Thanks for taking the time to make these videos. I just bought a 2008 Tour Delux that had been somewhat neglected. Your vids have helped me get it roadworthy again. Thank you.
04:50 thanks for bringing that up. My uninformed shop uses dishwash soap and water and says they have never had a problem. Well yeah, sure, they dont have a bike more than 5 years under the same owner come back to them with trashy wheels.
A motorcycle buddy of mine is the senior chemist at one of the chemical companies around here. He enlightened me about soap & detergents with LYE as an ingredient , and its corrosive reaction with aluminum..
Great video and information, in fact I have a Suzuki Boulevard c50 with Kenda Cruz tires , and you are right, the best tires , with very strong sides , from now on I stay with Kenda, blessings my friend
One little note when I made this video I forgot to mention. The Kenda tires I bought for my Venture were made especially for heavyweight motorcycles like the Venture. also, the Kenda tires I put on my GMC Canyon pick up truck which is not a very heavy duty heavy weight pick up truck. It was a crew cab 4 x 4, the tires gave a great ride, and they were actually light duty truck/SUV tires they were not tires made for a lightweight subcompact car I forgot to mention also that LYE in soap is what makes it feel ultra slick/slippery. When you put some on your fingers and you can feel the lubricity, the slipperiness of the soap/dishwashing liquid, face soap, shampoo. you are feeling the LYE. That is what is so slick I also mention the weight of the tire I removed and the weight of the new tire. I failed to mention that the new tire should weigh more because it’s got much more tread / rubber than the worn tire.. just a couple years earlier back in 2019, I removed Dunlop elite 3 Tires from my GL 1800 Goldwing that were on it when I bought it used from the original owner. It was a 2002 Goldwing and it still had the original tires on it, they had 13,000 miles on them/the original 17 year old tires. I replaced them with the Dunlop elite 4 tires.. The rear tire I took off of that Goldwing weighed 25 pounds. That was a very worn tire with just a little bit of tread left. The brand new Dunlop elite 4 Tire weighed 19 pounds. That’s 6 pounds less. That 6 pounds of unsprung weight I removed. Unsprung weight is completely different than weight you put in your saddlebags or on your passenger seat. It’s weight that the suspension has to contend with. Its weight the shock absorber has to control.. when I installed those lighter tires on the Goldwing. That was a completely different motorcycle. It felt like it weighed 200 pounds less. It’s like I dropped off a passenger. I don’t know how much the Dunlop elite 4 tire in the size required for my Venture weighs.. of course Dunlop tires are one of the top 3 , but the Kenda tires for the Venture/heavyweight motorcycles is a new product for Kenda.. I imagine they would be using the latest engineering and techniques since they’re coming out with a new tire, and I love the way they transformed my pick up truck and my wife’s Honda CRV ride. And the price is almost half as much as a set of Dunlops or avons or Michelin, and Metzler which is my least favorite top brand, or Continental which is actually one of my favorite tires for decades.. I actually won 6 road racing championships / 2 national Championships using continental motorcycle tires back in my day. I was actually a test rider for them. One time they sent me a brand new batch of tires for my racebike that had no numbers or stampings on the tires at all. They were blank. And my competition went to The race officials, and they let it slide this time, but they said the tires had to have certain markings on them to show that they were DOT approved. I called Arnold , the president of continental tire in New York and told him, and they had tires with DOT numbers on them shipped to me within a week straight from Germany… those tires were the prototypes of the TK 22 & 44 models I was testing..
Hey Jody. Good choice of tires IMO. I first ran Kendas on my V-Star 1100 and was very happy with them, so I tried them on my first RSV. I don't know what kind of mileage I had on them when the bike was totaled after I smucked a deer, but they were doing well. When I bought my current '07 RSV, the dealer put new Dunlops on it and (not surprisingly) I only got 4000 miles out of them. I replaced them with Kendas, and I'm currently on my second set. I got 15000 out of the rear and still working on the front. They ride nice and grip well, I haven't had any issues on any kind of pavement, wet or dry. When the time comes I'll be using them again.
Hey Jody, enjoy your videos. I have an 01 tour deluxe and it had a brand new Kenda on the front. It had over 10k on it when I replaced it and could have gone more but just wanted new rubber on front and back. They are great tires for the money.
Great video. I have a 2009 Model, and for the life of me. I have no idea why my rear tire is smaller than the front on my venture. The dealer installed a cheap version front on back prior to selling it. What’s the biggest I can go at the rear.
