until they are warmed up. They actually have heaters on each carburetor. Electric heaters.. Make sure you get the owners manual because it will show you things like, it has a 6 gallon gas tank, it shows you the three locations for fuses in the owners manual. Make sure all of the lights work, including all the dashboard lights. 75,000 miles sounds like a lot of miles to everybody. You have to keep in mind that if you keep that bike for 20 or 30,000 miles, it’s going to have over 100,000 miles on it which may make it hard to sell. Look closely at all the fasteners bolts and screws on the engine to see if it looks like it had been apart.. look for case ceiling to be oozing out around the head/cylinder joint and where the cylinders meet the engine cases. Check the title to see if it has a reconstructed or salvaged title. If the bike has been painted, it has probably been crashed, make sure one key operates every lock on that bike. if you have any questions, I might know the answer. Good luck, let me know if you buy it. These machines are not as smooth as a Goldwing, but you can get at every major component on this machine without removing cubic yards of plastic. That’s what I like about them. They are so serviceable.

@@Jodyrides, thank you very much for that!

Gold wings are definitely more refined than ventures. At least they are more refined than the royal star venture. Which was designed in the mid-90s and released in 2009 with a cassette player.. but they built another touring bike around that fabulous reliable as a sledgehammer Yamaha V4 engine that was introduced in 1983, used in the Vmax and the Venture and the Royal star.. I like gold wings, I bought one, I just was disappointed in how difficult they are to do minor maintenance chores compared to the simple venture .. I have nothing against gold wings. I just don’t wanna work on them. And I know quite a few mechanics that won’t work on them. The best mechanic I ever knew that worked in quite a few different dealerships, would not work on a Goldwing.. he said you waste too much time dealing with all that plastic he called it Tupperware.. you are right about the women..Every time I see a hot chick. I tell myself- “she ain’t writing to you cowpuncher”

My Royal star venture is 22 years old and only 29k miles on the clock, both my bikes will need a valve check before the next riding season, the venture will take around 3 hours to do, my VFR 800 vtec will take 2 days to check the valves

that’s why you have to have a minimum of two motorcycles. And they have to be completely different types of motorcycles because, if I were to go to Daytona from Pittsburgh, on my Kawasaki, Z 400. After about 500 miles, I would regret leaving my Venture at home all the way to Florida. do you like Aprilia. I like Moto Guzzi‘s. I’ve had four of them. I’ve had one or the other from 1979 until 2021, I continuously owned one of my four motor Guzzi through that time frame along with dozens of other motorcycles. They never let me down, they never cost me more than the cost of tires, brakes oil filters, air filters, a couple cables., never broke down on me, never left me stuck. They handle superbly with nice predictable, slow steering. They feel like they could be hit by a meteor while in the midcorner and it would not knock them off course… there is no way that my last Guzzi, a 1200 GT Norge, is faster than any jab 600. But Japanese motorcycles don’t have a soul. They don’t have a personality. Moto Guzzi‘s have a soul. The Aprilia’s are closer to the Japanese motorcycle. than Moto Guzzi’s are… actually, Aprilia owns Moto Guzzi. They bought them in the mid-2000s, and the first product of that new company was my Moto Guzzi Norge. Which the first thing I noticed was, it had a Japanese perfectly shifting transmission instead of the clunky agricultural shifting transmission of old… My Norge told you how far you’ve gone how far you have to go before you need gas, it had a Clock, thermometer, in fact, a snowflake on the dashboard display would start flashing when the temperature bowl dropped below 35° warning you that elevated surfaces could be frozen.. It had three temperature, heated grips, and electric windshield, single-sided, swingarm, fuel injection, to spark plugs per cylinder, the Bores of the cylinders on Moto Guzzi‘s were chromed back in the 70s because chrome wears like diamonds. It just doesn’t wear route. Then they switched to nicasil which is nickel silicone, carbide, blast it on to the aluminum, and that was the cylinder liner material. They don’t wear out. The crankshafts are designed on the drawing board to last 1,000,000 miles… They are quirky, they are not Japanese perfect, the fender’s don’t always line up perfectly where the bodywork, occasionally there will be a fly wing inbedded in the paint. The only reason I sold my last one was because it seems to have been made for someone under 5 foot eight. It was just cramped after about two or three hours. I thought like a baseball catcher probably feels after a doubleheader.. I never got into the Aprilia, or the MV, Augusta, which is a helicopter manufacturer in Italy also.. they are all beautiful machines, but they sure ain’t Japanese perfect or Japanese fast. And when you go to sell them, you are lucky to get $.50 on the dollar. You never get even with the Kelley blue book value says. It took me almost 3 years to sell my Norge. Most people never even heard of a Moto Guzzi… i’m going through the same thing you are now, the grass is always Greener, until you get there.. you are right, the ventures are so comfortable, and they’re so simple to work on, and they’re so reliable, and they’re so easy to resell, and parts availability is fantastic thanks to eBay. They have been using that engine since 1983, and they are still using it in the Vmax. they’re not great around town, no big bike is, and they’re not great on back roads especially if the back roads are not smooth. No big bike is. That’s why you have to have two motorcycles minimum. One for the highway and long distance, comfort, and the other bike for all the other conditions, like in town, or on hot days when you don’t wanna be behind a fairing, or if you feel like going out on the back roads, and spraining The speed limit with your buddies.. I am always on the lookout for the next bike. Near me is a Kawasaki Vulcan voyager with 15 K miles on it right now. A red 2010. I have to go look at it yet. But I am reading after doing research on KZfaq that there is a heat issue with those motorcycles. So bad, that they actually tried to fix the problem by putting an electric fan behind the rear cylinder, pulling the hot air away from the rider… i’m going to go look at it next week, if I can steal it I have to buy it. Then I’ll ride that one and Venture until I decide which one to keep… i’m open to many bikes, I won’t buy an English bike, I’ll never buy another BMW. I don’t like Harleys, and gold wings are way way too difficult to work on to do basic maintenance compared to just about any other motorcycle… what I would really like to have would be a Moto Guzzi 1100 breva . Or a California model. They are not Japanese fast or Japanese perfect but they are as reliable as a sledgehammer., and they have the best sounding exhaust. Listen to my Moto Guzzi Norge in the three videos I have on KZfaq. They sound fantastic. that is stock exhaust on my Guzzi Norge in those videos.. you can’t appreciate the sound just listening on a phone unless you have headphones. I watch it on my television with my stereo speakers doing the audio… I rode a buddies Aprilia a couple years ago. It had a very light fly wheel, I kept stalling it because of that… he also has a 250 2 stroke Aprilia, I think it might be a replica. Water cooled... I never rode that, but I did resurrect it for him when it got caught in a flood at his shop. The whole bike was submerged up to the mirrors in freshwater. I basically just pulled the spark plugs out, changed all the fluids, and it started right up spraying water out the expansion chambers for about two or three minutes.. I do know what you’re going through. I go through it constantly. Men are hunters, Forager’s by nature. Constantly searching for the next something…

@@Jodyrides Thank you for the feedback. I have been riding for about 18 years now, I started with a Honda cbr 250. From there I went into a Gxsr 600RR, which I enjoy very much for about 3 years. I had a close call on it, a school bus full of kids took me off the road, the driver didn’t see me coming, his left turn had a bling spot, and I guess he did not see the small profile of my bike approaching. I stopped riding for 1 year after that, I got really scared. I sold the bike just thinking what if. A year later, I said to myself, ” I love riding too much, and that others drivers actions are out of my control. I might have been going probably 20 over the speed limit when the bus took me of the road, I had to assume the responsibility as well. That’s where the KTM 390 got in the picture, the reviews where good st the time and it was a newer type of 300cc on the market. I had it for over 2 years. I sold that because it was missing the power, and on the highway I felt like a kite next to trucks. Then I found the bike of my dreams then I thought, a 2015 Gxsr 750RR, which I had for over 7 years. My wife in the last days of the Gxsr 750, on one occasion thought it would be nice to get a coffee, she requested we go on Gxsr. Once there at the parking lot of the Tim Hortons, I asked her, “how was the ride” she replied, “very nice.” That second I said,” I have to get a cruiser motorcycle, she has no idea what confort is on a bike”. She deserves to go out on dinner outings with me in stile, on two wheels 🏍️ 😆. That’s were the Suzuki M109R got into my life. I had that one for 2 years, I wanted the cruiser scenario without lacking the power of the 750 Gxsr . I wanted something in the middle, I was not sure if I was mentally ready to make the transition from sports to touring. The previous owner of the M109r, had installed a lowering kit to the bike. Me being 5’10” tall, and being so used to leaning the bike over it fell very unsafe, I could not lean the bike (m109r)4” without already scraping the foot pegs on the road. On this bike I had a little insistent where, I lost the rear in a turn and by God grace, I ended up sliding for about 40‘ on wet grass, and on a little ditch next to the road. It took me 3 months after my crash to sell that bike, thank God there was no major damage to it. It was only the pain in my chest from the impact, when I bounced off the bike during the lowside and my chest went into the handlebars before I went airborne. My Moto GP race jacket and gear did it’s job. It took the brunt of the crash. I have always felt fully protected on my bikes, I’m dressed to go to a racetrack every time I ride. Back to the present now, my 2009 Yamaha Royal star venture has been in my life for about 3 years. For my wife as a passenger, its confort in two wheels, the saddle bag storage and sound system was amazing at first, since I’ve never had those luxuries on a bike before. I cannot say much about this bike other then people giving me great compliments and fishermen’s thinking, “is this guy for real”. The day I showed up to a fishing spot by my house on the cruiser, with my fishing rods and a large tackle box in the trunk compartment of the bike 😀😀. For the left saddle bag, I have bought a cooler bag that fits perfectly, so that I can maintain my catch 🐠 , on long rides there’s no stress on my back, knees, wrist. It’s the most comfortable I’ve ever been on two wheels. I just finished doing the carburetor kit swap on the bike, this was new territory for me, I’ve never had to deal with a fuel leak from a vent hose in any of my other bikes. They have been all fuel injected, I like to do every repair myself. This one took patience, Faith in God saying you got this, just follow through, once I was waiting on the sideline for 2 months to get parts. The dealer wanted $800 canadian to clean the carbs 🫢😜. I bought the bike from a dealer for 13k taxes in, canadian 2.5 years ago. I’m selling it for $9500. Just to buy an Aprilia, I really like the 2017 Tuono 1100rr used. Now I’m thinking the 2023 Aprilia rs660 new. It’s the same price. When I started looking for a cruiser, the dealer was selling a 2019 gold wing for about $36000, frankly the Yamaha Royal star it’s a better more comfortable bike. It’s well equipped. The Gold-wings to me seem very robotic, no character whatsoever. Even though I have never been on a Goldwing before. They look and feel like an electric car. But For the sake of looking for the next bike, I think I’ll be shooting myself on the foot, if I sell the 09 Yamaha Royal venture. I just want a bike to get the old adrenaline going. That’s is where your advise takes hold of me, having a second bike would be ideal. I don’t know……..we have many bills to deal with for the 🚙’s, 🚤, 🏠, and utilities. I prayed to God once like this, on board the GXSr 750RR on the highway one day, on my way to work. God, you know I have 3 kids and a beautiful wife. Please help me sell this bike. It was 4th gear at 10,000 RPM, I didn’t know the 750RR became a weapon at this revs. I’ve never been one to push my bikes. This was a rush. It was a sensation between, this is amazing and scary. Amazing because the bike (Gxsr 750) is so capable, way more then I’m willing to compromise for. Scary, because if I get use to this much adrenaline I might be in trouble with the 👮‍♀️ one day, do to speeding. That’s was my rationale. The nail in the head, was when my wife asked to go grab a coffee that afternoon on the Gxsr, then and there, I decided it was time for the cruiser life stile. To now want a Tuono 1100RR is beyond me, is it men seeking for adventure🫡🤦🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️. God bless you and thank so su much for the videos. Ride safe everyone.

