Goldwing or Yamaha Venture 700,000 mile veteran choice 

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

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

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.

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 agree with all of your comments, usable torque is of far more importance than maximum horsepower. I found the goldwing so boring it was like riding on an armchair, no feel or sense of excitement being on a motorcycle.

@@myfavoritecolorisrage I don’t have room in my garage for a three wheeler like the spider. But I would like to try one.

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..

LUIS.. I know the prices have gone up up up. You can tell by my videos all the work I’ve done on mine, would you be interested in buying mine. I am in Pittsburgh PA I don’t know where you are. my machine has 31 or 32K miles.. i’ve done every maintenance chore over the last six months that you can think of. Changed all the fluids, lubed the driveshaft splines, change the oil in the shock while I had the swingarm off greased all the bearings and bushings, new tires, cleaned and synchronized the carbs, adjusted the valves, which none of them needed adjusted so I just checked them. They were all within spec. New air filters/oil/spark plugs/final drive oil/motor oil/cleaned and grease the clutch and brake lever pivots/change the brake fluid and the clutch fluid, Inspected and greased the front wheel bearing seals.. I have all the records of the work I have done to the machine. This machine has absolutely zero mechanical issues. Everything works, cruise control, all the lights, I’ve upgraded the horns, I have upgraded the tool kit..I don’t want anything near $10,000 for it like that one for sale near you. If you live far, I will pick you up at the airport, will do the changeover, and you can ride at home. Let me know if you’re interested

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

​That's good to know I just bought a 1996 Royal Star base. It's been sitting awhile so I expect I will have to pull the carbs and go through them. It's a good idea anyway, especially with the crappy gas in California.

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

Gold wings are perfect. I said that in my video comparison. They are perfect. I just found it a little less exciting. a little boring.. maybe it was the color I didn’t like. Mine was banana yellow…

that’s a sign when the thrill is gone, The cure, for that is a new to you bike, it doesn’t have to be brand new,,

