Hello, BLIGHT from the USA here. I have owned a beautiful 1986 VF1000R for about 16 yrs. I bought it used on Craigslist from a seller in Redding CA about 340 miles away. I live in Monterey/Salinas CA, about 1 mile from Laguna Seca Raceway. I drove my Ford F150 pickup up to Redding with a heavy-duty motorcycle rack mounted to the trailer hitch receiver. The carrier rack has a 600 lb rating, so I pushed it to the limit with the portly VF1000R. Carried it home safely and cleaned the bike up a bit. It ran just fine and was in good condition. I entered it in the Quail Lodge motorcycle gathering and received a 2nd place award in the SuperBike category. It’s an engraved silver-plated Tiffany dish. The only mods I’ve done to the bike are the removal of the resonator chamber and replacement with a noodle-type 4 into 2 collector from NL. The bike came to me with period-correct F1 dual aluminum slip-on canisters. It also had a K&N low restriction air filter. I removed the carbs, did a bench-synch and installed a DynoJet jetting kit. The hardest part there is re-installing the carbs on new rubber boots. it’s a PITA!! Very hard to get it all lined up and pop back into place. Right now, I’m having fuel delivery issues, I first believed it was the fuel pump, but the restriction seems to be the fuel tap/petcock or internal strainers. That’s the current thing to fix. It will only barely start and run poorly on full enrichener, indicating to me a poor fuel supply. I tried blowing out the fuel line back into the tank, and that helped flow some, but there is definitely a clog or restriction inside there. I’ll work on it this weekend and I also ordered a new fuel tap selector and gasket kit. Additionally I ordered a generic low-pressure electric fuel pump that I will install in place of the new pattern part pump that I installed that is not getting enough fuel.
I’ve used the same generic pump type successfully on a few other of my bike projects that need a fuel pump vs. gravity feed. It fits inline, suction on one side, pressure side on the opposite side.
I did send the carb lump to an expert for ultrasonic cleaning and reassembly + bench synch. I have high hopes it will run well again after all this fiddling and provided with some actual fuel. I’ll post a couple of pics from that 2012 Quail Lodge motorcycle Gathering show after I figure out how to post photos here. May not even be allowed for a newbie here like me!
That sounds like a lovely VF1000R, and 16 years of ownership certainly qualifies you as part of the furniture rather than a newbie! Being only a mile from Laguna Seca isn’t a bad place to keep one either.
Congratulations on the Quail Lodge award too — a 2nd place in the SuperBike category is something to be proud of. I’d definitely like to see the photos from the 2012 gathering.
Your fuel problem does sound as though you’re narrowing it down in the right direction. Hopefully the new tap and a properly flowing supply will finally let those freshly cleaned carbs do their job. And yes, getting the carb bank back into the rubbers on these bikes is one of those jobs that makes you question your life choices!
You should be able to post photos, so please give it a try. We’re always happy to see another VF1000R, especially one with a bit of history behind it.
Welcome aboard, Brian — and keep us posted on how you get on with the fuel issue.
I forgot to mention that I did add the tubular boonstra.nl 4 into 2 exhaust header collector in place of the restrictive and heavy OEM resonator box.
Somewhere I have some pics of that beautiful exhaust collector. It came nickel-plated, and it was very nice looking. I ended up painting it with flat black exhaust hi-temp paint so it just sorts of blends in under the bike like the OEM resonator did.
I’ll post up some pics of the VF1000R at Quail Lodge. and see if I can find the Boonstra.NL collector pics too.
Hopefully I can get it running well enough this weekend to go out and ride it around some. I’m actually toying with the idea of selling it to a good home. I’m not going to give it away though. The 1000R’s are a rare bird here in the states, especially good runners with excellent cosmetics.
I have 11 other bikes, so space is at a premium… and this one big motorcycle!
I just turned 71 yrs. old in July and big heavy bikes are getting difficult for me to maneuver about the garage.
It is time to “thin the herd” as they say. hard to even say, but it’s finally time.
Cheers, BLIGHT
I also have a “custom” 1986 VF500F that I fit with NC30 fairings, tank, seat and the NC30 rear single sided swingarm and 18" wheel. I can post Quail Lodge pics of that project bike too. It turned out better than I’d hoped, and was a ton of work to get it to all come together.