Chris thank you you might get a feel for how a venture is to ride if you watch two of my videos. Very short one is entitled Yamaha RS Venture smooth as Goldwing notice in that video that the two trucks that passed me tires are louder than my Venture is at 60 miles an hour. That is just cruising along on a cold day at 60 The other video it might give you a feel for what it’s like to ride adventure is the longer video. It’s my favorite Venture video entitled Yamaha royal star venture long way home.. It is a relaxed ride on a very windy hilly scenic road just north of me.. no music, no graphics, I don’t even talk much. And I don’t / wont appear in any of my videos .. it’s just about motorcycles, not me..

@@Jodyrides thanks Joey. The one thing I wasn’t crazy about with the FJR was the weight being super high up, not a veteran rider by any means, but does the venture feel manageable for your average weekend rider with some track days mixed in between?

@@bebopclownshow Bruce if you thought your FJR was heavy, the Venture probably weighs 250 pounds more.. The weight of your bike disappears once you’re moving. If your bike feels too heavy to move around and awkward, you need to work on your technique for moving bikes around. Make sure you don’t have extreme wrist angles, make sure you are holding the bike straight up and down as possible, don’t get yourself in situations that you have to back the bike out of a parking space, when your bike seemed downhill towards the curb. My BMW, and my gold wing both had reverse. I know that I never use reverse on both of those bikes combined more than 10 times. And mostly that was just to see if it worked. I just over the years had the experience to not get into situations that the bike had to be backed up, uphill to get out of a parking space. I always knew after the first few years to back into a space like that.. The reason the ride of a Goldwing or a venture is so nice is because of the weight.. that wait is your friend once you are moving. Did you ever drive a pick up truck that was empty over a bumpy road, and then you put something in the back with some weight, and you drive over the same road and it rides like a Cadillac. That’s what the weight does. When you go over bumps with a light motorcycle, the whole bike gets thrown in the air. But when you ride over those same bumps on a heavy motorcycle, only the wheels move unless it’s really bumpy. But the bike stays stable and the suspension gets a work out with a heavy bike, with a light bike, the whole bike gets banged around on bumpy roads.. that’s why you have to have two motorcycles at all times. Right now I have a Kawasaki Z 400 for when I just want to go out carving back roads, working the gearbox, picking perfect lines, hitting the Apex, setting up each corner to have the highest exit speed, and then getting to the next corner and setting it up. there is not a motorcycle out there that is a do it all. It’s either a sport bike, A standard which is not a sport bike or a touring bike, a sport touring bike, or a touring bike.. that’s why you gotta have at least two, and they have to be completely different from each other. You can’t have two sport bikes, or you can’t have tutoring bikes, because no matter which one you take out for a long ride, after three or four hours, you will always always wish you had taken the other bike that you left at home that day.. that has happened to me many times. I’ll take the big touring bike, and then I’ll hit some twisties in West Virginia, and I wish I had taken my sport bike that I left at home, or I’ll be on the interstate for a couple hundred miles on my sport bike, and I will miss my touring bike..

Cruise control, not working? Start with the switches on the clutch lever, and the brake light switch on the handlebars and for the rear brake lever… You can test the brake levers just by seeing if they make the tail light/brake light turn on and off.. because touching the clutch lever or the brake lever instantly turns the cruise control off while riding.. keep in mind, and the cruise control will not activate hey so you were at 35 mph or 40 mph minimum.. also, make sure your side stand safety switch is working properly. You can test that by simply starting the bike, pull the clutch in, put it in first gear, then put the side stand down. The engine should shut off instantly… The rocker switch on the dashboard just above the handle, bar clamps, when you switch that to on, does your dashboard indicate that the cruise control is on by lighting up the Cruise control dash lights? have the grips on your machine been replaced? Does the grip on the throttle tube rub up against the switch housing or the bar end weight? The throttle must turn freely and Snap shut, when you let go of the throttle.. there should be very little resistance, caused by an improperly installed grip on the throttle tube.. if everything I mentioned seems OK, try this.. you’re on the highway, turn the switch on below the dashboard that turns the cruise control system on.. If the lights come on the dashboard, indicating the system is energized, you know you don’t have a bad fuse… get up to cruising speed above 50mph in 5th gear.. push the set button on the right handlebar and hold it in for about five seconds. Loosening your grip on the throttle, your machine may slow down about five or even 10 miles an hour before the cruise control takes over and picks up speed… Try that a few times, holding the set button in while in Top Gear above 50 mph… The cruise control on my machine did not want to engage and take over at first when I got the machine. Repeated attempts at holding the button in after I went through my checklist, I could feel that the cruise kept trying to engage, but it would drop out after a few seconds, and the resume amber light on the dashboard would turn on. even this year on the first ride that I got a chance to use the cruise control, my cruise control did not want to engage right away, and then, when it did after a couple attempts, it kept dropping out, and I had to try again a few times, until it finally started working.. I have been able to get my cruise control to work, simply by repeat, tries to hold that set button in, and it finally started working. So I didn’t have to dig any deeper… I have no experience with working on cruise control on any of my machines that had cruise control because they always worked. My first Venture, a 1986, the cruise control stopped working one day.. I pulled up to a red light, and a car pulled up beside me, and the driver told me that my brake light was not working. I instantly realized that is why my cruise control is not working. My handlebar perch mounted brake light switch had melted / failed.. that’s the built-in fail safe design that all cruise control systems have.. Good luck, let me know what happens

@@Jodyrides thank you SO much for taking the time to help..I will let you know what I find- thanks again!

@@eastofthegoodones.1391 I just made a video because of your question about your cruise control not working. It is on KZfaq now, the title of it is, Yamaha venture cruise control, not working check