I never had a Harley. I don’t know anything about them. I do know about the CX 500. I had one, it’s actually my favorite engine. When that bike came out in 78, it made me notice moto guzzi , I thought that Honda copied Guzy, but that was not entirely true, because they were not that similar.. on the cx, they spin the clutch in the opposite direction to the crank, which offset the torque reaction that you get with a Guzy. I’ve had 4 guzzis -- so far.. Honda also twisted the cylinders to allow the exhaust pipes to miss the radiator and the frame, at the same time that brought the intake manifolds closer together so the carburetors could be on a single bell crank instead of two separate cables, which makes them a little more difficult to keep in synchronization .. The Honda had three or four valves per cylinder, I forget.. Honda also had a central located spark plug which reduces the risk of detonation with a compression ratio like the Honda had. I believe it was over 10 to 1 or 10.5 to 1 and it still ran on regular gas, and, it was a pushrod engine, reducing the cylinder height.. spinning the crankshaft longitudinally is the way to do a shaft drive engine on a motorcycle. That way you’re only making the power flow turn 90° a single time at the rear wheel… The Honda also had water cooling which means you can run a higher compression ratio. Water cooling is 4000 times more efficient than air cooling… The reason the cylinders were cast into the engine block on the CX 500 is because that engine was developed right from the start to be a turbo charged engine, which finally showed up at 1982. I actually sold the very first Honda CX 500 turbo that came into the Pittsburgh market to my best friend. I was able to snag it for him. $4998… I liked those comstar wheels also because they looked like a mag, but they gave the softer ride of a wire wheel.. The first few years of the CX 500 had CDI ignition. They were hard to start. When you were holding the start button, you were drawing power away from the CDI ignition. And they would light when you would let go of the starter button. Later, when they made it to 650, they gave it transistor ignition, which was better for starting… that was such a pleasant motor, 50 hp was plenty. I had to CX 500 deluxe, I was able to locate a CX 500 seat that came on the Canadian version. It had a Seat similar to the BMW R 100 RS seat…I put CB 400 F bars on mine, installed koni shocks, I think they were Progressive brand fork springs I replaced the stock ones with, stock exhaust, I loved that bike. I had $800 in it because I bought it as a barn find. Someone offered me $2000 for it when they saw it sitting beside the shop I was working at part time. I really didn’t want to sell it, but by not selling it, it would be. The same as me paying $2000 for it. So I had to sell it. That’s the one that got away. The guy that bought it actually rode the bike across country from Washington state down through Texas to Florida and back to Pennsylvania. When he moved his daughter in a large moving truck, he took the bike in the truck with him to Washington state from here in Pennsylvania. That guy was a retired truck driver, and he rode that bike a lot.. my friend that had the CX 500 turbo and I swapped bikes on the long weekend rides we would do together. I have a couple thousand miles on the CX 500 turbo. Mild bike, only 71 hp.. they had no recalls or mechanical issues/problems with that Honda turbo, which was the best of all the turbos. That was a very nice bike especially with those color matched hard, locking saddlebags. The turbos never really caught on… Moto guzzi Finally, finally is getting around to water cooling.. I just sold my Kawasaki Z 400 That I have quite a few videos on RU-vid of, so I’m all cashed up looking for my fifth moto guzzi.. there’s a RU-vidr named Scotty that rides a Harley, I don’t know the model pretty has hundreds of thousands of miles on it. He has many videos of doing mechanical repairs on it when it gives him trouble in places like Florida, Texas, Mexico, South Dakota. He’s a capable roadside repair man. I hate to say he’s homeless, but he lives in Mexico during the winter, and he lives in the United States during the summer, and he is at all of the big rallies like Daytona and Sturgis and Laconia, I don’t know if he works on bikes, but he’s there these days selling his book. because he’s been on the road with everything he owns on a motorcycle for something like 30 years now.. there’s quite a few guys that are doing that. My favorite guy is joe, his website is, dirty motorcycle vagabond. He does the same thing, he works at all of the big motorcycle rallies for Memphis shades as a mechanic, and he lives in Mexico in the colder months. But he camps on the side of the road for a night or a month .. very interesting guy. He’s younger, he just quit his job and lives on the road. He just did a trip to the Philippines, and Vietnam last year, 2023. I’m pointing these guys out because they also put a lot of miles on one motorcycle like you have done. have you had any issues, major breakdowns with your Harley that you put all the miles on? Have you had a belt break while you were on a trip? That happened to a coworker of mine on his Harley leaving Pittsburgh for Daytona, one year. Of course, it broke late in the day on Saturday, no shops were open Saturday or Sunday, he ended up, renting a truck and loading up his Harley and coming back home never made it to Daytona.. I have a video on RU-vid of a test ride I took on a Kawasaki Vulcan voyager in June 2023. I was going to buy it, but the motor made so much clicky ticky noise, it sounded bad. It turns out that’s what they do because they have hydraulic lifters or valve lash adjusters whatever they are called. But I was still thinking about buying that bike I really liked it.. but one thing surprised me about those Kawasaki‘s with belt drive. The belts cost over $500. That’s just for the belt. Harley belts are only $150, and they interchange with the Kawasaki belt according to some RU-vidrs… personally, I would converted to chain drive the first time it needed a belt.. just because you can replace a chain a lot easier.. i’ve only ridden two Harleys, and that was decades ago... I just don’t know any Harley riders. I’ve gone to the local hog shop and asked. When are you going to have demo days. I leave my number and they never call me.

what we have here, is a difference of opinion. It’s an old story. Marilyn Monroe or Jane Russell fender, Stratocaster, or gibson les paul Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones nineMM or 357 mag Mesa, boogie, or Marshall Ford or Chevy vanilla or chocolate Fried or baked cocaine or heroin Dunlops or Michelin’s tube or solid state Digital or analog vinyl or CD Harley or Indian .025 Beretta or Walther PPK Fiat 500 or citron CV2 daddario or elixir Boones farm or night train Kinison or Dangerfield brembo or EBC heads or tails everyone has a right to their wrong opinion ..

yeah, the older cars motorcycles trucks, they were easier to work on. Today you have to marry the dealer .. on my company car/ A jeep liberty, you had to take the car to the dealer to have them plug-in just to check the transmission fluid level

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 RU-vid 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.

Don’t you like Longboards?

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 don’t knock the other guys ride. Live and let live.. I will say this. Harleys cost a lot of money. Harley Davidson has surely paid for all of that tooling decades ago, and they’re sure not paying a research and development department to come out with new models the way Japan does. When I sold Hondas back in the 80s. 1982, Honda gave us salesman boxes of playing cards, 52 cards in each box, with a different model of Honda motorcycle on each card.. I don’t know how they did it, but they did not have the same two or three engines and all those motorcycles. They pretty much all had a different engine design.. I just never got into harleys..None of my friends had them over the past 40 years. never worked on one.. One of my longtime friends was a Harley test rider for years. He owmed BMWs, when they were simple, the boxer twins.. i’ve been into motorcycles for a long long time. And it seems, well it actually is two different cultures. You either ride a Harley, or you ride something else. In my experience, it is not very common to see a motircycleist that is into both harley and “ rice burners”.. One little funny thing about that. every time I would be at a bike night gathering, and I would see a sticker on someone’s helmet, or on their motorcycle that says “ Friends don’t let friends ride rice burners” every time, I mean absolutely 100% of the time, when I ask the owner of that helmet or motorcycle with that sticker on it what it means. 100% of the time, they do not know what it means. The funniest part of that is, it has nothing to do with motorcycles… I am not going to criticize people that love their Harleys. I look at it this way. There are people that love model T Fords. Are you going to criticize those people for loving those relics?? you gotta hand it to Harley. Genius marketing. There is an ass for every seat..