The rear wheel on the Venture is offset 10 mm to one side so that the tire will clear the driveshaft tube in the swing arm. If you get down on the ground behind the Venture, can you run the string around the front wheel on both sides, and bring both sides of that string to the back on both sides of the rear tire you will see that the rear wheel is not in line with the front tire on the Venture’s. that is very unusual, in fact, I don’t even know of another motorcycle that has that … so tire clearance is a factor. You really can’t go much wider. A couple world champion road racers back in the 80s did tire development research for motorcycles. They both agreed that narrower tires work better than wider tires. The wider, the tire, the more likely it is to hydroplane, and the wider. , The more effort it takes to countersteer to get the motorcycle to initiate turns, and the more effort it takes to hold that countersteer angle to keep the bike down in a corner.. The factories spend millions developing these machines and coming up with The safest best handling tire sizes. I myself never ever deviate from factory suggested/required tire sizes installing wider, tires or skinny tires, other than the size The machine was developed for changes, the angle that the tire actually meets the road. The tire carcass itself is distorted if you put a much wider tire on a wheel that is not designed for that size tire… i’m sure you could find a chart online that would list the acceptable size tires for the size wheel you have. There is a range of widths and aspect ratios. I remember seeing those charts showing the different width wheels required for different size tires.. One other thing to keep in mind, is the speed rating. Higher speed, rated tires are generally made of stiffer, carcasses, and softer rubber… higher speed rated tires also come at a higher price, and they many times have less tread, depth, less rubber, because the enemy at very high speeds is centrifugal force, causing the tire carcass to distort as the tire grows at high speed. Just picture those top fuel dragsters when they do a tire warm-up burn out. Centrifugal force makes those tires grow by a couple inches… if I can find the tire for any machine, I might have that is the correct size and, and has the correct weight carrying capacity. If I can find that tire in a lower speed rating such as H speed rated,which is safe to operate up to I think it’s 115 miles an hour. As opposed to buying the same rated tire for weight and size, but with a Z speed rating, which is safe to operate up to 149 miles an hour., I will always go for the H rated tire, because not only will it last longer, it will be about $50 cheaper, and the carcass won’t be as stiff. I did a video recently that I have not published yet. There’s too much of it I have to chop out of the video and piece it together, and I haven’t learned how to do that yet. But that tire was on the front of a friends Kawasaki Z 900.. that tire had a very high speed rating, Z or W…That tire was completely bald on the left side, I show that in the video that I have yet to publish, at 3500 miles. My friend and I when we go out riding, we will generally do about 150 to 250 miles a day, that’s three hours to five hours of riding because when you are riding, you generally average 50 miles an hour.. that tire only lasted 15 days/ rides…what’s the price of tires today, that’s something to keep in mind. If you like buying very fast motorcycles, they come with the highest speed rated tires because if they’re gonna sell you a motorcycle they can do 180 miles an hour, it is going to come from the factory with tires that are rated for that speed. A lot of riders never take that into consideration that they’re gonna be buying tires three or four times more often and those tires are around 30 to 50% more $$. And if you don’t put them on yourself you’re gonna be paying someone else to put them on.. I just bought a new to me motorcycle that the original owner had just put new tires on. He showed me the receipt. It was almost $800, $350 of that was labor. so if you’re gonna be paying that kind of money, every 3500 to 4000 miles having someone else install in balance, your tires, I think I would buy the lowest speed rating tire. I could find some thing in the H speed rating, which is probably the most common street bike tire speed rating. That speed rating letter will be in the size. branded into the tire, example 120/70/ZR/17 120/70HR/17 TheH, and the Z are the speed rating, and the R indicates that the tire is a radial..
