superhawk996

They don't have ram air, and I believe you are correct. Except that the carbs don't have any way to adjust themselves for temperature so your bike should have an additional advantage.

The carbed Birds don't have ram air, they manage to survive. I made a hot air intake for my first Explorer and it gained MPG and power, and survived towing a boat to AZ and back in hot weather. 'Till around the mid 90's thermostatically controlled heated air intakes were pretty common. Damn near every boat engine, even with turbos or blowers, breathe the hot air in the bilge. But yea, CoLd AiR iS pArAmOuNt!!!

Also difficult to have a rational conversation with an irrational person. There is no doubt that directing the air to the cooler instead of the intake will lower the oil temp, it's just not needed.

"won't work as hard" meaning it becomes less important for it to have great air flow since it has less cooling demand on it. For mild commuter type riding I'd bet you could eliminate the cooler and no harm would be done, hell, it might even do more good than harm.

If they're don't show any obvious wear they should be fine.

I've never checked the oil temp but it's unlikely to be a problem, especially if you're not riding it hard. You'll be trading a hot oil cooler for hot intake air, also unlikely to be a problem, but there is a trade off to consider.

I'd probably use a garden hose, maybe a weak pressure washer. Then flush it out with distilled or RO water so it doesn't spot.

The price was enticing, 'till I added the shipping and $ exchange rate.

No, I refuse to disrespect our dinosaurs like that. I think it was Castrol motorcycle spec 10-40 dino oil, don't remember the exact flavor. '4T' stands out in my mind, but I use Rotella T4 in a lot of shit so that might be clouding my memory. The current Bird has some super duper fancy synthetic 'race' shit that was ridiculously expensive, but it looks and smells pretty. And it did make it shift much more smoothly.

Right after posting I remembered that I have a '97 airbox, there's no drain on it.

If the airbox has a drain, many vehicles do, it could be coming from that. I can't remember what they're called, but it looks kinda like a hose with the end smashed flat and acts as a check valve. Duckbill? If oil from the crank case vent accumulates enough and/or the K&N is oiled heavily enough the oil could drip out of the drain.

The bike had a little over 50k when I sold it and almost 70 when it died, I believe it was still on the oil I sold it with and it had never been checked.

Every engine consumes some oil, even if it's not enough to notice, and I'm guessing that at some point in the 10+ thousand miles of neglect/abuse the engine started using more oil than normal. I showed up to check it out 'knowing' that there was no fucking way the motor was blown and it had to be something else. There was nearly no oil in it and what was in it looked horrifying.

Very possible, it has been a long time for me. I recall people saying they had the FI light come on when hitting the brakes which makes me think that the brake light is sharing ground with the other stuff.

Pants only right?

IIRC, all of the wires at the test connector have to be joined. If you made several separate bundles and didn't join them all I think it won't be right. It's been a long time since I did this repair or researched it so do check.

When I bought my first '97 it exhibited classic symptoms of clogged idle jets, it wouldn't idle at all without the choke on and ran like shit 'till I got pretty far into the throttle. It turned out to be a synch issue. It was so far off I assume someone did it, but I can't understand why they'd do that. If it wore to that condition someone had to fight with it for a very long time for it to get to the point it was at. Either way, it was crackhead shit that got it where it was, and the seller happened to be a crackhead so go figure. What alerted me to it was looking at the throttle blades, they were very obviously off. I didn't have a manometer so I used a piece of wire as a feeler gauge. I initially assumed I'd have to re-do it the right way but wanted to see if it needed more than just a synch, it ran so great I never did anything else. I later sold it to a friend that rode the shit out of it. It still exhibited no signs of needing a synch, but I assume that a manometer would have shown something and maybe it could run even better even tho there was no sign of an issue. He then gave it to his son who proceeded to ride the piss oil out of it 'till it blew up. There were conflicting stories so I don't have an exact number, but somewhere between 10 and 20k is how long it takes to kill one after you decide to completely ignore the oil, and it was ridden pretty hard.

Maybe he just needs to cross the equator during rides to even it out.

Hazard Fraught, keep it under 20MPH and it should be fine might not kill you.

😆

That's because I'm not so picky about rental trailers.

No tips for not getting a junky one, but for the relatively short haul and light load I wouldn't sweat it. They have utility trailers with drop down tailgates/ramps, but might be too short to get a decent angle where the bike doesn't bottom out half way up. See if he has a spot where you can park with the truck's rear tires high, a driveway ramp usually works, or bring ramps/blocks to drive your rear tires onto so that the whole trailer is tilted down making the ramp to trailer bed more level. Or the floor jack and lift at the hitch.

I'd cruise that.

There's the hassle of having to fiddle with the choke, and when it sits a long time it takes a while of cranking to re-prime the carbs, but the system hasn't let me down. Upsides, you won't have a FPR or harness test connector failure.

1" wide bicycle tires of the hardest compound available so he can't go fast.