FireHead

Banshees do not have a thermostat. Are you sure the boiling over is heat related? If it is heat related, your water pump impeller may have had it. Otherwise, you may have a blown head gasket that is causing the cooling sytem to be over prussurized with combustion pressure from the cylinders. I suppose that your radiator cap could also be worn out, which may also exhibit similair symptoms. The first thing I would do if I were you would be to pressure test the cooling system. :thumbsup:

Good call. :thumbsup: I would also recommend looking into some of the specialty aerospace fasteners if you really want to get nerdy with the fasteners on your bike.

Do you know what kind of AV gas your are using (fuek type ,octane rating, brand name, octane rating type, etc.)? I think that may benefit a few people on here that were asking questions as well as maybe helping further this discussion. :thumbsup:

I don't know about some of those VW folks. Whether its the Golf/GTI crowd of the vintage crowd there seems to be a large percentage of their population that weird me out. I have friends who are VW fanatics that I grew up in WA and some guys that I work with in CA and all the people they hang with are very similair. It's not so much the hippy thing that bothers me (though hippy's do bother me), it is the extemity at which they are into VW's and related things. I suppose they might find Banshee folks odd though, to look at the other side of the coin. The vintage Myer's Manx VW is kind of cool and given nothing else to do, I think I could get into that. I have a draftsman that works for me that has an orginal Myer's Manx that he has had since he was in high school. He belongs to a Manx club that is full of folks just like him (obviously), but they are not all weird and creepy. They pretty much just use it as an excuse to throw on a straw beach hat and go drink beer in the sand dunes. :thumbsup:

I enjoy running the fuel fragrence when I am running an alcohol type fuel. I know it's kind of gay, but I swear it makes it so that your eyes don't water as much. Orange and strawberry are my favorites so far. :thumbsup:

You wouldbe better off fixing your stock carbs IMO. Your needle valves are obviously bad and causing you gas leak along with alot of your jetting issues. Pick up a couple carb rebuild kits from RMATV, then clean and rebuild your carbs. Let us know if that solves your problem. If you are hell bent on new carbs then 28mm PWK's would be all that I recommend. :thumbsup:

Yes. You need the spacer. Iam not sure what we are talking about, but if there is a spacer associated with bearings you will always need it more often than not. :thumbsup:

Your rear shock could be blown, or you may have had the swing arm or shock linkage bearings go bad. :thumbsup:

It looks very PRM'esque, but it not something that I have ever seen the selling. That aluminum plate may be something that someone added of themselves. :thumbsup:

Exactly! Sometimes it like pulling teeth around here to get pictures. Be proud of your bike.....take pictures! :thumbsup:

If you have nothing then you aren't getting spark through that circuit. The coil might be cooked, the spark plug wire or cap might be toast, or something may be loose. Maybe one of the guys around here may have some more practical advice to lend. :thumbsup:

Let me catch the last couple posts in this thread: 1.) If you run any sort of alcohol 60/40, 50/50, or whatever, you will need to purge the system in a two stroke engine. 2.) In regards to ethanol or methanol and one being more corrosive than the other, I suspect it is about the same. Galvanic corrosion (chemical leeching of water below the surface of metal (process is similair to the way acetone carries molecules of whatever is suspended in it below human skin)) would be the same with either fuel. Feel free to blow me out of the water on this one. There may be a reaction other than this that the fuel aids. I would have to get a book out for sure, and it's to late for that tonight. :thumbsup:

Mullet Man........great post! Let me see what I can do to add to it a bit. In regards to Xylene and Toluene they are another can of worms that I am going to hold off opening unless we need to. To touch upon alcohol in the Buicks you spoke you are 99.9% correct. Since a four stroke engine has it's own oil supply seperate from it's fuel supply there does not need to be much special done to the motor to run alcohol besides the obvious fuel and ignition maps, and larger injectors (assuming fuel injection) or jets (assuming carbureation). What you may notice is being done is that they are not leaving fuel in their tanks at the end of the weekend to avoid having a tank of bad fuel on the next time out. The other thing that is done is that they change their oil alot more frequently than you might with a normal road going car engine. This is because the alcohol meets the oil on the cylinder wall ans effectively washes them down, thus dilluting the oil and extremely shortening it's service life. Now if we are talking about drag racing, which is what I am assuming we are talking about then you may have the same oil change interval whether you are running on gas or acohol due to the increase in cylinder pressures in the gas engine blowing by alot more unburned fuel into the oil, which also dillutes it. As far as the bi-metal or tri-metal motors that you speak of not making any difference to the corrosion problem you are probably right in respect to the vehicles you have experience with. Properly designed fuel systems for alcohol use really won't suffer any damage from prolonged contact with the fuel. The only real risk that you run as mentioned behore is the fuel going bad from water absorption. The worst thing you would see in that sort of fuel system might be corrosion on the aluminum, but it's not that much (think of anodizing) in the scheme of things. THere is a point where aluminum will not corrode past a certain point if the surface of the aluminum was sufficiently covered in layers of corrosion. In regards to the ATF being used in fuel.............I have no idea. What some of the old hot rodders may be familiar with is that when ATF is introduced to hot crabon deposits inside and engine it shatters them. Thus, folks use to use it to clean their fuel systems. I'll ask around about it at work and see if anyone has any idea about what folks are actually doing with this idea. :thumbsup:

I am going to have to call and massage the CEO a bit tomorrow. I am learning that it gets to be harder to get a job, even if they want to hire you, the higher up the executive ladder you get. Corporate racing is a weird world. :thumbsup:

The ITP Sand Stars are a good tire as well. If I was ever in a position that made it so I couldn't use Skat Trak tires they wou;d be what I would run. I may buy at set at some point just for the hell of it. Plus, they are a fairly sexy looking tire. Thanks for the reminder Jeff! :thumbsup:

I still haven't seen a picture of one of these things on a bike yet. The best that I have seen so far is the Elka ad in this months QUAD magazine that happens to show a Banshee and the correst Elka linkage for that Banshee. ::

VW=volkswagon in this case, you are correct. I never actually bought one of these from a VW place, but it is Empi who makes them and I havee seen them for sale at such places. I am sure Jeff sells them for the same price or cheaper. I was just offering another alternative. I am not associated with anything that has to do with old VW's (many of the old VW enthusiasts scare me).

If it makes you feel any better, I had to play tour guide for my parents this last weekend, so I didn't get to go either. However, the museum that is the USS Midway is freakin awesome! :thumbsup:

Make sure you rough up the surface with a fine scoth pad, then clean it with acetone or something similair (auto body shops may try and sell you a very expensive dirt and grease remover). Then make sure you choose a primer (Bulldog is what is cheap and easy, but not professional) with a good flex agent in it and go nuts. :thumbsup:

I am not sure that I want to know what that picture is orignally from. I'll watch MXC, but gay MXC, not so much.

It could have been worse.............the harvest mouse could have been filled with cocaine instead of just being corn fed.

I was just able to get on there. Maybe they are selectively discriminating against y'all and are only letting the ssuper cool people in. :yelrotflmao:

It sounds like you either had a big air leak or ran it out of gas a few times.

In your case that is probably true. I am working on getting moved into a position where I can hit the dunes after work a few times a week. The only down side is that I will have to move............ ::

It's all a personal preference, but I havbe found that the molded paddles like AMS sells tend be very thing in the blade area and are very prone to splitting out and chunking. Haulers are the only paddle that I will ever buy based on my experience with them. If you don't like the straight blades then Skat Trak makes a tire named "The Edge" that also perform very well. As mentioned above, I also run straight paddles and can keep up with anyone that I have ever ridden with as far as turning is concerned. The only bike I ever had a problem turning with while running straight paddles was a Raptor. :thumbsup: