2001 Honda Valkyrie Interstate

grepper

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I'm inheriting a 2001 Honda Valkyrie Interstate.

My wife's uncle bought this bike new back in 2001. I think he went into the Honda dealer and said, I want the most expensive bike you have, and put every option on it. He road it a it a little, but lost his license due to too many DUI's. Over the years he's had lots of people offer to buy it, but he was dead set on keeping it. So it sat in his garage, looking like it did off the showroom floor, collecting dust with only 3K miles on it.. A couple of years ago he thought he was going to be able to get his license back, so he had the local Honda dealer pick it up, go through it and make it road worthy again. The problem is that though he switch from vodka to beer, his health continued to fail. Last Saturday night, his liver, kidneys and what ever finally gave in.
So here it is.
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The battery is dead, there's gas in the tank and the petcock was left on. Hopefully it will be pretty easy to get it going again.

Anyone know of a good Valkyrie Forum?
 
Score dude!

It will either be fuel pump or vacuum petcock unless it was set to prime no problem. As always check smell the oil. NEW battery don't even think about trying to rehab the old one. Fire it up, run a few tanks of gas through it with some carb/injector cleaner added. Ever so gently clean, polish and wax. New tires. See you at Barber? Well heck you have to do a test ride right?
 
Gary: I'd love to make it to Barber this year, but I that's not going to happen. I've been working 50+ hours a week lately and that's not going to stop till probably after the new year. I haven't played in my workshop in weeks. I did see that VJMC BBQ sold out real fast.

Barry: I just signed up, hopefully some good information there. At this point I don't even know how to get to the battery. I'm afraid to start pulling at covers.

The bike is in his garage about two hours away. I'm going up there this weekend for the visitation and to help clean out the house. My wife's grandfather built that house (her grandmother died a year ago, and grandfather about 10 years ago), so there's 2 generations worth of stuff there. My wife and her mother are the next of kin, so it's up to us to take care of it all. Between, that, my heavy work schedule and taking care of his estate (he owned 6 rental house to boot that we have to sell off), I'm going to be pretty busy.

When I'm up there, I'm thinking I'd drain the tank and the carbs, put a fresh battery in it and see if I can get it going. If it goes smoothly, and the tires are in good shape, I'll ride it home, otherwise I'll trailer it. Like I said, he had the local Honda dealer go through it a couple of years ago, so it might not be that bad.
 
hi sorry about your loss just had the same problem with wife s father however all sorted now so i know what whats ahead for you . however if you get a min go onto home page on valkyrie site scroll down the side to features then click on shop talk you wont need a manual after that a bit like this site great guys and alot of good advice cheers barry
 
A little update. I spent last weekend helping clean out the uncles house and got some more information.
Turns out he was back on the vodka. He had a couple of drunks shacking up at his house for the last few weeks, making party store runs, keeping him pickled. The house was littered with liquor bottles. From the looks of it, they stole everything they could carry, all his jewelry was gone, he had jars of change all over the house that are now empty, his expensive mountain bike is gone. Who knows what else they took before 911 was called. Pretty sad, my wife had talked to him a week before and he seemed fine.

As for the Valkyrie. I drained and put in fresh gas and some seafoam, charged up the battery. I was a bit hard to start a first, but I got her going and road it home Sunday night about 100 miles. It's a real beast to handle at low speeds, but a dream once it gets going over 20 mph. On all my other bikes the drafts off of semis always shake me around, not this bike, it plows straight through. The thing pulls like a freight train, and I easily got the tires to chirp in the first 3 gears. When I got home, I shut it off to help my wife, then it wouldn't start, the battery is a 6 volts. I'm hoping I just took the last little bit of life out of that 15 year old battery and all it needs is a new one. It needs a good cleaning and going through and I'll get some new tires before next summer when I can put some serious miles on her.

Barry: Thanks for the advice, I found a copy of the factory service manual there. The freaking thing is 500 pages and the wiring diagram looks like it belongs to a car. I hope I don't have any electrical issues, it makes the xs650 look simple.
 
glad to be of help dont look to hard at the wiring diagram there pretty good the standared bikes only had problems with alternators being under powered but it was only when owners fitted all the xmas lights (extras) however your model came with more amp power anyway a new battery full tank fresh fuel and go put some miles on er there great bikes cheers barry
 
Hi grepper,
sorry for your loss but at least your uncle died while still appreciating his chosen lifestyle.
I lost a good friend this week, Alzheimer's wiped his mind two years back, visiting a living corpse and hoping it'll quit running soon really tears at you.
But I dunno about the Valk's Interstate version? What's the point in stripping a Goldwing down so it don't look like a Winnebago then bolting stuff back on until it does?
 
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