I had a 2002 Yamaha midnight Venture, with the studded seats and back rests. All black, all factory paint.. it had the look if that’s what you’re looking for. it looked so much like a Harley that Harley riders actually started waving to me, and I am completely not used to that, never having had a Harley ever.. As far as you wanting a fairing and the touring package, that’s why you have to have two bikes minimum. And they really should be completely different types of motorcycles because. I many times had two similar bikes, and three hours out, I always started thinking, maybe I should’ve rode the other one.. it never fails. Just last weekend, the temperature here in Pennsylvania was in the mid60s. I had planned to ride my Kawasaki Z 400 with friends on back roads, because of the temperature though, I ended up taking my Venture, and I was glad that I did, because one of my buddies that was wearing a mesh jacket, was complaining about how cold it was until around noon, from then on, the temperature got up into the upper 70s, then I wished I had rode my Kawasaki it only has a fly screen.. I have yet to find the perfect all-around motorcycle that can do at all. That’s why I have to have at least two completely different types of street bikes.. I think the seats were on my 2002 Venture and my current 2008 Venture are pretty much identical.. all of these touring machines are extremely researched and developed for comfort. At first I thought that the seat would be too soft, because it looks like it would be too soft with those softish looking tops, but there was no pinching , I have not been doing a lot of shifting around or needing a lot of breaks even in warm weather because of the seat. I think you’re always always going to find somebody that buys an aftermarket expensive seat that Is definitely going to say that the money they spent on an aftermarket seat was well spent .. I myself have not had A bad seed on any of my three ventures or my GL 1800 Goldwing or even my BMW K 1200 LT which I think actually had the best seed of all 5 of those machines.. I think that a motorcycle saddle should look very similar to a horse saddle at least from a comfort standpoint.. I would rate the BMW K 1200 LT seat is the best seat I ever tried. The second best seat ever was on my Honda Pacific coast which I commuted on for 24 years.. The stock seat on the Pacific coast is too soft. It is wide enough, but it is too soft and it pinches and gets clammy and you’re always shifting around after of the first two or three hours on hot days even though the Pacific coast did not put any heat on you at all. So I replaced the stock seat with a Corbin seed made for the Pacific coast, and that was the second best seat I ever experienced. And it looked just like a horse saddle, thin and very contoured, exactly like a horse saddle.. that’s why I expected the Venture seat tonight be as comfortable as it is because it does not look like a horse saddle. It looks very overstuffed and soft. I like it. I didn’t think I would.. as far as speakers on the Venture, or any other motorcycle, I’m not the guy to ask. Although all of my big touring bikes came with AM/FM, intercom, CB, either cassette or six CD changer from the factory as well as headsets, four speakers two in the front two in the back. If you add up all the time I listened to the sound systems on any of my big touring bikes, I guarantee it’s not more than five minutes total. I actually took the radio out of my first venture, 1986 Venture Royale, you could remove the Radio/cassette player with the ignition key, and the machine came from the factory with a cover to cover the hole where the radio was in the left side fairing panel. I took the stock radio out and put it in my cupboard in my garage and it sat in there for 16 years.. when I sold my GL 1800 Goldwing in June 2021, I could not demonstrate to the new owner how to turn the radio on because I had never done it. So I’m the wrong guy to ask about sound systems.. you should check out my other royal star venture videos that I do maintenance on, everything from changing the oil in the shock which is pretty easy, to removing the swingarm and driveshaft, changing and balancing tires/wheels. Just generally going over the machine and checking everything and servicing things like clutch fluid, brake fluid, adding air to the air forks and shock in one second. I show you how to do that in my videos.. I don’t think you can go wrong buying a venture .. they are so easy to work on, so you don’t have to marry the dealer like probably most people have to do with a Goldwing. I have in one of my videos comparing the venture to the gold wing after owning both. And a little things like, a Honda dealership will charge you five hours for the labor just to change the air cleaner on a goldwing.. having been a motorcycle mechanic for years, I did the job myself, my very first Goldwing air cleaner change. I thought five hours was ridiculous. It turns out that that was just about right. That thing is really buried under a lot of plastic and electronic components like your cruise control center. It’s probably about 80 little jobs just to get to the air cleaner.. on the flipside, on the ventures, you only need a Phillips screwdriver and a 10 mm wrench to change the air cleaners, there are two of them.. you should watch some videos i put on youtube about the ventures.. you might pick up a couple things you didn’t know.. I don’t know what part of the world you live in, I am in Pennsylvania USA. We get about eight months of riding weather here. And right about September 1, that’s when you can really pick up a street bike at a reduced price from a private owner.. it’s completely different after February 1, that’s when football season is over or just about to be, everyone is going to get their income tax return and they know how big it’s gonna be, and they have cabin fever, so that is when prices are high on street bikes, At least here in the Northeast. I sold motorcycles part time from January through May for 17 years. I always quit on June 1 because show rooms were deserted after that because, anyone that was going to buy a motorcycle already had it by June 1. And any motorcycles that did not sell used by June 1, we’re either over priced, or they were not worth buying.. good luck on your midnight venture. Make sure the rear shock absorber is not leaking, if it is you can have it rebuilt pretty cheap if you shop on the Internet. I would make sure that it has never been crashed.. I would check the title to make sure it is not a reconstructed/salvaged title, and I would make sure that the numbers on the title match the numbers on the frame.. I actually have a video about buying your first motorcycle, and I point a lot of the things out to people that have never bought a motorcycle before. And I start off with telling people about calling your insurance man first to find out what it’s gonna cost. And checking the frame numbers against the title numbers, and then checking the title to see if it was a reconstructed or salvaged motorcycle which means it was totaled and repaired, and that is A completely different story when it comes to getting it insured, and if it is stolen or totaled, the insurance company won’t pay you 100 cents on a dollar for a vehicle that was totaled at one time.Then I go into telling how you check the tracking, examine the motor to see if the fasteners/nuts and bolts and screw heads that have had wrenches on them very often, look for gasket sealant oozing out on the side cases or head gasket or base gasket which would show that the engine had serious work done to it for some reason. You should check that video out .. you might pick up something I never thought of.. Open the oil filler cap and smell the oil inside the engine. If it smells like gasoline, pass on that one.. Get the owner to explain how he washes his motorcycle. If it is absolutely spotless, that means he pressure washed it. Pressure washers are terrible to motorcycles.. just look under the gas tank get all of that carburetor linkage that should have white lithium grease on the choke/enrichment circuit linkage and on the bell crank linkage. If somebody pressure washes under there, there goes all your lubrication.. I point out in a couple of my videos that I have never ever washed a motorcycle with soap and water and a hose over the past 30 or more years. I have never done it on a street bike. There are spray cleaners that you can spray on your bike and wipe them off with a microfiber towel, and it will not scratch your paint. I use the Honda spray detailer that I buy by the case. They sell more of that than any other single item in their entire inventory.. look at my machine in the videos. I am not a polisher, I don’t mind a little dirt or dust, but that’s all I ever use on my motorcycles is that Honda spray detailer and never use paper towels especially on your windshields or face shield. Paper towels will scratch the shit out of it. anyway good luck on your possible purchase of a midnight Venture.. it’s tough to evaluate them without ever seeing them, but I would go over that machine like a fly on fly paper before I would whip out my cash.. just keep in mind, that bike is going to be another year old in a few months. You really can’t go by years of age on a motorcycle especially if it is written only part of the year, I go strictly by mileage and if it is stock.. adding creature comforts does not add to the value, having a new set of tires on the machine does not increase the value, it only prevents the machine from being worth less.. A motorcycle is worth what it’s worth, minus what it needs. And very rarely do is add it on accessories increase the value. It only works one way for some reason.. Good luck

89 ventures i know were the fastest generation 89-90s.. my 86 venture did trickle gas on the ground 2 times… both times, that happened when it was the first start up of the season after sitting for months during the winter. I went back to bike out of the garage, and start it up, and it would cough and choke for a while until the carbs woke up.. I don’t know/or remember if the early 1980s ventures had heaters on the carburetors. I do know that my 2008 royal star venture has heaters. I do not know their function other than, something needs heat , maybe it’s for the initial cold start, I know they don’t have automatic chokes, they don’t even have chokes. They have something called an enriching circuit. When you pull your choke rod out on your venture, you will see A little brass rod that the linkage pulls out all four of them on all four carburetors. That has a rubber plunger like device on the end of those rods. That simply opens up a second passage for gasoline to be drawn into the carburetors, because the fuel does not vaporized when it’s cold, so with carburetors, the enriching circuit dumps a lot more fuel in, that’s why it’s called an enriching circuit, because the fuel is not atomizing or vaporizing as it should until everything warms up. That is actually the most corrosive time for your engine, especially for water cooled engines.. Cold start up.. because, the cylinder walls take a while to warm up ..because they are water cooled, The warm up takes longer. The problem with that is, the incoming fuel condensers on the cylinder walls, just like humidity condenses on a cold glass of iced tea in the summer. That condensed fuel there’s not lubrication, in fact, it tends to wash away lubrication on the cylinder and piston skirt and piston rings.. that’s why you want to warm your engine up before putting stress on it by pulling away. It says that in my owners manual. I know the government wants you to put your car in gear and start driving away after a few seconds with your car, but I’m gonna go with what the engineers at Yamaha say. Warm it up first. But it’s not a good thing to leave the enriching circuit on for a long time.. soon as my machines will run without the choke/enriching circuit on, I turn it off even if I have to gently use a little more throttle to bring the idle up a bit.. as for my 86 Venture discharging raw gas out of one of the overflow tubes under the bike those two times over 16 years of ownership. That went away after the first ride both years that that happened because I checked it closely every time I stopped after that. And it actually became a habit to check.. I got into the habit of always turning the petcock off on any motorcycle I have it has a petcock I bought a half a mile before I get to my driveway just before I park my machines for the winter.. I do that in case one of these floats overflows because the needle and seat may have a speck of crud preventing the fuel from shutting off completely. This can be a big problem especially on motorcycles that have the fuel tank above the engine. I have seen this happen The fuel will trickle from the gas tank into the carburetor that has a bad seat, and sometimes that gasoline leaks into the cylinder of the engine, past the rings, down into the crank case. That destroys the oil. It will not lubricate correctly. I want you to open the engine oil fill screw on your venture and smell it. If you have to stick something down inside there to get a sample of the oil on a pencil or a straw, and smell the oil. If it smells like gas, don’t even start that bike.. in fact, I would buy a gallon of regular cheap oil, run that oil for a while till it gets warm, and drain it, that will rinse some/ not all the crud out.. The only way you can get about 95% of the sludge, grit, gum, soot, acid, Metal particles, and corrosion out of any Engine that has been sitting, is to get that oil up to operating temperature by riding it, not by letting it idle. Motorcycle engines can you take as long as 45 minutes to reach full operating oil temperature. Do you want to have some high flow turbulence going on in that oil pan and through that engine to loosen all of that crud and particles embedded in the crud to get suspended in the detergent of the oil. And when you get home, you wanna let that oil drain overnight.. I always let all my oils drain overnight. One time I got the cap off of a spray paint can, I imagine that’s probably a third of a cup size, maybe 4 ounces… after draining my oil for about 10 minutes. I removed the large pan of oil and I put that spray paint can lid under the bike overnight to see how much extra oil comes out… The next morning. That cap was full and there was a circle about 12 inches in diameter of oil that has spilled on my garage floor. That is how much oil drains overnight.. I’m gonna stop here and I will start another reply because when they get big like this, sometimes they won’t go through on KZfaq.