“ wonderful $60 motorcycle jack demo” search that video title, that is a demo video that I put on CZcams using the Jack we both have and using it on my royal star venture. You can see in the video where I jack my motorcycle up to remove the rear wheel.. because of that saddlebag bracket that crosses from one side to the other by the rear fender, and because of the rear fender, you have to jack the Venture up pretty high to be able to get the rear wheel to clear the fender and that saddlebag bracket when removing the rear wheel in that demo when I rock the bike you can see the jack moving slightly. That’s because my floor is not level there. That was not the Jack exhibiting excess play.. if you watch how the jack goes up with the scissor action, you’ll notice that the scissors supports work their way over towards the large nut that turns the all thread.Make sure you put the Jack so that is supporting the bike closer to the nut you turn to raise the jack so that the Xscissor lifting bars are under the frame, instead of supporting the bike on the far end with the perch’s.. I clean my frame with brake clean on a rag so there is no slippery stuff under the frame where the perches contact the frame I also remove the mufflers which take about two or three minutes each to remove, and the saddlebags, which take about two minutes each to remove, before I lift the bike up high. I get all the ground work wrestling with pipes and saddlebags and passenger floorboards done before taking the bike up high on the Jack. Once I get the wheel removed and out from under the fender, I lower the bike.. I also stabilize the front wheel so that it can’t turn, and it can’t roll by putting a sandbag in front of the front wheel … I measure and only take the bike up as high as it absolutely needs to go just enough to get the wheel out.. here is another idea I had just to make it a little safer I thought of putting a hose clamp around the frame with the screw housing of the hose clamp at the bottom. So that the jack perches contacting those clamps would stop the motorcycle from sliding forward on the perch... My thought is, that with a hose clamp attached to the frame on each side, they would act as a stop if you put them just behind the lift perch contacts the frame as an extra measure of safety.. I lifted my Goldwing using my jack when I had a GL 1800 which weighs much more than Venture, when I took the forks off to change fork seals and replace fork springs .. that Jack was directly under the six cylinder engine of the goldwing.. I think it’s also a good idea to grease the threads of the Jack where they do all the work. I would use some white lithium grease which is extreme pressure grease, which is different from high speed wheel bearing grease. Grease is not just grease.. I don’t know what maintenance procedures you are going to be doing that you need to lift your Venture. But I also made a 2 x 4 that fits under the bike, it has two slots in it to clear those two tabs that hang below the venture where the center stand probably would have gone if they installed one. That is how I used to lift my Venture before I had this wonderful scissor lift jack. I put a pair of floor jacks under that 2 x 4 it was just wide enough to contact the frame on both sides, and those frame tabs keep the 2x4 in place..It takes some pretty close measuring to make a 2 x 4 that’s wide enough to contact both sides of the frame, and it takes some pretty close measuring to determine exactly where to cut those slots just wide enough to clear those tabs. I determined where to cut the slots in the 2 x 4 for the tabs by holding the 2 x 4 in position and tapping it with a hammer so that it would put marks directly into the 2 x 4 showing me exactly where to slice into the 2 x 4.. make sure you’re jacking the bike up on a flat level solid surface.. what maintenance are you going to be doing that you need to jack the bike up? I just jacked my Venture up to take the weight off of the suspension and the wheels for the winter months here in Pennsylvania December through February…
if you check a couple of my other videos with the bike in the air, you will notice that I place the jack , using the saddles of the jack under the frame in the vicinity of the lugs/mounting brackets that Yamaha possibly intended to install a center stand, I changed their mind and did not install center stands on the royal star ventures.. that is where I place my stand when I am going to be removing the rear wheel.. of course when I’m going to be removing the front wheel, I placed the stand more forward in the area roughly of the floorboards..
it will probably say in your owners manual with the recommended tires are for your royal star venture. I am running the Kenda tires on my Venture. So far so good. I like the ride, and they spin true. And I can let go of the handlebars, and the handlebars don’t start to isolate into a tank slapper which I have had that happen on quite a few brand new tires.. If you’re gonna be riding with a passenger, I think I would go with Dunlop elite 4 tires.. I put those on my goldwing. The original tires were still on that machine when I bought it. It was 16 years old when I bought it with 13 K miles. I replaced those Dunlop elite three tires with Dunlop elite four tires… I weigh my tires, because tires, the wheels, the discs, those all come under the heading of unsprung weight. That is one place you want to have as light a component as you can find. The rear tire on my Goldwing, Evan, though it was worn out, weighed 25 pounds. The tire I replaced it with, was the new version of the Goldwing tire. The elite four… that same size tire rated for that heavy motorcycle was 6 pounds less at 19 pounds. You would not believe how much better that motorcycle felt especially on bumpy roads. The suspension was not slow down having to deal with that extra 6 pounds. When you hit a