The engine was a 1200 CC in 1985. They had a weak second gear. If you buy it, baby second gear, it came with two flavors, with or without the radio/sound system. 1986 everything came standard as far as radio/CB ect The bags were smaller 1983 1984 in 1985 then the 1986 on bikes. But the first generation was the fastest, not that that matters with a cruising touring bike This is suspension can be upgraded very cheaply if you do your own work. Put Progressive branch fork springs and a matching progressive shock spring.. throw in some new fork seals, wipers, fork oil while you have the forks off, and it will feel like a new machine.. put a new seal in the slave cylinder when you change the clutch fluid. Don’t get any on your plastic/or paint. Alcohol-based brake fluid destroys paint and that plastic around the lower fairing. Seen it.. The valve shims that fit that machine fit Suzukis, Kawasaki‘s, and Yamaha’s to this day they take that size. Make sure you can get carburetor vacuum diaphragms. When you’re cleaning the carbs, don’t get carburetor cleaner near those carburetors while the vacuum diaphragms are in there. I actually like the design and the styling of the saddlebags etc. on the 1983, 1984, 1985 Venture ithe best

elton.. The 1983, 84, and 85 Yamaha venture royale‘s were 1200s. It’s pretty much unanimous that the 1200 was smoother than the 1300. It may have actually been the fastest of all of the ventures including the 2022. They turned 12 second quarter miles in tests by all the magazines. They also handled better than any big touring bikes of that time.. i like that you could buy one without the sound system/ cb/ intercom- that saved lots of dough..i have radio/ cb /intercom on my goldwing bmw and all 3 ventures… never turn them on.. the 1200 ventures has questionable 2nd gear reliability, smallish bags / trunk, and starting in 1986, the venture got the same clutch as the 148 HP vmax.. they also changed the waterpump slightly.. i think the 1200 ventures were the best looking/ more compact.. just baby every shift into 2nd gear on every bike, especially yamaha fj1200, all xs750 & 850 tripples, and 1200 ventures.. Second gear is the gear most likely to fail in all motorcycles because there’s a lot of torque behind every shift from 1st to 2nd. Those dogs on those transmission gears come to a dead stop with all that torque behind them. That’s why they called transmissions, crash boxes for years. it’s a miracle transmissions last as long as they do if you knew what went on in there.. transmission failures scare me. I’ve had two of them. Because, when you pull the clutch in, that does not free up the back wheel once it locks because the transmission locks up. The clutch just disconnects the crankshaft from the transmission input shaft.. once a motorcycle transmission locks up, that rear wheel will stay locked until you pull the engine and split the cases.. those 1200 ventures Really benefit from an upgrade to the progressive brand fork springs and the rear shock spring. Less than $200, you will never need air in the suspension again. I did that on my 86 venture, it felt like a brand new motorcycle after that..

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 don’t have to learn. I did the work. The issue is, I don’t wanna do it again. Gold wings are perfect. They are also the most difficult to work on motorcycle I ever worked on. Not so much difficult as time consuming…Even following the honda service manual, there are so many little fasteners, screws, rivets, the screws seem to all be different lengths and you can not mix them up. You have to take them off and put them in order. I have a one car garage with a lot of stuff in it including my 58 mga sports car which I have owned since for decades.. I had to start taking things off in order, and finding places in my game room for all that plastic.. I thought I could do a shortcut to get to the rear shock absorber to remove it to upgrade the spring, I started to remove the right saddlebag. I gave up after half an hour, I discovered there is so much wiring and automatic trunk locking and the tail lights were wired in there in the bags, and the harnesses running through the bag, that I gave up on the thought of removing the right saddle bag. It was also tied into the trunk bodywork. Unbelievable. On the flipside, I could have either saddlebag on my venture off of the bike, I am not kidding completely off the machine in less than two minutes. Using electric nut driver, I could probably have them off in under a minute. It’s only four screws.. The saddlebag example pretty much sums up what it’s like to work on a Goldwing versus just about every other motorcycle out there.. I was a motorcycle mechanic at three different dealerships.. my Goldwing was absolutely the most complex to work on motorcycle I have ever seen.. I know how to take the screws out and the little fasteners and take things apart and put them back together without losing anything or without having parts left over. I don’t have to learn how to do that. That doesn’t mean I want to do it.. Gold wings are perfect. They’re more refined than any .. they’re just a pain in the ass to work on. Been there, done that. And I feel bad for people that have to pay $125 an hour which is standard shop labor rate to do simple jobs that Take an hour or two on just about any other motorcycle, but on the Goldwing, sometimes those same jobs take as long as five or six hours