part two on your venture, 1989, he improved second gear. Second gear is the gear most vulnerable to failure on all motorcycles. Baby second gear. Don’t take your motorcycle up above 3500 RPMs are 4000 RPMs on every shift from 1st to 2nd. That’s a lot of spinning torque . Those little tabs on the sides of the gears are called dogs. They have to slide sideways when you shift and index into holes on the gear beside the gear with the dogs. you want to always let off the gas in a coordinated Rhythm between your right hand, your left hand, and your left foot. So there is no load on the dog when you rotate that shift drum/shift fork/to make that transmission disengage first gear and slide into second gear engagement. I only bring this up because the early Venture’s had a weak second gear..They don’t call transmissions crash boxes for nothing. That is a very violent action that takes place when you shift gears. Letting off the gas slightly on every shift takes the load off of the dog so it can slide easily to disengage from one gear, and the dog on second gear can easily index with the slot on the gear it supposed to mesh with.. your 89 Venture had no common flaw.. The first three years of the 1200 ventures had clutch problem, I don’t know what the exact problem was with the 1200 ventures, but they did change the clutch for 1986, second gear problem, water pump redesign. After that, they were perfect..They gave the 1300 venture engine an updated water pump, second gear, and the diaphragm type clutch used in the Vmax.. your machine has an onboard compressor mounted in the floor of the trunk for the air suspension system. That is supposed to be serviced and have the water absorption decadent material changed periodically or you will have air pump problems/leaks I would suggest buying a set of Progressive brand fork springs and shock spring. They are not that difficult to install, and you should be changing your fork oil anyway, so those fork springs have been under compression with all that weight on it for 33 years.. same for the rear shock spring. They get tired/fatigue. when I installed progressive fork springs and shocks spring on my 86 Venture. It was a completely different motorcycle. The handling was crisp, the suspension compliance over bumps and ripples in the road did not upset the steering or the handling. And, when you put Progressive brand fork springs and shock spring on your machine, you’ll never need air.. The spring rates do you not need air assistance. Actually air is the most archaic low-tech way of increasing spring rate for your suspension on anything. Because as that air chamber compresses, the spring rate increases greatly. It’s not a constant spring rate with air. when you see air valves on dirt bikes on the fork, that is not to put air in, that’s to let air out that builds up from heat.. I would spray that seat on your venture which is probably very dry with lemon pledge and let that soak a bit before you sit on it may be causing it to crack. Never use armor all or any type of protectant on vinyl. It reduces its resistance to ozone.. your machine has a system for monitoring things like oil level, headlight, tail light, side stand, and battery fluid level.. if that battery probe that goes down into one of the acid cells is not in a lead acid battery that you can actually install that in, that warning light is going to be flashing on your dashboard in your face all day. The way to get that light stop flashing is to Solder a 2000ohm resistor onto the wire that goes to the battery probe. then add a piece of wire on the end of the resistor, and connect that to 12 volts.. that will satisfy the circuit and make the battery warning light go out.. but if you do have a lead acid battery in there that you can remove the cap and install that probe, you won’t have to add that resistor to the circuit.. your venture has vents on the insides of your legs around the knee area. Those are to let heat come from under the fuel tank after it goes through the warm radiator on to your legs.Those do not seal very well in hot weather. So for summer use, take those panels off, you can get them off without removing anything else, they just plugg into gromets.. and seal them completely from the inside with tape, don’t use masking tape, once that stuff gets wet, you have to use dynamite to get it off. That will reduce the heat on you a great deal… I change the brake fluid and the clutch fluid in all my machines every year. The clutch on your venture is hydraulic, takes brake fluid, brake fluid absorbs water right through the breather on the master cylinder. Every time you pull the clutch and brake levers, you are pumping air in and out of the breather to equalize the volume. that’s how it gets in there. The problem with getting water in your brake fluid is, it corrodes components on the inside of those master cylinders, the lines, the connections, and all of that corrosion gravitates down to those cylinder of your slave cylinder. So your slave cylinder is cycling through grit/corrosion, and the water will lay in there. It will corrode the slave cylinder piston, it will ruin the slave cylinder seal, and it will leak. When it leaks, it will ruin the belly pan and the paint.Brake fluid destroys paint. I cover my fuel tanks with a large plastic yard leaf bag/plastic bag anytime I am going to change brake fluid or clutch fluid and I cover my gas tank. And I have rags ready to dab up any drips, and no matter how careful I am, there are always drips..You can go to AutoZone and buy a vacuum bleeder pretty cheap. It comes with lots of attachments for different applications. It’s just a hand pump looks like a staple gun. Rather than send all that Credi brake fluid that’s in the reservoir through the system bleeding it manually. I use the vacuum bleeder to suck out all the crudy brake fluid ..Then I will clean the inside of the Reservoir very carefully, and I have a garbage can right beside me, and every paper towel I use inside that master cylinder, I immediately throw it in the garbage. You don’t want to accidentally bump your paint. Then fill the master cylinder with fresh dot 4 brake fluid.. place the lid back on the master cylinder do not pull the lever on the clutch master cylinder or the brake master cylinder with the lid off. Brake fluid will squirt out of there. Now that you have clean fresh brake fluid in the master cylinder, you go down to the bleeder, and attach The vacuum hose to the nipple and draw the old brake fluid out into the little bottle that the vacuum bleeder collects the brake fluid with. You don’t attach the vacuum bleeder directly to the nipple. The vacuum bleeder gets connected to a bottle. It sucks the air out of the bottle, and the bottle sucks the air out of the nipple. That way you don’t contaminate the bleeder gun.. I carried a spare slave cylinder seal with me at all times on my Venture because they were known to fail. It’s a simple job to replace that seal. It’s only about the size of a quarter, and I think there’s only two bolts that hold the lid on the slave cylinder. I was always prepared to do a roadside repair in case my slave cylinder failed.. if that machine you just picked up has been sitting, check the fork tubes in the area where the seals wipe. See if there’s any corrosion there. If there is clean it off with fine steel wool.. it wouldn’t hurt to put a little oil on those four tubes where they meet the dust wiper and the seal for a while to lubricate the seal.. i’m sure your clutch lever and brake lever pivots haven’t seen Greece for years. White lithium grease. There is a brass bushing it will probably show a lot of wear on the front brake lever.. you can clean that up with some very fine sandpaper and re-grease it. those are one of the things that gets neglected. Motorcycles don’t wear out, they are neglected to death.. your machine has 11 locks cylinders on it. I would get a little bottle of graphite lock ease to lubricate all of them. Put a little bit in each lock and work it in with the key.. don’t slam your keys all the way into the bottom of their locks cylinders. Especially the ignition switch. Some ignition switches are like a sandwich with multiple layers, and the bottom layer is just a piece of metal with bend over tabs holding all of those electrical connections together. Slamming your key all the way in sort of opens up that sandwich by pushing the bottom of the ignition switch down and unbending those bend tabs.. good luck with your venture, you have the fastest of the ventures. Yours has 35 mm carburetors and it is in a higher state of tune. The royal star venture in a milder state of tune and I think they only have 32 mm carburetors. The first time I rode my 2002 midnight Venture, I thought there was something wrong with it because it was so slow compared to my 86 Venture. Those early ventures turned in the 12 second quarter mile times at the dragstrip..That was faster than my 1967 GTO

@@Jodyrides Thank you for all the information

@@Jodyrides I agree the 1300 Ventures were fast. I had an 88 and got the chance to play with an 1800 wing once. From 0-100 it was dead even. That's saying alot considering 500cc difference and fuel injection compared to carbs. Seems like Yamaha would have used the newer 1700 vmax engine for the newer Ventures? I lost all interest in the Venture when they chose a v twin. I prefer something smoother.

thanks paul.. I just started my venture and clicked the high beam and the low beam on while the machine was running. The driving lights did not come on with the high beam on or the low beam SO…….. I turned the switch on, about an inch from the cigarette lighter receptacle socket on the inside of your fairing on the left, almost directly behind the driving lights.. it is a rubber covered push button switch. I pushed the switch and it clicked, and the driving lights come on with the headlight switch in the low beam position. when I rock the switch for the high low beam to the high beam position, the driving lights go off. so you must first close the switch that is mounted in the backside of the fairing on the left almost directly behind the driving light on the left. Start your machine, then, operate your high / lo beam switch on the handlebars. if they do not operate, check your fuses. In fact, I suggest you get acquainted with the location of the fuses. They are behind those covers inside your lower fairing on one side or the other. and be prepared to go to a hardware store and get better screws from a place like Lowe’s or Home Depot that has a very large selection of SAE and metric screws nuts and bolts. I would rather be familiar with where are the fuses are now at home when you have all your tools available and the patients to fight with those covers, then to have to do it some night on the side of the road in the rain.. I bought myself an assortment of fuses on eBay. I think I got either 100 fuses, or 50 fuses of all amp values , In both styles. Some of them are about 25% smaller and the blades are pointed, and the larger ones are also push in and different colors and the blades are a little larger. So I bought two batches one of each size , i’m not sure of the identification name, but I know they come in micro and Mini. You can get like 50 fuses of all different sizes for seven or eight dollars on eBay. I just looked now.. and I would add some fuses to my tool kit while you’re Getting to know where the fuse panel is, and even if there is an additional fuse panel somewhere. Good luck, let me know how it turns out

@@Jodyrides Awesome Jody, thank you so much for the comprehensive reply. I really appreciate you taking the time. I located and pressed the little rubber covered button and now the lights work as they should. Thanks again!

in my video, I did say “ Gold wings are perfect”.. I do all my own work. I used to be a mechanic at three different motorcycle shops. No one has ever touched any of my dozens and dozens of motorcycles except me. I just don’t like working on something as complex and hard to work on ,buried in plastic like the gold wing. I never experienced that degree of complexity on 2 wheels…. The thought of having to do something like replace the shift forks, or the most common failure in motorcycle transmissions, second gear, gives me chills just to think about having to do that job on a Goldwing.. that’s why I bailed out after two years of getting aquainted with my goldwing once i got a sample of the most complex motorcycle ever made available to the public ..The fear of, “what if” was always a concern.. The whole time I owned my Goldwing, I was resigned to the fact, I actually looked into how I go about this, if something happens to that machine, I’m not gonna be able to fix it in the parking lot of a McDonald’s somewhere using the tool kit. I’m just gonna have to rent a trailer and a car with a trailer hitch to get back home or, carry the title with me, and sell it as is to the nearest Honda dealer and fly home.. which ever is cheaper… as far as handling and performance, that you mentioned goes. I am not going to be out there scraping the floorboards on my Venture, or the foot pegs on my Goldwing. If I’m feeling frisky, I will ride my Kawasaki Z 400 that day.. or whatever smaller bike I have at any given time.. is the Goldwing, more refined, faster, better handling than, my Venture, I’d say yes, it’s not roomier or more comfortable than my Venture, and I happen to like floorboards on my big bikes, now that I have experienced them both.. both of them I like much much better than my BMW K 1200 LT that I had that only had 12,000 miles on it when I bought it.. that was my first BMW, and I ain’t never going out on that bmw limb again. Too flawed of a design in many areas. complex is one thing, but flawed is another thing entirely ..I believe they rushed that to market before it was perfected. bMWs sure ain’t what they used to be.. The Goldwing is more refined than the Venture, there’s no question. I like the 2017 and older gold wings more than I like the new ones. That’s a personal preference. I think the 2017 and older gold wings were more luxurious and roomier. I don’t know what Honda‘s goal was with the newest.goldwings .. it’s almost like they were trying to make a bike that would appeal to both , goldwing fans AND ST 1300 fans..AND- automatic scooter fans- I don’t think it has been appealing to the typical writers of the Goldwing in the ST 1300, because the local cycle trader online has many many automatic gold wings brand new 23s for sale here in October 1923. It’s a little late in the season to be stuck with so many motorcycles that those dealers are gonna have to start paying interest on the loan after a year. The interest is onepercent per month on the balance of the loan. That’s about $200 a month per Goldwing interest after the first year. I feel for those dealers…

You are right. Gold wings set the standard. I’ve had both. Goldwings are perfect.. my GL 1800 Goldwing was much more modern and advanced than my current venture. It was smoother, faster, the suspension was better, the brakes were very powerful. but I didn’t wanna work on it again. What a pain in the ass working on a gold wing is. Everything practically requires that you remove plastic panels..It’s called a motorcycle and you can’t even see the motor.. it just didn’t seem like a motorcycle to me. It seemed like a car that was missing two wheels.. I just don’t wanna work on them again. They are not mechanic friendly. Not nearly as bad as a BMW were you even have to have special tools to work on them. I mean special tools that only fit that motorcycle.. I had to find out if I was missing something so I bought the BMW, got rid of it …I bought the gold wing. good handling good brakes not as roomy as a venture, but it does handle better than the ventures, it has better brakes than ventures, but Venture has a smoother ride and is much roomier..The Venture was getting long in the tooth when they stopped making them in 2013. So that was 1999, to 2013 for the royal star venture model. But if you think about it, they came out with the 1800 Goldwing in 1988. A friend of mine bought one. And he paid $8888 for it. That’s how it was advertised from a North Carolina dealer. Get an 88 Goldwing for 8888. so that six cylinder Goldwing engine was 1800cc has been around for 30 years.. that’s enough time to have something perfected and it is. They’re perfect.. just not my cup of tea.. I actually find it boring.. like owning a Toyota Corolla. Probably the best car ever made in history of the world. But as boring as my toaster…

@@Jodyrides In 1988 the Gold Wing was the GL1500...the GL1800 was 2001

@@frankward8003 That is correct the 1000 was 1975, then it became an 1100 with the gauges on the tank but no fairing yet, then the interstate changed everything. Then the 1200 , in 1988 was the six cylinder 1800 which had a 29 year run until 2018, which is what we have now. The most refined smoothest most reliable touring bike to date. I always felt that the 1500 Goldwing was the best looking Goldwing ever, still do.. I was actually shopping for a GL 1500 when I found my GL 1800 with only 13,000 miles on it for sale locally.. I never thought the GL 1800 was very good looking compared to the GL 1500. but the 1800 was newer and it had such low miles that I had to bite on that one.. I tried for two years to feel something for that 1800. I just never bonded with it. I thought it was boring and dull. Besides that it was yellow which made it impossible.. I don’t care if yellow is the least involved in accidents color on cars.. I am very anxious to see The new Suzuki version of a gold wing, with air conditioning,and a supercharger, and the paint changes colors electrically…

@@frankward8003 I remember when Honda came out with the six cylinder Goldwing in 1988. A coworker flew down to the Carolinas, bought a new Goldwing six cylinder and rode it home to Western Pennsylvania here.. I remember the ad it was advertised here which was much lower than you could buy a gold wing for here in Western Pennsylvania period it went something like this, buy an 88 goldwing for $8888. you are correct, that was the 1500 CC. In my opinion which most doesn’t count for much, I think the 1500 Gold wings were the most beautiful gold wings ever. When I bought my 2002 yellow GL 1800 with only 13,000 miles on it from the original owner, when it was 16 years old, I was actually searching the Internet for a GL 1500 Goldwing at the time, that is the goldwing i bought wanted in that wineberry candy apple red color. But the yellow 1800 I ended up with just happened to come on line the day I started looking. it was pretty much stock/original except for some added on trinkets which I removed and sold on eBay like the floorboards.. and the drivers backrest. I don’t know what it was about that particular set up, but that motorcycle with that Honda accessory backrest hurt my back. Every time I hit a dip or a bump, it was like getting hit in the back by the backrest. I ended up taking it off and selling it on eBay.. I have had the back rests on all three of my ventures and on my BMW, and they worked fine, no issues. But not that GL 1800 backrest for some reason..

I like the Vulcan voyageurs. I never see them for sale, and I check craigslist just about every week for my next bike.. it all depends on whether or not you can reach the ground easier on the Venture or the voyager. Just remember, you don’t put both feet down to stop a motorcycle and to sit at a red light. You’re right foot is on the brake usually.. if you ride in the right wheel track where the cars rt tires ride..meaning you are going to be putting your foot down somewhere near the middle of the lane at stops..that part of the ground is actually closer to you than on the right side in countries that drive on the right side of the road. So that will have the result of your leg being longer. The reason your left leg is closer to the ground than the right is, all roads pretty much are crowned. Sloped to the right for water drainage. Ask any civil engineer.. and riding in the right wheel track, that part of an older road is actually going to be lower because the cars have worn the surface of the road down slightly when you put your left foot down, you unconsciously slide your butt over to the left. So very few riders pull up to a light with both feet out. I see that very rarely.. I am 5’10”, and I’ve always had that issue with my dual sport bikes, Kawasaki KLR 650 And suzuki VStrom 1000.. I never even tried to get both feet done because I couldn’t do it on those machines. You just adapt. The same with my dirt bikes which were motocross bikes because they had the best suspension & the best power. Those things have 12 and 13 inches of travel. There was no way I could get both feet down on those machines. But when you get on the machine you compress the suspension. That’s called sag.. on a dirtbike, a general rule of thumb is to set the sag at 100 mm meaning, when you have a static setting height, and then when you sit on the bike, it should sag 100 mm.. but that’s dirt bikes. One thing you have to keep in mind, those voyageurs & ventures and gold wings have shaft drive. You see a lot of people that put lowering kits on their machine. There is a danger in doing that. Most of the Japanese shaft drive motorcycles I have ever seen only have a single Ujoint.. with a single U joint in the driveshaft, that Ujoint only has about 8° of rotation movement before it will start to bind.. so you really can’t lower or raise A Japanese motorcycle without taking into consideration the rotational ark of the swing arm and Ujoint.. You just have to be careful in certain situations like pulling out of a gas station. They usually have a concrete ramp from the street up to the gas station lot level.. if you were to stop with your rear wheel still in the street and your front wheel in the gas station parking lot level. Where you are in the middle, it’s about four or 5 inches further down. So don’t ever get in that situation. Same thing when you’re pulling out of someone’s driveway if their driveway is sloped where it meets the ground. You can be 10” higher were you have to put your foot down if you stop with the front wheel in the street and the rear wheel still on their driveway slope.. The width of the seat also is a factor in how far down the road surface is.. A very wide seat prevent you from getting your leg straight down from the hip compared to a narrow seat. But on the other hand, a wider seat is more comfortable…. then there’s a crash bars. I know my Venture was dropped by the previous owner because there are little marks on the rollover bars. Most of the big touring bikes have them from the factory. They’re designed to let the bike lay down without damaging the saddlebags or the gas tank or the engine in a tip over if the ground is level where you lay the bike over.. if you feel like going down, let it go. That’s one thing I have taught people when I would teach a beginner riding a motorcycle, don’t try to save it, you could get hurt that way, just let it go.. another thing I would teach people was, when you stop, don’t look straight down at your shoes ornat your front tire level. Looks straight down the road 100 or 200 feet. That will teach your brain to recognize that you are holding the bike level. And holding it level is the key to holding it up..Once you get rolling again, all that weight disappears

@@Jodyrides Thanks so much for the throrough reply! I've been riding since age 10 (61 now) and understand and agree with everything you said. One thing I do have going for me is that my left leg is 1/2" longer than the right, thanks to my older brother jumping on my back when I was 5 and busting that leg, and when it fused back it was longer. Last week I was at a dealer that had a '12 Venture and a '13 Voyager, and I was able to more firmly plant my feet on the Venture than the Voyager. I was surprised that the Venture seating/bar position felt slightly better than the Voyager. I think the Venture puts the driver further forward because there is more passenger room than the Voyager (I read a couple Voyager reviews saying that the driver felt the passenger right on his back). The Voyager key features I prefer is full instrumentation and the fuel injection. The new 2018+ Voyager has FI and more gauges, but I'm not about to spend that kind of money for a bike that will have relatively limited use ($10K is probably my limit). I recently bought an '02 VTX 1800C but I think I'll have to spend a few grand to make that bike somewhat comfy for 100+ mile rides with the wife, and it still won't be as nice as a Voyager or Venture.

