It’s just over two weeks now until my road trip through the Southwest. I’ve spent the last two weeks getting to know the VTX from a riding perspective, and getting it up to date on maintenance.
For maintenance, the big one was valves. I had no record of it ever having been done before, but according to factory recommended intervals, It should have been just about time for the third valve adjustment. The actual adjustment isn’t difficult, being a set screw type lash adjustment, rather than shims. Access however, is pretty challenging. It is such a big motor that you have to take off a lot of stuff to get at the heads, and then you have very limited clearance to work
I didn’t take any pictures while I was working, something about touching my phone with oil covered hands... I used a photo above from a really great VTX valve DIY article I found. In any case, based on what I saw when I got it opened up, I’m fairly certain I was the first one to do valves here. Exhausts were on the tight end of spec, but still in spec, so I did not adjust. Intakes were all out of spec on the tight side, so all were adjusted to the correct lash.
After that, I changed the oil (Rotella T6 FTW!) and checked all the other fluids. Should be good to go for a long time now!.
Which is probably a good thing, currently I’m planning on putting quite a few miles on it in a not very long time.
The first leg, which I’m running with a few friends, takes us on the most direct route to the Bonneville salt flats where we will spend a few days watching rocket cars go fast.
From there, the rest of my party is going to split off and head back north, while I’m going to head south and explore a bit.
That’s a general route I have planned although AMGtech did give me a few other places to look at crossing the Sierra Nevada range. Haven’t been to the Southwest in almost 13 years since I did a few weeks of backpacking in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. And I haven’t been to the grand canyon area since I was 10 (and couldn’t even begin to appreciate it).
More to come!