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Hate to say it because this has been beaten to death, but the official Yamaha spec for the original cotter pinned axle nut was 85 ft/lbs. (pg 6-6, December 1984 version of shop manual). Subsequent supplemental manuals covering the new style compression nut are even higher.

They're still making the V-Max! There's 85 models still used as daily runners. It's not some dead dusty museum piece -- yet. :biglaugh: As for Harleys, I test rode 6 of them at bike week in Laconia. The latest generation Dyna Glides with the 6 speed and the 96 ci engine and new frame and...

The old style nut that used a cotter pin had a torque value of around 55 lbs. It's the newer style nut that has the very high 100+ spec. I cranked mine to around 85-90 lbs. I'm sure it'll stay put. BTW, I found the bolts that hold on the calipers much more interesting: the spec is 25 ft/lbs...

Re: Widest tire on stock rear wheel I put on a 170 Metzeler 880 just tonight. It clears the swing arm by 1/16 inch without resorting to the washer swap. It looks kinda funny because it's wider than the fender, but I can't see it when I'm riding. :biglaugh:

Who ever put the last tire on my used V-Max must have gone by the manual. It took a 5 foot cheater on my breaker bar to break that damn nut loose. So I'll go at least 95 ft/lbs on my torque wrench when I put it back together.

Re: My PreMax love affair, what was your's? Past bikes: 1967 Honda 305 Scrambler, 1970 Rokon Trailbreaker (2-wheel drive!), 1971 Honda 90, 1972 Kawasaki 350 F9 dirt bike, 1974 Honda 550, 1975 Honda 750 Supersport, 1979 Honda XR500 dirt bike, 1983 Honda XR500, 1986 Yamaha Big Wheel, another 1975...

And if only one of those 880 lithium cells has a manufacturing defect, all 880 cells will explode one at a time in a runaway chain reaction that will top 2,000 degrees. Exactly like a bad laptop battery but on a small nuclear bomb scale. :surprise: How many quarter miles runs do you...

Re: Gas Milage Hot dogging around town I get 34 mpg, on an all-day ride I get closer to 40. The push me soon light comes on at about 110 miles. My 2003 V-Max is (for now) completely stock. First we fix the handling, then we worry about more power. :biglaugh:

If you peruse the British vendors, one of them offers kits to install a 7 inch headlight on the V-Max. The pictures I have don't look too bad. Hpoefully, it wasn't vmaxbitz.com, whose inventory tends to come and go.

No motor or frame: the parts that happen to have serial numbers -- hmmmm! But there's also no forks, swingarm or wheels. So maybe these parts are the cast offs from an impressive custom V-Max project. Still I'd expect to see an exhaust system and the original wheels if this was a...

I think those scoops are for cooling air. The Moto Guzzi lump is still an air-cooled motor. The bike looks interesting, sort of a Guzzi "Multistrata" or adventurer tourer. Might be an interesting winter bike.

Jumping into this argument months later, I've got a Valkyrie with an axle at least 50% larger in diameter than my V-Max and the factory spec is 67 ft/lbs. No cotter pin. No pinch bolt. And there's no way in hell I'm tightening up the tiny V-Max axle beyond 75 ft/lbs.

Not sure that's true. The air bladder seems to be more like a life preserver. The accidents it would best protect against would be the classic left turner. If you had the presence of mind to steer for the front fender and jump up at the instant of impact to completely clear the car, the...

You guys will groan when I say this, but the V-Max is sort of like a Sportster. That's a bike that was the top of the heap for 15 years but hasn't been considered fast since the early 1970s. But Harley has been making them 50 years and they're still a blast to ride, warts and all. (Although...

Well I did in fact ride on Sunday, but this is NH and it only got up to 43 degrees. (That passes for riding weather in these parts.) But there's already heavy salt on the roads so only my dirt bike is gassed up this time of year. It's back in the teens tonight so the riding is done for...

Living in NH and riding throughout the winter on a KLR 650, I?ve learned a bunch about cold hands. It is hard to stay warm on an open bike like the V-Max. I use goose down filled gloves I got from a bicycle shop years ago and put a wind-proof mountaineering shell over those. They are very...