@@Jodyrides Understood Jody...yeah getting down to what you need to work on can be a PITA...but doing your own work, you get to know the bike (as you know) and know that things like torque setting are correct. have a great day!

Honda is poor designed crap. Yamaha is designed by people with brains. Honda is designed by low intelligence morons

I disagree with you completely, the fee twin has character and great torque. The flat six is the most boring engine ever made, exactly the opposite to what a motorbike engine should be. IMHO

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 RU-vid of how I mouse proofed my air box. It’s on RU-vid 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.

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

@@Jodyrides...lol...

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

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.

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..

@@michaellandis2144 we are in touch… What do you need to know?

@@Jodyrides NOTHING RIGHT NOW. I WILL BE IN TOUCH. GOD BLESS YOU.

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

If you were going to quote me when I said Japan makes the best motorcycles, and then mock me for complaining about it taking six hours to change the air cleaner.. then don’t forget to quote me when I said “gold wings are perfect”, I actually say that twice in the video. They’re just hard to work on.. thanks for watching..It took me a while to go through all these responses to my video

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…

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.

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!

I know what you mean about German cars and motorcycles. I don’t know what happened to them. BMW air cooled twins were the standard. But ever since the introduction of the k100 BMW motorcycle in the early 1980s, they went off a cliff and never came back. The most flawed motorcycle I ever owned was a BMW K 1200 LT look at VW.. The only car I ever had that broken half was a VW rabbit with 72,000 miles on it. The antenna hole in the fender leaked into the cab unknown to us and the floor was wet constantly for years. I sold the car to a friend of mine who just wanted something for transportation. And the car broke and a half right behind the front wheels straight down from the windshield leading edge.. look at the I believe it was over $1 billion fine VW got for making its cars appear to be compliant with pollution standards.. my best friend loves BMW convertibles that he buys when they are returned leases. He buys those extended warranties you see advertised on TV. And they do not cover things that are very expensive like convertible tops that won’t go up, broken seat frame for the driver seat, automatic transmission shift levers that can be put into manual mode so you can follow a shift pattern manually, my friend spent over $10,000 to have those things repaired out of pocket because those car warranties he was buying did not cover those items. And he was paying $151 a month for those warranties.. there was a time when something made in Germany was considered top of the line. That was 40 years ago. Now it’s Japan. The best car ever made is the Toyota corolla, according to a worldwide repair garage owner survey.. I don’t know how the federal government allowed my BMW K 1200 LT motorcycle into the country. Every time I used the side stand to park the bike. When I would restart the bike it would pour white smoke out the exhaust pipe. The dealer said that’s harmless and it’s normal.. that bike had quite a few other flaws with the electric/hydraulic ABS brake system, the flawed front end that no other manufacturer has even attempted to copy the design. The final drive gear set failures left and right, just the awkward top heaviness combined with the no field electric servo pump activated ABS front brakes. Just stopping at a stop sign was nerve-racking. That’s the only motorcycle I have dropped since I started riding in 1968. Never dropped any of my three Yamaha ventures, never dropped my GL 1800 Goldwing, or the dozens of other motorcycles I have owned. I don’t know how BMW motorcycles and stays in business. There were 4 Dealers in the Pittsburgh area at one time, now there are zero

lug nut. That makes four different horsepower numbers I have heard for the royal star venture’s. I’ve heard 72 hp, I’ve heard 85 hp, I’ve heard 95 hp, now I’ve heard 99. To me it feels like it has around 75.. but it is very Torquey.. I don’t think I have ever stalled any of my ventures that I can remember. You just let the clutch out and they go..We may think we want big horsepower, but what we really like is the torque ..

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.

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..