bump, that energy goes into the spring, and then the oil in the shark Hass to control the spring. That takes time. And when you had a series of bumps/ripples in the road.. your suspension can handle the first one, but depending on how much unsprung weight you were burdened with, and how fast you’re going, and how far apart the ripples are, your suspension can actually collapse, you can feel it, when it’s compressed, you hit the next bump, nick keeps it from uncompressing, and then you hit the next bump, and your suspension is canceled out. You really can’t feel it at slower speeds, but at moderate to high speeds, you can feel that your bike does not want to stay online, on track through corners. My Goldwing salt like it was 100 pounds lighter with those lighter tires… it has nothing to do with the weight of the machine or how much weight you were carrying or how many pounds you have in your luggage or how heavy your passenger is. It has everything to do with how fast the suspension can absorb the bump and recover. if you were going to put a lot of miles on your bike, every year, it would probably be better to go with the Dunlops, but if you are not going to be out there, piling up the miles, you’ll probably have to replace the tires because of their age, rather than how worn they are, much like the goldwing i bought head that was 16 years old, and still had the original tires on.. Who is tire is actually still would pass safety state inspection for the amount of tread they had, but I have in my videos, showing how the sidewalls were cracking from ozone attacking the rubber.. so if it were me, and I was not gonna put a lot of miles on, I would put the less expensive tires on, but if I was going to carry a lot of weight, I would go with the more expensive tires.. The only reason I went with Kenda tires is, I put them on my last pick up truck and loved the ride, and then I put them on my wife’s Honda CRV, and she loves the ride in the feel.. and I just put a set of them on my ram pick up, and I could feel the softer ride immediately. They are not the wrong tires on my heavy truck, they are rated for my truck weight… they are not made in China, they are made on new equipment with new engineering designs that are up-to-date in Vietnam, designed in Ohio, which is where Kenda headquarters is.. I did a lot of Internet research on CZcams about tires on Venture‘s and other heavy motorcycles, and I only found one video that showed a tire failure of a Kenda, and after seeing that video, and seeing that tire, that tire did not fail, I think that guy hit a very bad pothole, or he hit a piece of metal laying in the road. That huge cut in that tire across the tread does not look like a tire failure. why are you have your rear wheel off, I suggest you grease that rear hub it’s held on by a snap ring. I don’t know what the official part is called. I think it’s some kind of clutch. They use that name in the manual, but I call it a Cush drive or a cushion drive. Because every vehicle that I know of has either rubber motor mounts and transmission mount, or it has rubber blocks in the rear wheel, or a rubber bushings like the Venture has in the rear wheel, and your final drive spins that clutch, that hub that is plugged into six rubber bushings in the rear wheel. Those bushings have metal collars inside. And they rust.. at least, when I took my rear hub out of the rear wheel, those pins were rusty. Some people say that there’s noise that comes from the rear wheel sometimes and that’s what it is, that hub needs those pins in the bushings, greased, and the sprocket on the hub that plugs into the final drive, that needs greased. You’re gonna need a pair of snap ring pliers that opens at least 1 inch to get that snap ring off. AutoZone will lend you the tool for free. What they do is they sell it to you, and then they will buy it back at full price.. that would also be a good time to change the final drive 80 weight gear lube. Coincidentally, I just changed mine today in my new to me Honda nt700 that I have a couple videos of on CZcams already..
I bought the motorcycle scissor lift jack on eBay two years ago. I bought it new for $49.95 with free shipping. I did a demo video of this Jack and the video is now on CZcams. The title is -wonderful $60 motorcycle jack demo- it is rated at 1100 pounds. They sell them on eBay. If you type in the words, motorcycle scissor lift jack. A page with dozens of them will show up. They are about $67 with free shipping now. Worth every rupee.. The tire tool? If you’re talking about the motorcycle tire balancing stand. I bought that at “Harbor freight”…It was just under $50. Using their online coupons, I think I got it for $40 when I bought it a few years ago… If you were talking about the red manual motorcycle tire changing stand, I bought that at Harbor freight also. I think it was approximately $50 when I bought it a few years ago. I also bought 10 pounds of motorcycle or car stick on lead balancing weights on eBay. I heard that they were going to eliminate lead weights a few years ago so I stocked up. The reason they gave for eliminating lead weights is, they claim that 5000 tons of wheel weights ends up falling off of car wheels along the road every year and they end up contaminating groundwater .. so now the only weights you can buy are made of something called composite. The problem with them is, they are at least twice as large as lead weights. So if you can get them on eBay, if they’re still available and not all sold, I would buy some stick on LEAD weghts while you still can if you’re gonna buy this balancing stand at Harbor freight..
Thanks for taking the time to make these videos. I just bought a 2008 Tour Delux that had been somewhat neglected.
Your vids have helped me get it roadworthy again. Thank you.
I have the same lift. I bought mine from Amazon. They are for sale there now too. good lift.
