The Venturers - Yamaha Venture Technical Support Library

Carefully guide the wires through the opening as you lift the fairing out of the way. Once completed you should have something like this. It's really not as bad as it looks.

From here my next step was to remove the front wheel and fender. I started by removing the brake calipers (two bolts) and wrapping them in rags and placing on top of the lower fairings. Next loosen the pinch bolt for the axle and then remove the axle.

I left the wheel resting on the floor under the fender and will roll it out after I remove the fender. The fender is held on by four hex screws as shown here (yours may be different as I have the chrome fender trim in place). Two on a side.

Something to remember when reinstalling the fairing bracket is to make sure the bottom holes are lined up to accept the screws for the turn signal bracket (pic below) before tightening up the top two. If they are not you won't find this out until the end of putting things back together and lets just say a lot of things have to come apart all over again to fix it. I install the screws in the bottom to get everything aligned and then tighten up the top screws. This bracket should have the clutch line running through it and will not be able to be removed. There is plenty of room to work so it's not in the way.

With the top clamp off you can lift off the stainless covers to get at the lower clamp screws. While the fork is still clamped, it is a good time to loosen the fork cap a little. I used a Crescent wrench to do this. Once it's broken loose you can remove it once the fork is off the bike.

Before loosening up the clamps in the picture above I took a measurement from the top of this clamp to the top of the fork so I knew where to put them for the reinstall as I didn't see anything in the manual to tell me. When reinstalling also make sure to line the schrader fitings toward the back.

Loosen the hex screws on the lower clamp (two on a side) and the forks should drop out. I had to loosen (a little) the three screws that hold the lower stainless covers on to get mine to drop out.

With the forks on the workbench I let all the air out and then removed the cap. There is some pressure from the spring on the cap so be sure to be pressing down when unscrewing it. With the cap off the spring will be sticking out like this.

With the cap off I removed the spring and then tipped the fork upside down and drained out the oil. You can also slowly pump the fork to help get a little more oil out of it. This is what 6 year old fork oil looks like.

I should have changed this out a long time ago. This is something that Yamaha says isn't needed on this bike. You decide.

Compare that to the new oil.

I let them drain upside down for a while and then flushed them with some tranny fluid (no real reason except that it was a lot cheaper than using the synthetic fork oil I had). I put 16 oz. in a fork and then slowly pumped it up and down to work the oil in and then drained again. I did this twice for each fork and after the second time the oil was pretty clean. I let the forks sit upside down for a while to drain out any remaining oil. The manual says to install new 5W oil to a height of 117 mm from the top of the fork with the spring out and the fork compressed. I used 15 w synthetic fork oil to get a little firmer ride. Some recommend using a dual viscosity oil such as 5w 30 so you have thinner oil when it's cold and thicker oil when it's warm. I'll try the 15w without any air and see how it feels. It's now time to reinstall the spring and the cap. I figured this might be a little work as the spring had some pretty good tension to fight. I tried it by hand and couldn't get it started so I put the top clamp in a vice and then tightened the fork in it.

This worked out pretty good as I was able to use both hands on the cap instead of one. With the caps in place and new oil in the forks it's time to reassemble. Just do everything in the reverse order paying attention to not overlook anything. I also spent some time cleaning up things that are pretty much inaccessible when it's all together.

If you want to repack the steering head bearings now is the time as you have all the needed essentials out of the way to do this. If you want to cheat a little and just put some new grease on the lower bearing and race without completely removing it just remove the steering stem nuts as shown three pictures below. If you want to do a more thorough job and remove it entirely you will need to remove a few more things.

First is the fitting that the front brake lines connect to. You will want to remove the two hex screws on the fitting and also remove the bracket that the brake line runs through in the left of the picture. There is one on the left side of the bike also.

You can leave the lower stainless covers on the stem or remove them. If you want to remove them it is the three hex screws shown here. When reinstalling these you may want to leave them loose until the forks have been installed to be sure they are lined correctly.

To remove the steering stem lift off the retainer that goes over the two nuts and remove the top nut, rubber washer and then the lower nut while holding on to the steering stem from the bottom (it will want to drop out).

The top bearing will remain in the frame underneath the dust cap and the lower one is pressed onto the steering stem. Repack both bearings with grease (Yamaha recommends a lithium soap base grease) and apply some grease to the races in the steering head.

Reinstall the steering stem, then the dust cap followed by the lower nut. You will need the tool to torque this properly. The tool # is YU-33975. I think it can be ordered under part # 90890-01403-00. Torque to 37 ft bs initially, loosen and then torque to 2.2 ft lbs. Install the rubber washer and then finger tighten the top nut so the slots are aligned on both nuts to install the retainer washer. Once this has been done it's time to reassemble everything by doing it in the reverse order.