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 to no avail.

I’ve used the same 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 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!

Cheers,

Brian light aka BLIGHT