04:50 thanks for bringing that up. My uninformed shop uses dishwash soap and water and says they have never had a problem. Well yeah, sure, they dont have a bike more than 5 years under the same owner come back to them with trashy wheels.
A motorcycle buddy of mine is the senior chemist at one of the chemical companies around here. He enlightened me about soap & detergents with LYE as an ingredient , and its corrosive reaction with aluminum..
Great video and information, in fact I have a Suzuki Boulevard c50 with Kenda Cruz tires , and you are right, the best tires , with very strong sides , from now on I stay with Kenda, blessings my friend
One little note when I made this video I forgot to mention. The Kenda tires I bought for my Venture were made especially for heavyweight motorcycles like the Venture.
also, the Kenda tires I put on my GMC Canyon pick up truck which is not a very heavy duty heavy weight pick up truck. It was a crew cab 4 x 4, the tires gave a great ride, and they were actually light duty truck/SUV tires they were not tires made for a lightweight subcompact car
I forgot to mention also that LYE in soap is what makes it feel ultra slick/slippery. When you put some on your fingers and you can feel the lubricity, the slipperiness of the soap/dishwashing liquid, face soap, shampoo. you are feeling the LYE. That is what is so slick
I also mention the weight of the tire I removed and the weight of the new tire. I failed to mention that the new tire should weigh more because it’s got much more tread / rubber than the worn tire..
just a couple years earlier back in 2019, I removed Dunlop elite 3 Tires from my GL 1800 Goldwing that were on it when I bought it used from the original owner. It was a 2002 Goldwing and it still had the original tires on it, they had 13,000 miles on them/the original 17 year old tires.
I replaced them with the Dunlop elite 4 tires.. The rear tire I took off of that Goldwing weighed 25 pounds. That was a very worn tire with just a little bit of tread left. The brand new Dunlop elite 4 Tire weighed 19 pounds. That’s 6 pounds less. That 6 pounds of unsprung weight I removed. Unsprung weight is completely different than weight you put in your saddlebags or on your passenger seat. It’s weight that the suspension has to contend with. Its weight the shock absorber has to control.. when I installed those lighter tires on the Goldwing. That was a completely different motorcycle. It felt like it weighed 200 pounds less. It’s like I dropped off a passenger.
I don’t know how much the Dunlop elite 4 tire in the size required for my Venture weighs.. of course Dunlop tires are one of the top 3 , but the Kenda tires for the Venture/heavyweight motorcycles is a new product for Kenda.. I imagine they would be using the latest engineering and techniques since they’re coming out with a new tire, and I love the way they transformed my pick up truck and my wife’s Honda CRV ride. And the price is almost half as much as a set of Dunlops or avons or Michelin, and Metzler which is my least favorite top brand, or Continental which is actually one of my favorite tires for decades..
I actually won 6 road racing championships / 2 national Championships using continental motorcycle tires back in my day. I was actually a test rider for them. One time they sent me a brand new batch of tires for my racebike that had no numbers or stampings on the tires at all. They were blank. And my competition went to The race officials, and they let it slide this time, but they said the tires had to have certain markings on them to show that they were DOT approved. I called Arnold , the president of continental tire in New York and told him, and they had tires with DOT numbers on them shipped to me within a week straight from Germany… those tires were the prototypes of the TK 22 & 44 models I was testing..
Thanks for sharing Jody!
Good to hear correct information!
Hey Jody. Good choice of tires IMO. I first ran Kendas on my V-Star 1100 and was very happy with them, so I tried them on my first RSV. I don't know what kind of mileage I had on them when the bike was totaled after I smucked a deer, but they were doing well. When I bought my current '07 RSV, the dealer put new Dunlops on it and (not surprisingly) I only got 4000 miles out of them. I replaced them with Kendas, and I'm currently on my second set. I got 15000 out of the rear and still working on the front. They ride nice and grip well, I haven't had any issues on any kind of pavement, wet or dry. When the time comes I'll be using them again.
Hey Jody, enjoy your videos. I have an 01 tour deluxe and it had a brand new Kenda on the front. It had over 10k on it when I replaced it and could have gone more but just wanted new rubber on front and back. They are great tires for the money.
Great video. I have a 2009
Model, and for the life of me. I have no idea why my rear tire is smaller than the front on my venture. The dealer installed a cheap version front on back prior to selling it.
What’s the biggest I can go at the rear.