hello Luis yes the Venture is very capable of years of miles. 700 K is my combined mileage behind bars of all the street / road motorcycles I have owned.. I keep a log of the day, date, year, miles of all my maintenance chores on all my machines over the decades. 700 K miles is actually pretty conservative because I did not keep a log in the 70s-early 80s.. and there was no way to log mileage on my off-road vehicles/dirt bikes/trials bikes, So I don’t even count those, or my road racing machines, which I rode raced for eight years, , I am seeing a conservative number of miles each weekend racing including practice, heat races, and Sunday final race was somewhere between 75 and 90 miles a weekend, not counting the four 24 hr road races I was in. Each team had four riders, and we each rode for approximately six hours total.. average speed was approximately 82 miles an hour, times six hours is approximately 450 to 480 miles of race time, not counting practice and set up time which wasn’t very much, just breaking and additional sets of tires, checking the gearing, jetting, tire pressures, chain adjustment, breaking in a new chain, estimating fuel mileage, etc.. but that’s an entirely different story.. so the number 700,000 miles, not kilometers, is a conservative estimate of the number of miles I have accumulated on the dozens and dozens of motorcycles I have owned, touring, riding on weekends, mostly commuting.. I know just on the four Moto Guzzi‘s I have a hunt since 1979, I put just under 200,000 miles on those machines. I put 138,000 miles on my first Yamaha venture royale over 16 years. 48,000 miles on my 2002 Yamaha midnight royal star venture. I only put about 6000 miles on my GL 1800 Goldwing over the two years I owned it. I just had no feeling for that motorcycle.. sort of like owning a Toyota Corolla. They are perfect, nothing ever breaks, but there’s nothing special, no zing, no pizzazz.. I think most of the people that have gold wings feel the same way without realizing it. Because look at all the trinkets and lights they put on their machines to try to give them something extra to get excited about.. I myself, like you mostly rode standard and sport bikes, café bikes.. Kawasaki 350 and 400 twins and triple two strokes, Yamaha RDs and RZ, suzuki X6, Honda CB 400 F(I had three of those) The very first Kawasaki 903 Z1.. The very first Honda CB 750 F.. Yamaha 550 and 600 Seca.. FJ1200..Bridgestone 350 GTR two stroke rotary valve twin.. Kawasaki ZX6.. Yamaha XV 920 RH/chain drive.. Yamaha XS 750 triple, Moto Guzzi V 11 sport(The most uncomfortable motorcycle in the entire history of the universe), but gorgeous and what a magnificent engine. Moto Guzzi SP 1000, V 50, Norge 1200 GT.. I currently have a Kawasaki Z 400. I have videos about that machine on KZfaq right now. Lots of fun wringing its neck, without spraining the speed limit by much. It feels like you’re going faster than you are because of how high the engine revs/12,000. A good friend of mine bought a gray market Kawasaki 250four-cylinder directly from A smuggler from Japan that was able to get these types of bikes into the United States without going through all the paperwork. I rode his machine one day, the redline was 19,000 RPM. I could not bring myself to taking it up past 15,000. It sounded like a siren… I did not know that that was only at 2:50 when I first rode it.. I thought it was a 400 at least. It was quite a surprise when he told me it’s only a 250 the day we swapped machines way out in the sticks.. I worked in three different Yamaha shops over the years. 17 years part time as a motorcycle salesman from January through May. that’s actually how I made the jump from sport bikes to large touring bikes. My friend owned a Yamaha/Suzuki dealership. He took in a Yamaha venture royale on trade. He insisted that I take it home and ride it over the weekend to see what they are like. I did.. my wife went with me at the first time I ever rode a venture, we did over 400 miles, like it was nothing. No sore legs or arms or shoulders or wrists, no aching ass, that’s when I knew I had to have one. And I have had three ventures so far, and I currently have a royal star venture that you see in the videos. I tried the big BMW, and the gold wing, and I like the ventures better. They look and feel like a motorcycle. They have a soul.. being around three different Yamaha dealerships, I never heard of a common failure issue with any of the ventures or Vmax machines which share the same basic engine. With the exception of the very first ventures, 1983, 84, and 85. The ventures, and many other Yamaha‘s in those days had weak second gears..Not so much the Venture transmissions, but I will never buy a barn find Yamaha 750 or 850 triple from the 70s and early 80s. The second gear in those machines was just a bad design. One of the mechanics that worked at one of the dealerships I worked at , got so good at repairing/replacing second gear in those machines, that he figured a way to do it without pulling the engine from the frame. He somehow I figured out how to do it through the clutch basket housing. but after 1985 when the Venture went to a 1300 cc displacement. They upgraded the transmission, the clutch, and the water pump,And they have been as reliable as a sledgehammer ever since

Thanks I am glad you agree. I tried to fall in love with my Goldwing for two years. It just felt sterile, artificial, it was perfect, but so is my toaster. And like my toaster, my Goldwing had no soul, no character, no personality.Gold wings are perfect, I admit that, but they are also perfectly boring

In my opinion, which ain’t worth much, I think the most beautiful gold wings ever made were the 1500s. I was actually looking for a 1500 Goldwing when I spotted my yellow GL 1800 on craigslist with only 13 K miles on it. I actually didn’t like the color, Pearl yellow, and as time went on, I never changed my mind about the color. I wish it was black or candy apple red or green or glossy primer gray or burnt orange, or pearl white, but not yellow, I don’t care if it is the most visible color to be seen at night.. those 1500 gold wings just looked like a Cadillac. And they came out with the 1800, it sort of looked like a mid grade Chevy by comparison, at least to me..

my Venture is a 2008 in the videos. That is the first year for the noiseless primary gears that do not WHINE as much, at least that is what I have heard/read here on the Internet. The engine at the crankshaft transfers the energy to the transmission by use of gears. A small gear on the end of the crankshaft, meshes with a much larger gear around the clutch basket. I’m not positive on that with the venture, but that’s the way it usually is. The crankshaft is always turning if the bike is running, the primary gear on the transmission is always being rotated by the primary gear on the end of the crankshaft. that is the source of the whine.. that’s why you hear it whether the motorcycle is moving or not as long as the engine is running.. if those gears are straight cut, that is the most efficient angle to have gears transfer the energy head on, but they make noise if you cut the gears at an angle of approximately 30°, on the end of the crankshaft, and around the clutch basket, they are much quieter but they tend to push away from each other at the angle of the gears. So they are not as efficient, but they are quiet. You give up efficiency for silence.. so all of the Venture’s and Royal stars or whatever bikes use that same engine have that noise up until 2008.. I could be wrong, I’m only repeating what I have seen on the Internet about that date..I suppose if you listen to the radio, you just turn it up to block out the whine.. I do not listen to the radio of any kind while riding my bikes. Never did. The engine makes the kind of music I like..I wear swimmers ear plugs myself 100% of the time. They mold perfectly to your ear canal and they are the best earplugs I have ever tried. You buy them in little plastic cases with a dozen in the case at Walmart .. I lost my hearing in one ear from childhood earaches when I was four, so I tried to save my good ear hearing as much as possible. Of course playing guitar in loud rock bands for years didn’t help.. I do not like the Haynes or climer service manuals unless there is mo option..I know that the factory service manuals are very expensive but you can usually pick them up on eBay used for about 25 bucks. One of the reasons I do not like the Hanes or climer manuals is they are vague, and sometimes they don’t even cover the subject you buy them for.. my mother had an Audi. The sunroof was starting to make noise when we would open and close it. So I bought a Hanes or a climer manual. It was sealed in cellophane so I couldn’t open it to see anything about the sunroof mechanism. So I bought the manual and took it home to do the research. When I opened it to the sunroof chapter. The manual said “it’s best to have the dealer service the sunroof on this vehicle”.. what a ripoff.. I did not lube the drive shaft splines on my Venture yet - i plan to do that in april-2022…The reason is, I want to pull the swingarm off to lube the swingarm bearings, I didn’t want to just pull the swingarm off until I did some research, so I delayed pulling the final drive housing, the driveshaft, and the swingarm. I have to do that yet, as well as the fork oil: seals, and lube the steering head bearings.. then I will be completely done with everything I wanted to do on this machine for this year. Then it will be ready to go.. I want to get back to gold prospecting ,out west next…I got the gold bug when I found some gold here in Pennsylvania up near New York border.. that’s where I saw what I thought was a rattlesnake. It had a rattle. I did not think there were rattlesnakes in Pennsylvania …so I talked to someone that knew. I learned that there are more rattlesnakes in Pennsylvania than there are in Arizona. They are called timber rattlesnakes, and they are very shy. If you walk through the forest in northern Pennsylvania for a mile along any trail, you have walked within 5 feet of at least one timber rattlesnake. I had no idea..

The clutch basket, stamped with the letter I stopped the whine from the cut gears

sorry, it took over a year to respond to your comment. I am overwhelmed by the number of favorable comments I got in my comparison between my venture and my GL 1800 Goldwing. You asked me what year my Venture in my video is. It is a 2008. I bought it in 2021, September, from the original owner with 30 K miles on it. The first thing I did was change the oil, and filter, and the tires. The tires were 11 and 13 years old and full of cracks that I point out in my tire change video. I also point out that the DOT number, stands for department of transportation, that is a date code. There are usually four Numbers in a DOT number that stamped into the tire. The last two numbers are the year the tire was made, and the first two numbers are the month the tire was made. you asked about my stand under the machine. I got this stand in 2018 when I had my Goldwing GL 1800. I was watching a company do front fork spring changes on their excellent website. The name of that company was traction dynamics. I noticed they were using one of the stands to hold up a Goldwing with the front end removed. When I saw that, I knew immediately that’s exactly what I need. And I searched the Internet and just happened to find them on eBay by typing in the words, motorcycle scissor lift Jack. When I bought it in 2018 it was $49.95 free shipping. I think they’re up in the $60 range now. I would buy one if they were $250. You have to have one of these to do tire changes, and to take the forks off, or to service your driveshaft/swingarm bearings, etc, on the royal star venture‘s because they don’t have a center stand. This is my third venture. My first one was a Yamaha venture royale. Funny story, I bought the bike used with about 7000 miles on it from the original owner.. these machines were only $6900 brand new back in those days. I got mine for $4150. When I sold it 16 years later, I put it on eBay. And it’s sold for $4500. I made a profit of $350 after 16 years of free use of the motorcycle… then I bought a 2002 Yamaha royal star venture midnight version. I sold that machine with 48,000 miles on it and bought my very first BMW. I thought after all these decades of riding I deserve the best at least once. Boy was I wrong. I think BMW rushed that bike into production before it was perfect like their old air head boxer twins were. They sure ain’t what they used to be.. After having a pretty dangerous experience with ABS brakes on gravel on that 900 lb BMW.(no breaks at all going downhill on a road that was covered with gravel/fly ash) I was able to stop only by running into a cyclone fence that’s around at a auto salvage yard at the bottom of the hill. I didn’t drop it, it did break the front fender. But I got rid of that bike as soon as the new fender came in. I didn’t want another motorcycle with ABS so I bought a non-ABS 2002 Honda GL 1800 with 13 K miles on it in 2018. It’s still had the original Dunlop tires on it, full of cracks, I have a video under my other screen name, showing the mice bedding inside the air cleaner on that Goldwing. The name of that video is three words here on eBay- Goldwing made mouseproof. that was my yellow gold wing in that video showing the amount of plastic. I had to remove just to get at the air cleaner.. that was quite a learning experience, working on a Goldwing for the first time. I changed the fork oil, fork, springs, seals, and bushings in the forks. I changed the air cleaner, I looped all the cables with a pressure louver, I installed and balanced new Dunlop elite four tires, I upgraded the rear shock spring to balance the system with the front fork springs. . and there were the usual maintenance things like new spark plugs, change the oil and filter, flush the brake fluid, flush the clutch fluid, which never was changed, that clutch fluid from the slave cylinder, came out, looking like a melted chocolate milkshake. I am amazed that that seal did not fail in that slave cylinder.. and I also learned how complex even simple jobs on just about any other bike, those jobs are not so simple on a Goldwing, it’s quite nerve-racking, prying those plastic panels off, hoping that you don’t bust one of the tabs off. It’s like fingernails on the blackboard. One other little thing about my Goldwing. I wanted to add a sub panel to power, my electric vest, heated grips, Garmin/phone, and a fourth fused circuit for accessories like my electric tire pump if I get a flat.. The subpanel with fuses was only the size of a pack of cigarettes. It’s remarkable that I could not find anywhere on that bike to Mount that’s sub panel near the battery. They really have all of those wires and systems and cables packed under those plastic panels like sardines, literally. I mean some of those wire harnesses are getting flattened as they get smashed between the frame and the panel. That’s how tight it is under there. I had to give up finding a little spot to mount something the size of a pack of cigarettes, so that I could have just four fused circuits. Those engineers for Honda that designed the Goldwing are magicians. They actually figured out how to get 2 pounds of shit in a 1 pound bag, metaphorically speaking. but overall, goldwings. they are the smoothest, most refined motorcycle on the planet. They are perfect. I just don’t wanna work online, and Venture is a little more roomy if you’re over 6 foot tall, and I like floorboards. I also realize that air suspension is just about the least modern type of suspension because it has a rising Spring rate, as you are compressing the suspension as opposed to springs that have the same rate throughout the stroke. But, you can’t deny that air suspension is the softest ride. And that’s what I was after, a rolling, lazy boy. as for adjustable windshields on the Goldwing that the Venture does not have. I have other motorcycles with adjustable windshields. My last moto guzzi had an electric windshield. But the thing is, once you find the spot you like, you don’t adjust it again. It stays in one position, The one that gives me the least helmet, buffeting, and that’s where I leave it. so my first Venture did come with a center stand, the 1986 venture. But my 2000 to midnight Venture, and my current 2008 royal star venture, do not have center stands.. over the winter, I use my scissor lift jack that is in several of my videos, just to take the weight of the bike as it sits there for three or four months.. Sorry, it took over a year to get back to you, but the responses to this video have been overwhelming and overwhelmingly positive

