Mission Accomplished!!

Mike Portillo and I worked 3 days (1 full and two 1/2 days)
getting his '88 Venture Royale running right. We removed,
cleaned and bled 2 of 3 calipers, it had NO BRAKES at all.
Bled the clutch it was not disengaging, it shifts smoothly now.
Removed drive shaft grease and reinstall correctly so rear
wheel turns easy. Removed the steering, repacked
the bearings and adjusted, it was hard to turn and noisy.
Installed fork seals. Cleaned many parts soaked in oil,
dirty and rusty. Lubricated many moving parts, all levers
were hard to push or pull.

Next we need to check gas mileage, the Neutral light is
intermittent, engine shuts off when kick stand is down,
and starter needs to be cleaned and a better ground.


This is the third Venture I've done this on, it is
getting easier to do.

Mike and I had 3 days of fun, laughing and joking around.

Can't get Firefox to let me install any pics, dang.
Will use IE next time.

I copy and pasted this from Juno. Won't do that again.

Busy, busy

Monday, lunch with friends, do errands thought up over the weekend.
Tuesday go riding
Wednesday, work on bikes
Thursday go riding
Friday do whatever whenever
Sat, go riding with friends
Sunday watch videos, & relax what else?

That's it just trying to keep you informed!!

So you think I'm motorcycle crazy...

I bought my Yamaha Venture in June. I let my friend who bought one of my Suzuki 1100's drive it. He immediately loved it and bought one. We got it running late summer. Then we had another friend drive his and mine. He liked it so much he bought one. It came in yesterday.
Mine is a 1984, was $1800 and I've got about $3000 in it now. The first friend bought his 88 for $2500 and has about $4000 in his. The third Venture was bought for $2000, also an 88 and he will probably put at least a $1000 more into his.
Now to my point. I have 5 bikes, first friend now has 3, and the second friend has 7! He has a friend who has over 30. Almost everyone that has been biking a long time has more than 1. Only the newbies or returnies to motorcycling have 1.
I've had 24 bikes in 40+ years. Most I only kept a few years except for the 91 Brown Suzuki 1100 that now has over 100,000 miles I bought in Feb 93.
I kid one of my friends, his wife has 2 boarded horses they are far more expensive to buy and keep. He should have 2 bikes for every horse to be even. Right?
The friend who has 7 has to keep some in a rental space. He also has a 36' 5th wheel, 1 ton pick up, a large SUV and his company van.
Gas has come down but my miles driven have not yet, but winter will slow it down. I'll put 21,000+ miles on my five this year. The Venture is so comfortable (for a motorcycle) it is getting the most, 5,000 in 5 months. The miles float by very easy. The seat is good for 400 mile day trips.
When we took the car to Ft. Davis, it got 33 mpg and cost less to drive than the Venture (47 mpg) in Sept. because gas is down so much.
Life is good in retirement, if you keep yourself busy, and don't have too many pains.

Pic is a light echo, don't ask me to explain that one.

Mc Donald Observatory

For the second time we went to Ft. Davis Texas to the McDonald Observatory this year. But this time we got look through the 107" Telescope. For $50 we got a nice brisket dinner, 2 presentations and got actually look at 2 objects. Only McDonald Observatory lets the public use their telescopes.
The 2 talks was very technical, I'm sure many did not understand. The first staff member did a overview of how 80% of space observations use refracting light (the rainbow color effect) to determine chemical makeup, speed, and distance of staller objects.
The second speaker was someone I thought I would never get to meet. He was a member of a team looking for planets around stars. McDonald Observatory is the main telescope doing this.
They have indirectly determined there are hundreds of Jupiter type planets out there. But so far their methods are not good enough to find earth like planets because they are too small. What they do is look for the star to wobble because of gravitational pulls. Even our sun wobbles because of Jupiter, which 5.2 times as far from the sun as we are.
I understood about 90% of what a heavily accented foreign speaker said.
Then we got 2 direct observations ourselves, 1 person at a time. The first was a star cluster 33,000 lights years away, stars about 4-5 billion years old. Maybe 100,000 stars together. Then we looked at a Nebula (cloud) of a exploded star 6,000 light years away. Way cool! Would never see them except through a large telescope.
Linda wants to buy a 107" telescope now.
Nice thing about this time of year is the sun sets much earlier and we got to leave just after 7 pm our time. Got home just after 10 pm in the car (too cold for bike). In Sept. we took the bike and got out at 9 pm and got home at 1 am.
Did not hit any suicide pigs and death defying deer. But see deer going to Ft. Davis in the day. We took the long way in, it is very scenic but dry there.
Was A Great day. Pic later

Projects = staying busy

So far I've almost done 80 things to the Yamaha Venture. With five bikes I can dream up things to modify, improve gas mileage, do some maintenance, go for a ride, clean & polish, go pick up parts, do errands, go visit friends, write emails for Saturday's ride, scan the net for parts or look for new projects, check to see what parts I need, look thru parts I got to see what I want/need, reorganize them, checkout the Venture Rider. org website out for other riders opinions, answer friends questions about their bike.

Yesterday a male 25 year old neighbor. who's name is "Wesley" came over asking me if he should buy a 150cc scooter. I said yes if he can get parts, wears a helmet, gloves, jeans, takes the MSF rider safety class at Community College. Presently he rides his bicycle to work as far as 5 miles. He is a roofer, and has applied for Border Patrol. 150cc is still faster than a bicycle.

Yesterday I installed a Variable Resistor in the ignition circuit, hoping I could advance the timing to get more performance and gas mileage. Was only $3, but did not work. Today I rode up to Orogrande about 50 miles. After filling up I "ONLY" got 48.7 mpg at 65 mph. I was hoping for mid 50's. Half of the fun is installing something I've never done before, hoping I don't burn out the electronics ($50-500). The other half is the excuse is to go riding to see if my idea worked.

Most of the time they do.

Dorothy (my sister) said last year "Do you ever NOT modify anything you buy?" Well our Accord only has new floor mats and a freer flowing air cleaner, does that count?

Example of a good modification: We have 2 home humidifiers. When I bought the 2nd one I took the 1st one apart to clean the fan blades. I noticed a dramatic increase in air flow without the grids. So I cut out the ones you can't put your fingers thru anyways. The other grids on top I cut out every other grid. So large objects would not fall inside. I smart enough (most of the time) to NOT put fingers in turning blades and since our kids moved out 10+ years ago....

Got any ideas?

Rennaisance Faire

Linda & I to Las Cruses to this art & crafts, food and entertainment fair. Only $5 to get in. Best of the 3 times I've gone. The music we heard wasn't the best, but there was many vendors and entertainers in period costumes.

When we started out at 9;00 am it was in the mid 50's, by the time we left LC at 1:30 it was in the 80's. No wind, this is the best time of the year to ride.

We took the Venture, it's running great, got 48 mpg 2 up. Gas was down to $2.53, only $6.50 to refill it up.

I was hoping to listen to more music but Linda's stamina is not up to 100% yet.

It's on about 20 acres there were a few hundred vendors, very little junk. Mostly quality products. We bought some cheese and jellies for Christmas. I was hoping for more period food vendors, but we stuffed ourselves on chicken, chocolate, popcorn and pastami.

Later Sam came by we finished up his case guards on his Yamaha Virago and put forward footpegs on them.

Good Day. But then most are, when that "W" thing is gone.