The rear wheel on the Venture is offset 10 mm to one side so that the tire will clear the driveshaft tube in the swing arm. If you get down on the ground behind the Venture, can you run the string around the front wheel on both sides, and bring both sides of that string to the back on both sides of the rear tire you will see that the rear wheel is not in line with the front tire on the Venture’s. that is very unusual, in fact, I don’t even know of another motorcycle that has that …
so tire clearance is a factor. You really can’t go much wider.
A couple world champion road racers back in the 80s did tire development research for motorcycles. They both agreed that narrower tires work better than wider tires. The wider, the tire, the more likely it is to hydroplane, and the wider. , The more effort it takes to countersteer to get the motorcycle to initiate turns, and the more effort it takes to hold that countersteer angle to keep the bike down in a corner..
The factories spend millions developing these machines and coming up with The safest best handling tire sizes. I myself never ever deviate from factory suggested/required tire sizes
installing wider, tires or skinny tires, other than the size The machine was developed for changes, the angle that the tire actually meets the road. The tire carcass itself is distorted if you put a much wider tire on a wheel that is not designed for that size tire…
i’m sure you could find a chart online that would list the acceptable size tires for the size wheel you have. There is a range of widths and aspect ratios. I remember seeing those charts showing the different width wheels required for different size tires..
One other thing to keep in mind, is the speed rating. Higher speed, rated tires are generally made of stiffer, carcasses, and softer rubber… higher speed rated tires also come at a higher price, and they many times have less tread, depth, less rubber, because the enemy at very high speeds is centrifugal force, causing the tire carcass to distort as the tire grows at high speed. Just picture those top fuel dragsters when they do a tire warm-up burn out. Centrifugal force makes those tires grow by a couple inches… if I can find the tire for any machine, I might have that is the correct size and, and has the correct weight carrying capacity. If I can find that tire in a lower speed rating such as H speed rated,which is safe to operate up to I think it’s 115 miles an hour. As opposed to buying the same rated tire for weight and size, but with a Z speed rating, which is safe to operate up to 149 miles an hour., I will always go for the H rated tire, because not only will it last longer, it will be about $50 cheaper, and the carcass won’t be as stiff.
I did a video recently that I have not published yet. There’s too much of it I have to chop out of the video and piece it together, and I haven’t learned how to do that yet. But that tire was on the front of a friends Kawasaki Z 900.. that tire had a very high speed rating, Z or W…That tire was completely bald on the left side, I show that in the video that I have yet to publish, at 3500 miles.
My friend and I when we go out riding, we will generally do about 150 to 250 miles a day, that’s three hours to five hours of riding because when you are riding, you generally average 50 miles an hour.. that tire only lasted 15 days/ rides…what’s the price of tires today, that’s something to keep in mind. If you like buying very fast motorcycles, they come with the highest speed rated tires because if they’re gonna sell you a motorcycle they can do 180 miles an hour, it is going to come from the factory with tires that are rated for that speed. A lot of riders never take that into consideration that they’re gonna be buying tires three or four times more often and those tires are around 30 to 50% more $$. And if you don’t put them on yourself you’re gonna be paying someone else to put them on..
I just bought a new to me motorcycle that the original owner had just put new tires on. He showed me the receipt. It was almost $800, $350 of that was labor.
so if you’re gonna be paying that kind of money, every 3500 to 4000 miles having someone else install in balance, your tires, I think I would buy the lowest speed rating tire. I could find some thing in the H speed rating, which is probably the most common street bike tire speed rating. That speed rating letter will be in the size. branded into the tire, example
120/70/ZR/17
120/70HR/17
TheH, and the Z are the speed rating, and the R indicates that the tire is a radial..
I have a jack and bike like yours but a 2004. Where do you put the jack so it doesn't do any damage??? Wanna be safe.
“ wonderful $60 motorcycle jack demo”
search that video title,
that is a demo video that I put on CZcams using the Jack we both have and using it on my royal star venture. You can see in the video where I jack my motorcycle up to remove the rear wheel..
because of that saddlebag bracket that crosses from one side to the other by the rear fender, and because of the rear fender, you have to jack the Venture up pretty high to be able to get the rear wheel to clear the fender and that saddlebag bracket when removing the rear wheel
in that demo when I rock the bike you can see the jack moving slightly. That’s because my floor is not level there. That was not the Jack exhibiting excess play..
if you watch how the jack goes up with the scissor action, you’ll notice that the scissors supports work their way over towards the large nut that turns the all thread.Make sure you put the Jack so that is supporting the bike closer to the nut you turn to raise the jack so that the Xscissor lifting bars are under the frame, instead of supporting the bike on the far end with the perch’s..
