FJ12Ryder

Hey all, Peggy and I are thinking of hauling the RV and bikes down to the Hill Country this coming April. Can anyone give me a decent idea of what the weather will be like, and good areas to park the RV and do some riding and sight seeing. Also appreciated would be some advice on whether the weather will be amenable to warm riding. I'm cross-posting this to the other list, so I do appreciate any advice, rumors, hearsay, mind-wanderings, etc. TIA Howard

Honda really has no control how the bike is maintained after it leaves their hands. So the PO is the sole culprit in this case. I installed Galfer stainless lines and bleeding the brakes was no big deal. Granted more complicated than a straight system, but really was not an issue. Used less than a quart bottle of brake fluid and did the whole thing over a weekend. Of course your rebuild is much more complicated than mine. Just my opinion, but install Speedbleeders while you have it apart. They are well worth the money.

On my '99 I'm turning about 5,000 RPM at 70 mph. It really throws off the speedometer, and now the odometer is also off. The odometer is usually spot on with the stock gearing. It hasn't affected my mileage at all, if anything it's better than with the stock gearing. Running 70-75 mph for a couple tankfuls netted me around 50 mpg. There's no way I'd go back to stock.

As tall as the bike is geared stock, I doubt that combination would be too low geared.

I went with 17/45. Much preferred over stock. IMO that's what they should have come with.

Both look bent to me.

Horrible, horrible stuff. I had a friend who was a beer distributor before the "Taste Great, Less Filling" commercials started. He said the beer sold like crazy after the commercials started. Who says marketing doesn't work.

Heck, that would more than double the value of my '99. LOL

A lot depends on how often you plan to use the lift. There's not a lot of sense in spending $800-$1000 for a lift you'll use a couple times a year. For occasional usage a "cheapo lift" will do the job just fine. I still have my cheapo lift from HF and it still works just fine, and lifts everything from my VFR to my step-son's Street Glide. It cost me less than $250, and I can buy necessary stuff like beer and gas with the money I saved. Having an air-over-hydraulic would be the best reason to upgrade IMO.

Very apt description of the adventure-type bikes. I see quite a few motoring through here on the interstate lookin' nice and clean. 🙂

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I bought my VFR partly due to its looks. Taking the fairing and related parts off kind of defeats the purpose. I lived through the era of the UJM, so "naked" bikes don't appeal all that much. I can recognize the work that has gone into building one, but that's it. And big "adventure" bikes make very little sense to me. Can you imagine trying to pick up one of those behemoths on the downside of a slope, or even on level ground? For most people it's just style over function...again.

"Knobby tires"?

Yep, a lot of people have hard-ons for K&N. I've used them in all my bikes since for ever, and had no failures, no excessive oil usage, no problems. That being said I would not use them in certain circumstances. I pulled the one that came on my Cummins diesel because that thing just moves too much air and needs to be cleaned frequently. It was a mess when I pulled it out with crud everywhere. The ones in the bikes clean up great. YMMV.

Yeah, I've never had more than two keys for any bike. A lot of them only had one key. Never had any time when I needed more than what I had. Of course that's only been over the last 55 years, so it could still happen. YMMV. Whoops, on Edit, I did drop the VFR key under the tank and couldn't find it so had to have one made.

The Skylift is pretty cool, but just not versatile enough if you have more than one bike. I have the HF lift, and it works okay for the price: about $200 some years ago. But I would be looking at a lift that has air operated hydraulic lift if I had the money. Just depends on how much money you want to spend. They all do the same thing, some are a little more stable than others.