I know how good they are. I had an 86 Venture for 138,000 trouble-free miles. They had the 35 mm carburetors which were the biggest they ever put on a venture. They had the diaphragm type clutch they put on the Vmax. It had an improved second and fifth gear oiling and spacing over the 19 8384 and 85 ventures.The 91 like the 86 has a center stand... It was the fastest venture. Still the fastest, not that that matters to someone interested in a touring machine. I never cared about how fast mine was. I was interested in the Cadillac ride..91 has grease fittings on the rear suspension linkage..91 head improved brake calipers.. there are a few things that I did to my 86 to improve it that could help the 91 also. take the side panels with those vents off to cover the vents on the inside with something to completely block them off in warm weather because they do not prevent the heat from coming out onto your legs in the hot weather. Covering them on the inside with something to keep the air from going through really helps if you can’t get a battery with a removable cap to insert the battery probe. Just take the wire that has the battery probe, cut the wire and install a 2000 ohm resistor. Connect that resistor to a 12 V power source. That will make that monitor display on the dashboard go out. You will satisfy that circuit.. Progressive fork springs and shock Spring transforms that venture into a much lighter feeling better handling machine instantly. It feels like a brand new lighter machine with new progressive brand fork springs and shock spring. It’s not that tough to do. When you do upgrade the springs which are surely sacked out after all these years, you do not need Air in the suspension anymore which probably leaks anyway. You run zero air in your forks and shock with the upgraded springs. fork springs cost about 120 on eBay, and a rear shock spring was about $90 when I bought them for my Goldwing two years ago Progressive brand springs i bought on ebay.. The only complaint I have about my 86 Venture. The fairing rattled a lot going over bumps. I don’t know what it was because I tried to stop that a few times, but it was always a little bit of a rattle compared to the Royal star ventures that don’t have a lot under the fairing the way the older ones do.. but those older ventures 86 through 91 really didn’t have any flaws..One thing I never forgot about those ventures is, they have 11 lock cylinders.So don’t you dare lose your key

Thanks for those tips man!

if you want to get that venture, just buy it. It’s a lot easier to ask for you’re wife’s forgiveness than it is to ask for permission..

@@Jodyrides I just bought a 2005 Yamaha Royal Star Venture last Sat. I will take delivery this Sat. So excited! 😍

@@khliew79 I am happy for you. can you stand a few tips from someone who has had 108 motorcycles so far? make sure you get all the keys. Make sure one key opens every lock on the bike make sure the bike has not been reconstructed meaning, it was totaled at one time and rebuilt. check the title serial number against the number on the frame to make sure they match make sure you get all the spare parts, all the original parts, any extras like oil, oil filters drivers backrest shop manual, owners manual, everything that goes with the bike.. get the maintenance records. When was the last time the valves were adjusted, if it has K and N air filters, throw them away and put OEM filters in there. I have learned that K and N air filters only keep out rocks and birds. They let dirt and grit get thru.. only use motorcycle oil in motorcycles. It is very different from car oil, car oil cannot withstand the force of transmission gears meshing.. motorcycle oil has an additives package with increased levels of zinc and phosphorus which gives the oil a higher film strength to resist shearing which is what takes place in transmissions as the gears scissor the molecules of the oil apart.. you know your oil is shot when it becomes a little harder to shift gears or to find neutral baby second gear. Baby second gear on every motorcycle, second gear is the most susceptible to failure gear in every motorcycle transmission because of the speed of the shafts coming to a dead stop when you shift from 1st to 2nd with all of that torque running through the system.. that is quite a severe event for second gear every time you shift into second gear. Shift to second at lower RPMs than you are used to with your V Strom.. by yourself a case of Honda spray detailer. That is the single best selling item that Honda has in its entire inventory. that is the only thing I ever used to wash any of my motorcycles. I never use a hose and soap and water ever. That spray detailer prevents your bike from being scratched when you wipe it with a clean rag and the spray detailer. I use it on my windshields, face shields, all the paint work on my bikes, I had two black motorcycles, my BMW, and a Honda Pacific coast, which I consider to be the most perfect most useful motorcycle in the entire History of the universe. I commute it on one of those bikes for 24 years. It was black. The only thing I ever cleaned it with was Honda spray detailer. Black is impossible to hide the tiny scratches especially if it’s a sunny day. That bike didn’t have any unusual scratches on it from using just that spray detailer.. I buy it by the case never use paper towels on your windshield or your face shield. They will scratch it.. never use armor all on a motorcycle seat. Only use lemon pledge. I bought an $800 vanson leather jacket. It came with one instruction from the factory in Massachusetts. That instruction was to only use lemon pledge on this leather jacket. that’s all I use on my leather jackets, and on my seats for the past 20 years.. make sure you get the complete tool kit.. upgrade the kit.. learn where your fuse boxes are. They are in a strange place on the Venture, they are in front of your shins on the right side below the air cleaner I think.. add a small 12 V air compressor you can buy at Walmart and a string plug kit for plugging flat tires from Walmart. I just put a video on about plugging a tire, what you should carry, how to do it, what you should not do and why… I am excited for you.. unlike your V Strom, you have to pull the choke out and let a venture warm up. It tells you that in the manual to let it warm up. They are cold blooded and spit back through the carburetors if you try to drive away with the engine still cold.. The Venture Does not have integrated breaks. The first two generations of Venture and I think the gold wings too, had a system we’re using the footbrake applied the rear brake and one of the front discs. Two of my four Moto Guzzi’s had that system that guzzi invented.. right now I’m doing an update to this video reply, to tell you that I thought that this generation of royal star venture had that same integrated system as the earlier Venture’s had.. I am putting a new front tire on my Venture right now here on March 30, 2022. And I checked, and I just discovered that this machine does not have integrated brakes which makes me happy. There are times you simply do not want to touch the front brake in slow very slow speed situation is like in snow, or if you get caught in mud going downhill. You do not want to have to fight with a locked up front wheel. I don’t care how much the back wheel drags going downhill in the snow or in gravel or on mud, but you don’t want to lose the front wheel. that being said..The stock brake pads that came with my royal star venture are not good. My back brake has way more bite- power compared to the front brakes.. I am going to switch over to EBC front brake pads on my Venture. I am one of those people that is a heavy front brake user. At the beginning of every season, I go out and I practice to get the feel of the brakes all over again after winter…After all, it’s the front brakes that are going to save your life, not the back brakes Let me know how it goes

I really believe the gen 2 venture is the best bike ever built for all the reasons u state. I have 145k kms on mine and runs like a top. Yamaha totally ruined the gen 3 with the motor and final drive

A GL 1800 isn't expensive to maintain, as long as you can do the work. The air filter is the one job I dread. Replaced it in a 2003 with 30K on it in 2020 when I bought it. Replaced it with 52K on it, and when I got down to it, it looked as good as the day I put it in. I won't touch it again until I hit 100K on the clock. Replaced the front fork seals, and changed to progressive shocks while doing that. Plugs were a breeze. Gas, Tires and Oil are all it needs regularly. Love my Wing.