I clean my frame with brake clean on a rag so there is no slippery stuff under the frame where the perches contact the frame
I also remove the mufflers which take about two or three minutes each to remove, and the saddlebags, which take about two minutes each to remove, before I lift the bike up high. I get all the ground work wrestling with pipes and saddlebags and passenger floorboards done before taking the bike up high on the Jack. Once I get the wheel removed and out from under the fender, I lower the bike..
I also stabilize the front wheel so that it can’t turn, and it can’t roll by putting a sandbag in front of the front wheel …
I measure and only take the bike up as high as it absolutely needs to go just enough to get the wheel out..
here is another idea I had just to make it a little safer
I thought of putting a hose clamp around the frame with the screw housing of the hose clamp at the bottom. So that the jack perches contacting those clamps would stop the motorcycle from sliding forward on the perch... My thought is, that with a hose clamp attached to the frame on each side, they would act as a stop if you put them just behind the lift perch contacts the frame as an extra measure of safety..
I lifted my Goldwing using my jack when I had a GL 1800 which weighs much more than Venture, when I took the forks off to change fork seals and replace fork springs .. that Jack was directly under the six cylinder engine of the goldwing..
I think it’s also a good idea to grease the threads of the Jack where they do all the work. I would use some white lithium grease which is extreme pressure grease, which is different from high speed wheel bearing grease. Grease is not just grease..
I don’t know what maintenance procedures you are going to be doing that you need to lift your Venture. But I also made a 2 x 4 that fits under the bike, it has two slots in it to clear those two tabs that hang below the venture where the center stand probably would have gone if they installed one. That is how I used to lift my Venture before I had this wonderful scissor lift jack. I put a pair of floor jacks under that 2 x 4 it was just wide enough to contact the frame on both sides, and those frame tabs keep the 2x4 in place..It takes some pretty close measuring to make a 2 x 4 that’s wide enough to contact both sides of the frame, and it takes some pretty close measuring to determine exactly where to cut those slots just wide enough to clear those tabs. I determined where to cut the slots in the 2 x 4 for the tabs by holding the 2 x 4 in position and tapping it with a hammer so that it would put marks directly into the 2 x 4 showing me exactly where to slice into the 2 x 4..
make sure you’re jacking the bike up on a flat level solid surface..
what maintenance are you going to be doing that you need to jack the bike up?
I just jacked my Venture up to take the weight off of the suspension and the wheels for the winter months here in Pennsylvania December through February…
if you check a couple of my other videos with the bike in the air, you will notice that I place the jack , using the saddles of the jack under the frame in the vicinity of the lugs/mounting brackets that Yamaha possibly intended to install a center stand, I changed their mind and did not install center stands on the royal star ventures.. that is where I place my stand when I am going to be removing the rear wheel..
of course when I’m going to be removing the front wheel, I placed the stand more forward in the area roughly of the floorboards..
What are the recommended tires for the 2004 Yamaha Royal Star Venture 1300
it will probably say in your owners manual with the recommended tires are for your royal star venture. I am running the Kenda tires on my Venture. So far so good. I like the ride, and they spin true. And I can let go of the handlebars, and the handlebars don’t start to isolate into a tank slapper which I have had that happen on quite a few brand new tires..
If you’re gonna be riding with a passenger, I think I would go with Dunlop elite 4 tires.. I put those on my goldwing. The original tires were still on that machine when I bought it. It was 16 years old when I bought it with 13 K miles. I replaced those Dunlop elite three tires with Dunlop elite four tires…
I weigh my tires, because tires, the wheels, the discs, those all come under the heading of unsprung weight. That is one place you want to have as light a component as you can find. The rear tire on my Goldwing, Evan, though it was worn out, weighed 25 pounds. The tire I replaced it with, was the new version of the Goldwing tire. The elite four… that same size tire rated for that heavy motorcycle was 6 pounds less at 19 pounds. You would not believe how much better that motorcycle felt especially on bumpy roads. The suspension was not slow down having to deal with that extra 6 pounds. When you hit a bump, that energy goes into the spring, and then the oil in the shark Hass to control the spring. That takes time. And when you had a series of bumps/ripples in the road.. your suspension can handle the first one, but depending on how much unsprung weight you were burdened with, and how fast you’re going, and how far apart the ripples are, your suspension can actually collapse, you can feel it, when it’s compressed, you hit the next bump, nick keeps it from uncompressing, and then you hit the next bump, and your suspension is canceled out. You really can’t feel it at slower speeds, but at moderate to high speeds, you can feel that your bike does not want to stay online, on track through corners. My Goldwing salt like it was 100 pounds lighter with those lighter tires… it has nothing to do with the weight of the machine or how much weight you were carrying or how many pounds you have in your luggage or how heavy your passenger is. It has everything to do with how fast the suspension can absorb the bump and recover.
