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In the fall 2008 my wife took the motorcycle safety course at the local college. The program runs an entire weekend, and at the end they were able to complete the test to get their full license. She passed with flying colors. The next step was to start looking for a good starter bike for my wife I had no idea where to start. At 5'3" tall, the size of the bike was very important. She needed to be able to reach the ground, feel comfortable, and lift it off the side stand.
Looking at many different bikes I had originally targeted a V-Star 650, but the weight seems to sit quite high and the bike was more difficult to lift off the stand. Once she is comfortable with riding and bikes in general, this likely would not be an issue, but at that time, it was.
Searching Kijiji one day I came across a 1984 Yamaha Virago. Never having owned a Yamaha, and no idea about the Virago, I did a little research and found that this bike is very highly rated for a starter bike. It has a low center of gravity which makes low speed control for her much easier, as well as lifting it off the side stand. The 1000cc engine was a bit of a concern, wanting something smaller for her first bike but decided to go with it anyway.
She started riding in parking lots, graduating to a few local roads after half a dozen times out. From there it was riding with me as well, and then onto some highway riding. The 1000cc engine is perfect for this; it is more than capable of keeping up even at highway speeds.
The bike was a little rough when we picked it up. The previous owner indicated that it has been backed into and fixed after that. I am not sure what exactly happened, but I noticed several additional things after picking the bike up that I did not notice when we looked at the bike. I do not think the previous owner mislead us, I just did not look carefully enough.
I am a bit of a perfectionist. I like things to look like they are supposed to and if I do something I want it done right. I set out to spend a few hundred dollars on restoring the Virago to its former glory. I kind of lost track at some point and ended up spending way more than I planned, but I think the bike looks much better today, and I do not look at the bike thinking that I need to just do 'this' to it to make it better. Some of the parts were required for function, and others were 'required' for other reasons. In the end I replaced several things that were working fine, but were showing their age. Others I replaced just to upgrade the bike, I wanted it to be a good bike for my wife to ride.
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Replaced Parts
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Right Side Passenger Peg / Mount (new OEM)
The right side passenger peg and mount were in bad shape. The mount for the peg was homemade and the peg itself was not stock, or even close to it.
As you can see the mount was terrible, and the peg would not stay up, it was always down, annoying if you ask me. I replaced the mount and peg with a brand new OEM Yamaha part. Cleans up the look from that side of the bike.
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Speedometer / Tachometer Covers
I really do not know what I was looking at the day we looked at the bike. I did not notice so many things that were right in front of me. The most glaring was the condition of the gauges. The gauges themselves were in decent condition for the year, but the rear covers were held on using black tape. The speedometer also shook a lot and seemed very loose in its mount.
 
You can see the tach cover on the right side of the bike is completely the wrong cover and really looks out of place. I decided to remove the entire gauge cluster. Upon doing this I noticed that the ignition switch also had a broken mount so I used some very strong modeling glue I had around and it seems to have held up nicely. I then removed the rear gauge covers and that is when the problems began.
With the tach I soon saw why there was black tape holding the cover on. It has one mount point on the back for the cover, that mount was broke off the tach at the base, and there was no sign of it. To repair this I took some light gauge aluminum and fabricated a mount point from the actual gauges mount that would hold the cover on. Not a perfect mount point, but it does the trick.
The speedometer cover had similar issues. The mount tabs (2 of them) were both broke off, but they were still in there. I used the model glue to reattach them to the back of the speedometer. Letting them dry thoroughly and carefully attaching the new cover they have held so far. The bigger issue was the actual mount for the speedometer. The metal ring was broken in two. I welded the ring back together, not worrying too much about appearance, more concerned about clearance issues. The speedometer now mounts very solid and the cover does not require black tape to hold it on. You can see the improvement below.
 
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Exhaust / Exhaust Gaskets (used OEM exhaust / new gaskets
The exhaust on the bike was fairly dented as seen below. I was willing to live with that given the replacement costs, but then I noticed one of the things I really missed the day we looked at the bike. There is clearly a 'tear' in the upper exhaust pipe, just below the passenger peg. When standing and looking at the bike, you really do not see this, so it was easy to miss, and overall is not a big deal I guess, but I really was not happy with that.
I finally came across a used exhaust for a Virago 1100 on eBay. It came with the rear header pipe as well, which I did not need. I had been looking for a while, and the starting price was $69.95 USD plus shipping and a 'Buy It Now' price of $99.00, with 3 days left in the auction. There were no bids so I spend the next few minutes trying to decide if I should bid and risk paying more than the 'Buy It Now' price. I finally decided to just use the 'Buy It Now' options and get them shipped. Total cost with shipping was 138.00, a far cry from the replacement cost of $700+.
As you can see the new exhaust looks much cleaner than the original. They are not complete in this picture, the header pipes are not connected, waiting for gaskets. The gaskets I bought locally and were all fairly reasonably priced, except for the one that connects the rear header pipe to the exhaust system. It was around $50. It is fairly large as far as gaskets go, but the cost surprised me a bit. The original was in pretty good shape, but it was fused to the original exhaust so I had no choice but to buy new.
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Left Side Horn and Air Box Mount / Left Side Air Box / Air Box Back Plate
Part of the damage to the bike was the left side air box, back plate and the mount on the frame for the plate and horn. The remaining parts that are usually in the left side box were literally wired to the rear mount for the air box. The mount itself was completely broke off, but the part was saved when it happened. The previous owner had tried JB Weld on it, but apparently it would not hold. You can see the entire left side air box was missing.
I started by welding the bracket back to onto the frame. The tricky parts of this were getting the JB Weld off that remained on both parts, and the fact the bike had a full gas tank. I would have removed the gas tank, but the amount of welding I was doing was very small, so I shielded the tank with aluminum and carefully welded the bracket back onto the frame. The other part that was a bit tricky is getting the placement right given that the mount was ripped off, the metal was stressed and out of shape. I used the new back plate I bought to get the mount as close as possible before welding, then bent the mount to get final placement once it was attached.
With the mount back on I reinstalled the horn, and the new OEM back place. The air box cover I purchased on eBay. I actually purchased 2 of them, and used the best. The second one came with a back plate as well; I only wish the eBay listing would have stated that, I could have saved the money on a brand new back plate. I reinstalled the components into the left side air box. The result is quite good I think, really balances out the bike with both of them in place. It looked off having only the one before I think.
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Clear Alternative Signal Light Lenses / Clear Alternative Taillight / Kuryakyn Run-Turn-Brake Controller
Front Signals
This was one of the easiest upgrades. For the signal lights on the front I actually replace the entire assembly with brand new signal lights. The main reason was the gold trim on the original ones was very worn and not looking very good at all. Once that was done (simple plug and play) I replace the bulbs with amber colored 1157 bulbs and the clear alternative lens covers.
Rear Signals / Tail Light
The rear turn signal were a bit more work. I wanted to put rear running lights as well as brake and turn signals. There are a few ready made solutions for this, but I thought this would be easy so why spend the money. I replace the rear turn signals with front signals, put in red 1157 bulbs and the clear lenses. Wiring the running lights was easy, connect to the tail light power. Connecting the brake was also easy, connect to the brake power. Two out of three done in no time, this is easy! Then the dilemma. When the brake is on, to flash the signal, you need to alternate between off and on, when no brakes are applied you need to alternate between on and off.
I did some research and found a possible solution. It used two DPDT (Dual Post, Dual Throw) relays, so basically when there is no voltage on the signal line, the brakes lights work as designed, but when one of the signals was active you send the 12v (has to be on then entire time the signal is on) to the relay which flips it to signal mode and it starts pulsing with the signal flasher. Seemed like a fairly easy solution, other than a bit of wiring. I then set out to find a 12v signal that goes active when each signal is active. The bad news is that I could not find one anywhere, the good news is that if I could have this would have worked. I considered connecting the signal line to the relay and using it to pulse the lights, but was not too sure how many cycles the relay could handle and did not want to wire something in like this that would burn out too quickly. I finally just broke down and decided I was spending way more time on this than I should and ordered the Kuryakyn Run-Turn-Brake Controller for Metric Cruisers from eBay.
Kuryakyn Run-Turn-Brake Controller for Metric Cruisers
The Kuryakyn Run-Turn-Brake Controller for Metric Cruisers is a fairly easy install, just need to be careful to keep track of wires and have a circuit / voltmeter handy. Because I had replaced the rear signals with dual element 1157 models, I did not need to wire in the running light part. The rest is just connect the one side to the input for the brake and each signal light, connect the other side to the brake light and signal lights, connect the power, and finally connect the ground. if you are careful, you should now have a fully functional Run-Turn-Brake combination on the bike, greatly improving your visibility to drivers. The Kuryakyn unit also has a flashing option that is disabled by removing the plug from the unit. With this option the brakes lights will all flash 3 times (I think it is three) and then go on solid to also improve your visibility to other drivers.
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Pictures: |
| This the bike as purchased on September 9, 2008 |
| After extensive part replacements November 10, 2008 |
| As of March 15, 2009 |
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