Hello, finally got it running with new fuel pump and lines. Seems the tank was lined many years ago by a previous owner. Looking in the filler cap you can see the lining is detaching and likely floating around inside. The main strainer was likely coated as well, greatly restricting flow in the ON position. I did install a new fuel tap as part of this project, but open is pretty weak. The Res flow is better because there is no strainer. To bad Honda didn’t design that whole assy. To be removable with the fuel tap. Once the main strainer is clogged, not much can be done short if cutting it out, and that’s not an option for me. Just ride it on RES. And be happy. I did get it to finally run without being on the choke/enrichener, but it was reluctant to start. I’ll try it again today and hopefully take it for a ride, but I really don’t want to push it home if it dies on me somewhere. I’ll just ride it around my neighborhood for a while to get some confidence. I’ll try posting some pics today too. Cheers, BLIGHT
They were fitted as I got the bike. I have no docs. To be sure they are still silencer I made a noise measurenent and they are with a margin of 8dB inside the limits.
Those cans look nice The F1 brand was made of aluminum, so probably a bit lighter. and a LOT lighter than the stockers.
The F1’s are too loud for my preference, but, like you, they came with the bike when I bought it.
I probably 3rd or 4th owner, but have had it longer than any of the others I’m sure., since 2012.
I’m running it with the OEM collector box ‘delete’, so that makes it a lot louder right there.
I put on a boonstra.nl 4 into 2 tubular collector like I saw elsewhere on the forum. It’s also a lot lighter than the OEM collector box. The VF1000R can easily stand to lose some tonnage, as it’s no lightweight.
As far as I can tell, that NL aftermarket collector is no longer available, and was only made for the VF1000R (without centerstand)
Well, the bike wouldn’t start after replacing the fuel pump, fuel tap and clearing the file by blowing compressed air back through it. Fuel was flowing, but the bike wouldn’t start, and only just catch on full choke enrichener, then die in 2 sec., so then yesterday I pulled the carb rack out again so I can go through it and look for reasons it won’t start. BTW, I squirted some starting fluid into the carb intakes and it did indeed fire briefly on all 4 cylinders, so it does have ignition! At my wits end with these 40 yr. Old carbs. I previously toyed with converting to Weber IDF downdraft carbs but the inlet manifolds were really difficult to fab so I gave up. I’ll add a pic showing the carbs in place… So now it’s back to more head scratching and frowning…
Here are a couple of pics from the Weber downdraft aborted conversion. These are Chinese Weber clone carbs and are about 50 USD per 2 barrel 40 mm carb on Amazon. The butterflys are 40mm, and they have 28mm chokes suited to run very well on air-cooled beetle engines of 1300 to 1600 cc typically. And each boxer engine runs on a pair of these twin choke downdraft carbs. I gave up the project mostly due to the difficulty in fabbing inlet elbows to the angled boots
to square everything up, and overall space issues. Then there is the likely nightmare of synching the front and rear carb pairs, jetting, etc. The conversion looks cool, but you lose all “bling points” because these carbs are completely hidden underneath the fuel tank and fairings.
I still think efi would be the best way to go, and I’d use a VFR800 efi throttle body rack modified for inlet spacings.. front/back/left/right… a big task there too.
Then there is the big issue of adding all the sensors, ECU programming & wiring, and an external fuel pump, since the VF1000 never had a fuel pump in the tank. My Guzzi V11 Sport has an external Marelli efi fuel pump and it works just fine.
For now, I’m just going to give my rebuilt OEM VF1000R carbs a good going-over to check float heights, blockages, jetting, etc. Then, I get to try and refit the carbs back into those 4 angled boots. VF carb installation has to be one of the most difficult tasks in all of motorcycling. (other than rebuilding and synching 6 carbs on a CBX 1000!)
I do have another idea in my head, that is to modify and fit downdraft Mikuni CV carbs from a Yamaha Venture/VMax. I did this on my 1975 Honda GL1000 Goldwing Cafe bike, and they ran very well. The OEM GL 1000 side-draft carb bank is heavy and troublesome too. An alternative here for the VF1000R is to buy two pair of carbs from the Virago 535 v twin, brand new on Amazon for about $170 USD ea. Here is a pic of the Venture downdraft carbs I put on my GL1000: I had to modify spacing and tie the left and right banks together with an adjustable tie-rod just like the Guzzi setup. Synching wasn’t bad at all because of easy access.
I used pod filters for a while when riding in dusty conditions. and the velocity stacks had screens to keep bugs out.
The F1 brand was made of aluminum, so probably a bit lighter. and a LOT lighter than the stockers.