if you were going to put a lot of miles on your bike, every year, it would probably be better to go with the Dunlops, but if you are not going to be out there, piling up the miles, you’ll probably have to replace the tires because of their age, rather than how worn they are, much like the goldwing i bought head that was 16 years old, and still had the original tires on.. Who is tire is actually still would pass safety state inspection for the amount of tread they had, but I have in my videos, showing how the sidewalls were cracking from ozone attacking the rubber..
so if it were me, and I was not gonna put a lot of miles on, I would put the less expensive tires on, but if I was going to carry a lot of weight, I would go with the more expensive tires..
The only reason I went with Kenda tires is, I put them on my last pick up truck and loved the ride, and then I put them on my wife’s Honda CRV, and she loves the ride in the feel.. and I just put a set of them on my ram pick up, and I could feel the softer ride immediately. They are not the wrong tires on my heavy truck, they are rated for my truck weight… they are not made in China, they are made on new equipment with new engineering designs that are up-to-date in Vietnam, designed in Ohio, which is where Kenda headquarters is..
I did a lot of Internet research on CZcams about tires on Venture‘s and other heavy motorcycles, and I only found one video that showed a tire failure of a Kenda, and after seeing that video, and seeing that tire, that tire did not fail, I think that guy hit a very bad pothole, or he hit a piece of metal laying in the road. That huge cut in that tire across the tread does not look like a tire failure.
why are you have your rear wheel off, I suggest you grease that rear hub it’s held on by a snap ring. I don’t know what the official part is called. I think it’s some kind of clutch. They use that name in the manual, but I call it a Cush drive or a cushion drive. Because every vehicle that I know of has either rubber motor mounts and transmission mount, or it has rubber blocks in the rear wheel, or a rubber bushings like the Venture has in the rear wheel, and your final drive spins that clutch, that hub that is plugged into six rubber bushings in the rear wheel. Those bushings have metal collars inside. And they rust.. at least, when I took my rear hub out of the rear wheel, those pins were rusty. Some people say that there’s noise that comes from the rear wheel sometimes and that’s what it is, that hub needs those pins in the bushings, greased, and the sprocket on the hub that plugs into the final drive, that needs greased. You’re gonna need a pair of snap ring pliers that opens at least 1 inch to get that snap ring off. AutoZone will lend you the tool for free. What they do is they sell it to you, and then they will buy it back at full price..
that would also be a good time to change the final drive 80 weight gear lube. Coincidentally, I just changed mine today in my new to me Honda nt700 that I have a couple videos of on CZcams already..
where did you buy the lift and tire tool?
I bought the motorcycle scissor lift jack on eBay two years ago. I bought it new for $49.95 with free shipping.
I did a demo video of this Jack and the video is now on CZcams. The title is -wonderful $60 motorcycle jack demo- it is rated at 1100 pounds. They sell them on eBay. If you type in the words, motorcycle scissor lift jack. A page with dozens of them will show up. They are about $67 with free shipping now. Worth every rupee..
The tire tool? If you’re talking about the motorcycle tire balancing stand. I bought that at “Harbor freight”…It was just under $50. Using their online coupons, I think I got it for $40 when I bought it a few years ago…
If you were talking about the red manual motorcycle tire changing stand, I bought that at Harbor freight also. I think it was approximately $50 when I bought it a few years ago.
I also bought 10 pounds of motorcycle or car stick on lead balancing weights on eBay. I heard that they were going to eliminate lead weights a few years ago so I stocked up. The reason they gave for eliminating lead weights is, they claim that 5000 tons of wheel weights ends up falling off of car wheels along the road every year and they end up contaminating groundwater ..
so now the only weights you can buy are made of something called composite. The problem with them is, they are at least twice as large as lead weights. So if you can get them on eBay, if they’re still available and not all sold, I would buy some stick on LEAD weghts while you still can if you’re gonna buy this balancing stand at Harbor freight..
Harbor freight