Thanks JiM, good eye.. that is a 1958 mga roadster …. I have owned that car since 1968.. 1968-I was almost 16 working in a gas station after school and on weekends. I would work all day Saturday open to close and all day Sunday open to close for five dollars a day. doing everything from changing oil, changing tires on a manual tire machine, most cars had tubes in the tires then also…checking your oil washing your windshield when you would buy your gas, empty all the garbage cans paint the islands even clean the shitters..I was rich… so I bought a 59 Catalina convertible for $50. Red with a white convertible top. It had all four hubcaps, red carpeting, and red and white interior.. The only thing wrong with it, it needed a transmission.. me and a buddy got permission from the boss to pull the transmission out while the car was up on the lift at the gas station when we close at 11 PM. We worked all night.. The boss had made a phone call the day before and said he would fix me up with someone that was going to fix my tranny .. all I had to do was pull the transmission and have it sitting on the floor Saturday morning, 7:30 AM.. we worked all night it seemed. We had the transmission on the ground on Saturday morning when a guy that worked at the local transmission shop pulled up in his white 61 impala with 2 antennas,fuzzy dice dangling on the mirror with a garter.. The a.m. radio was playing Tutti Frutti ..this guy was older..I’d say he was at least 30…he got out of his car slowly like he was hung over from last night…without closing the door behind him, he took a pack of Lucky strikes he had rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve,lit one up..flipped the driver seat forward and picked a used torque converter and a speed wrench with the correct socket already on it off of the back floor. he took a big drag, peering through the smoke that was burning his eyes,he walked up to the transmission that I had sitting on the garage floor … he put his cigarette in his mouth, and stooped down…He spun the bolts off with the speedwrench, he removed the bad torque converter ,, Took another drag, and squinting through the smoke,, he installed the used converter.. The whole process took about two minutes..I handed him a fin, he got in his car, put it in drive, and pulled out before he even finished that lucky strike.. we had to push my Catalina out of the garage bay so my boss could have it opened for the busy Saturday ahead. I worked all day, Then after closing, we push the car back in, put it back up in the air,and then worked that night to put the transmission back in..I had another friend help me with that.. it only took us about an hour and a half to get the transmission back in now that I knew where everything goes.. The kid that helped me put the transmission back in worked at the gas station also with me after school and on the weekends and through the summer. He was older, he was a senior in high school, I was only in ninth grade,He liked my Catalina very much. He had a toylotta green 1958 mga roadster that he could not get running.. now that I had a good transmission in my car. He offered to swap me is mga for my Pontiac Catalina.. it didn’t sound like fair dealings to me.. my car had a power convertible top, it had a big backseat that the MG didn’t. It had power steering, automatic transmission, and a 389 V8.. I could lay tire all the way across the gas station parking lot when the boss wasn’t there. That’s where I kept the car until I got my drivers license, hopefully.. that MG was a stick shift, it didn’t even have real windows on the sides, no backseat, no power steering, a little four-cylinder engine. besides, my Catalina was fire engine red, that MG was green..I wasn’t interested.. then a couple weeks later, my Catalina was sitting next to that MG the whole time over in the corner of the parking lot, some of the high school girls came in for gas and they made such a fuss over that mg , I recognized it instantly that it was a chick magnet. So I traded my $50 Pontiac Catalina for the 1958 mga that wasn’t running.. The car had been given to the kid I worked with because it wasn’t running.. her husband tried to fix it but gave up. The car was already nine years old which is old for a car in 1968.. it turns out they didn’t realize the car had positive ground electrics. They were hooking the fuel pump up backwards. It was blowing bubbles in the gas tank.. The mechanic friend of mine that looked at it figured that out, reverse the wires, and the car started right up.. I drove the car all through high school, but I would buy a Volkswagen bug every winter to keep the MG out of the salt and it didn’t go very well in the snow anyway. I would pick up a volts wagon for $100, drive it all winter, and sell it for $100 in the spring. I did that five years in a row, first to keep my MG out of the salt ,then to keep my 1967 GTO convertible out of the salt… I had a fenders off two week body restoration paint job done by an MGA specialist. I had it painted the factory Tartan 1958 red.. I was into my GTO, motorcycles, and girls in the mid1970s so I put the MG in my mother’s garage. The decades past, and it ended up in my garage here where I live now or it’s been sitting in the garage for 35 years… I crank it over with the handcrank at least once a week for a minute. I had pulled the spark plugs out and sprayed oil into the spark plug holes, and then I put the plugs partly back in..It still has the tires I put on it in 1970. Michelin x radials.. I have the only aluminum factory hardtop anyone has ever heard of for it. I found it about 1972 sitting on a rotted out MG that had a tree growing up through the floor we are in Hooterville somewhere while I was riding my motorcycle. I knocked on the door and offered to buy it. The guy said I could have it for $100. when I had the car body done over with that two week restoration/paint job. I had the hardtop painted too..The guy that painted my car and restored the body offered to do the entire job if I would give him the hardtop.. he had to remove two small dimples in the roof because it’s aluminum and it was under an apple tree when I spotted it, so those apples put those two slight dimples in the roof which the guy actually removed.. I had the engine rebuilt about 1974 totally stock. Actually what happened was, I bought the engine out of a recovered stolen mga 1600. And I had the motor done over. New pistons and rings, the crankshaft cut after it was magna fluxed.. New rod, cam, and crank bearings. The lifters were slightly pitted. I have a brand new set of Lockheed or Girling I forget the name exactly but they’re brand new factory packed and Cosmo lean lifters. I’m going to install them when I pull the head to put hard exhaust valve seats and stainless steel valves in it so it will run on today’s gasoline… I always told everybody that I would resurrect it and put it back on the road after I retire, well now I’m retired. my ambition now is, to have ambition..

@@Jodyrides I had an 1959 MGA. It was a 1600 but the motor was shot. I put an 1800 MGB engine in it. It ran really good. When I was in high school I also worked in a gas station. The work I did sound the same as what you did. I sold that car 35 years ago. Wish I hadn’t. I have a 2004 Mazdaspeed now. It only has 6000 miles on it. I bought it new and it still has the new car smell. I’m retired and I plan on giving it to my granddaughter, but not anytime soon. She’s only 5 years old. Maybe when she 25 or 30 and knows what that car really is. Good talking to you.

@@jamescorbin3666 now there’s a coincidence. You have a royal star venture, I have a royal star venture, you had and mga, I have an MGA. But how about this one I met a guy while I was working part time is a motorcycle salesman at my local shop. He pulled into the shop in his MGA. OK his motorcycle at the time was a Yamaha RZ 350. So was mine we got to talking. A car he had, was a saab sonnett.. I had one of those also he also had a 1980 Moto Guzzi V50 I also had a 1980 Moto Guzzi V 50 What are the odds of running into someone that has had 4 of the same vehicles you had

@@Jodyrides I can’t match that. When I was 15, was when I was working in the gas station. I had a Kawasaki 500 H-1 2 stroke. It’s was a 3 cylinder screamer. The night I bought, I got a ticket for no driver license. Then 5 months later I was hit head on by the guy that owned the ambulance service that took me to the hospital. He made a left hand turn right in front of me. It broke me into pieces. I spent almost a year in the hospital. At that time I said I never wanted another motorcycle. We’ll 40 years later and now I have 2 bikes. The Venture and a Vstar 1100 Silverado. I don’t ride the bikes much anymore because of knee replacement- rotator cuff surgery 2x and triple bypass surgery. But I’m hoping to get going again. Life can really get crazy sometimes. Be safe on your bike.

@@jamescorbin3666 left turns violating a motorcycles right of way is the most common accident between a motorcycle and cars/trucks. over the decades, I have had at least one pretty close one about every five years, and one very close one about every 10 years.. I actually had a close one with an ambulance. He didn’t have his lights on, he wasn’t in a hurry, he was just in front of me going down hill on the same route I took every day commuting from work. I was on a KLR 650.. we were approaching a traffic light, and a road to the right at the traffic light The ambulance started to turn to go to the right, but the road was closed due to flooding, and the ambulance quickly swerved back as i was now beside him.. he did not know I was there. He actually bumped me with his drivers door.. then he saw me and nailed the brakes. I just kept going.. I saw the whole thing developing and I reacted correctly.. i had 2 motorcycle deer impacts, one at 70 on my bmw k1200lt / $5500 damage (2010 price) .. a 2nd deet impact at 35mph on my commute to work on my honda pacific coast.. i didnt go down either time- just luck… but i was on my way to work , 7am waiting my turn at a busy 4 way stop intersection… i got hit from behind hard.. totalled the pacific coast.. I had all the gear on. As I was laying there coming too, I must’ve been out for a while because the ambulance and the police were already there as I was coming to. I heard the man that hit me explaining to the cops, that he saw my tail light flashing, so he thought I was pulling out.. I had one of those back off flashing tail lights. That actually caused the accident. I won’t go into that anymore, because that causes a lot of accidents with flashing headlights and tail lights I found out later. A phenomenon called target fixation… your subconscious is like hypnotized and stares at something that it doesn’t understand until it figures it out, the consequences, you drive right into where you’re looking… knocked me out of work for nine months. The orthopedic surgeons were ready to cut me open to fix my shoulder. I went to my chiropractor just for the hell of it. My visits to him were disrupted by getting hit, I was already seeing him from being rear ended in my company van while stopped.. my chiropractor was listening to my story and told me to stand up and it had me move a little bit and put my arms up and things like that, and he said to me. Do you mind if I put your shoulder back in place? he fixed it in one second. And those surgeons were ready to cut me open.. but, it was the most profitable paid nine month vacation of my life. Very profitable.. I actually wanted to go back to work after three weeks, but the company doctor would not let me come back until I had a release from my own doctors. I was a maintenance HVAC/electrician for a large company. And they would not accept responsibility until I had a release. that took nine months.. I think my shoulder got dislocated because I was trying to hold the bike up while I was being hit from behind. That’s the only way I can think that it happened.. so, it is rough out there. I have over 700,000 miles behind bars just on the street since 1968, most of those miles were commuting back roads on my 13 mile one-way commute to work and partially through stop sign to stop sign for the last few miles to where I worked near three Rivers Stadium.. my commute to work were the most enjoyable part of every day. Even if it was raining.. I was riding to work six days a week, voluntary overtime every Saturday which I never passed up.So I’ve seen a lot of stuff that can happen in front of you, from beside you, and from behind. Even if you’re doing everything right, you better be dressed for when everything goes wrong. Because it does

I was the first to purchase a Cavalcade here when they first came out and it sure was a nice bike. I too wish they did another one

Bought my 86 Cavalcade LX used in 1988 with 6000 miles. Also had a matching trailer by Bushtec. I kept that bike for over 30 years. Just wasn’t interested in other bikes since it had a smooth quiet ride, yet with some rumble character. Had it restored via nationally known guru in Kansas who got everything back to normal. The end came when I was hit from behind on the Interstate at 90,000 miles. I now ride a Vespa 250 for around town and use a cage for freeways. It’s hard to justify $30,000 for today’s best when aside from fuel injection and a little more precise handling, there’s not much else offered than what I had in the old Suzy for $6k.

@@Diap842IV Love hearing stories like this although a sad ending. A bike like that is like the girl you long ago fell in love with only to lose in the end. The memory keeps her alive. Thanks for sharing.

@@xnihilo64 The Cavalcade was a great bike. Goldwing had the 1200 at that time but this was a 1400 and a very smooth ride. I took a trip to Arkansas from Cali with my wife shortly after getting it and the bike performed flawlessly. Also, with me being 5 6" I could touch the ground comfortably due do miss it