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”…

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 RU-vid now, the title of it is, Yamaha venture cruise control, not working check

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

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.

there are usually dozens of these Jacks that I bought on eBay for sale. If you type in the search bar, the words, motorcycle scissor lift jack, they will come up. I have a video on RU-vid, just showing the Jack and operating it. video title -Wonderful $60 motorcycle jack demo …..The title of another video is -$50 motorcycle lift stand Yamaha royal star venture Goldwing - I think if you type just $50 motorcycle lift stand, you’ll find it holding up my Venture with the rear wheel removed.. I bought this when I owned my gold wing so that I could get the front forks off to change the fork, springs and seals, etc, and the rear wheel removed on the Goldwing to put new tires on and to remove the shock to upgrade / change the rear shock spring on the Goldwing ..I have other videos on RU-vid showing that my Venture is in the air with one of the wheels off, front or rear, supported by this Jack. I spotted this Jack, when a very professional looking company called traction dynamics that seems to specialize in suspensions for gold wings, they had a gold wing up on one of these jacks, while they had the front end off, changing the fork springs. I thought to myself, that’s good enough for me, and I searched and searched, until I accidentally found these jacks for sale on eBay… make sure you get the one with the individually adjustable saddles that you can adjust the width of the stance of the saddles, and the height. I show that in one of my videos, how you can adjust how far apart the saddles are, and you can adjust the height of each saddle in case you have to avoid making contact with the oil pan or the exhaust. They are rated at 1100 pounds

I’ll tell you the most plastic feeling motorcycle I had, that was my 1986 Yamaha venture royale. Over every little bump, there was a lot of rattle plastic noise from that fairing. I pulled the fairing apart one day to try to reduce that rattling, I zip tied a lot wires closer together and try to figure out what the heck is loose. I never did figure it out. But that 1986 Yamaha that I put 138,000 trouble-free miles on did rattle.. at the same time it was the fastest of my ventures. The magazines actually clocked them in the 12 second quarter mile times at the drag strip.. that was a nice bike. The only reason I sold it, is because it was 16 years old…

Wait until the first week of March to list it. If you were in the Northeast or somewhere where we experience winter. Everybody has cabin fever, the weather starting to get better, they know how much they’re gonna get back on their income tax check, that’s the easiest time to sell anything on two wheels

You are never going to sell your venture?? Never and Someday are two days that you will never find on any calendar…

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

@@Jodyrides Sure is

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 RU-vid 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 RU-vid 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

Matt, I have had to adjust the PAWL spring to RE- center the spring on the post for the shifting mechanism that rotates the shift drum on most motorcycles. I never heard that type of mechanism action you described as having a turn, lift, and drop motion.. I never worked on a Goldwing shift mechanism, so I don’t know. This is something new to me. Maybe that’s the reason Honda is against using floorboards because you have to use heel toe shifters. to tell you the truth, I see many people clacking their bikes into gear using the entire weight of their leg when they shift from neutral into first gear. That seems brutal to me.. that could be why Honda forbids the use of floorboards.. I do not use the heel portion of my shift lever on my royal star venture. I think that you tend to be a little meat fisted using the entire weight of your leg to rotate the shift drum.. it always makes me cringe when I see people attacking their shifters, especially when the bike isn’t even running. I wanna go up to them and smack them.. they just don’t understand that the transmission is a rotary constant mesh transmission. And that the gears must be rotating for the dogs to engage and disengage.. i’m going to buy a used heel toe shifter on eBay to cut the heel section of the shifter off to see if that will work fine. Because I never use it in consideration of the shift mechanism and the shift drum and the shift forks and the shift shaft.. Have you ever replaced bent shift forks? Burnt shift forks from people who rest their foot on that shift lever? I have. Most people have no conception of how that shift mechanism works or how a constant mesh sequential transmission works.. and I don’t expect them to understand how it works. But I would like to tell them that you don’t need to attack your shifter..

@@Jodyrides ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cvzsKF4FRGg.html

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

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

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..

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 !

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 RU-vid 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 RU-vid 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.

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?

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.

My Venture in this video is the standard 2008 color royal star venture. I have owned quite a few bikes. I have never bought a motorcycle that has been repainted. Because that means only one thing..

I have seen lots of people that go to the dark side. I’m surprised it fits in that skinny swingarm space.. on the Venture in the Vmax, the rear wheel is offset 10 MM to give the tire some room. The rear wheel does not track directly behind the front wheel.. does the car tire fit on the Venture wheel??

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…

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

I wish I knew what you were talking about And I wish you did

Right on. I own both and you are speaking from the same real world experience I have.

That handy little compartment stitched to my tank bra was on the machine when I bought it used in the fall of 2021.. I have seen those for sale on eBay new and used..

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!

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..