Count your blessings, Savage people.  

Not only do you have OE parts, you have improvement parts and detailed pictorial how to's on how to fix the relatively FEW Savage defects that exist -- you also have the real living experts actually participating daily that will answer your questions.  

(yeah, Greg still counts as a very useful answer as he does give out detailed good info once he gets past his "check search" reminder -- he's here, he's responsive and he is informational)

People say the Savage is a simple bike -- it was also well designed to be ROBUST both electrically and mechanically (only exception noted is the cam chain tensioner system).

That's ONE (1) major defect that is well covered, understood and documented.  Yamaha viragos have at least 3-4 major areas to foul up on you, parts are scarce, dealers won't work on a bike past 10 years old (as Yamaha drops parts support on them) and the on line experts (who never apparently owned a camera) have departed the building and are not in evidence anymore.

Count your blessings Savage people.

I must agree, I've never been more happy owning anything which may require maintenance cause you savage folks know what you're doing, I mean hell, we even have our own store where people make custom parts

What in the world are you talking about, boat anchor?

My non-OE company-supported Flying Purple People Eater shall rise up again, snarl and bite off all those errant typing fingers what said such a thing.

She shall be missing all her PC correct (but totally nonfunctional) exhaust pulse valve powered active pollution control systems and curl around the cylinders chrome piping.  She shall have multiple non-standard extra electrical grounding points and she shall have two solid copper billets where her spark plug RF suppressor gizmos used to be.

She shall have custom circuitry that bypasses certain "avoidable energy drains" on her recalibrated battery charging systems.  She shall have two new style Iridium low voltage firing spark plugs to give RED BULL wings to her poor old aching coils.

She shall have custom mixed touch up paint filling in all her little whoopie marks on tank and fenders to exactly match her faded Ponderous Purple Pulchritude.

She shall be missing all five of her major mud dauber nests and the all the multitude of perverted previous owner's tape and bubble gum wiring repairs.  She shall have a multitude of cleaned and refreshed plug-in males and tighted-up females, all eager to mate together again.

She shall have adjusted valves and pressure tested piston rings.  New oil and new oil filter.  She shall have her shaft drive sup new gear stuff such as that never even existed in her virgin youth.

And she shall eventually roar out, and race forward to approach the magical ton again, using all the down & dirty modern magics of electrical cheats and mods mated to an oversized rear tire.

For she actually has a Title now, clean and clear & taxes paid -- new plates with insurance to match.  She is a 14 year old obsolete "legal beagle" miracle bike.

And she shall forever more be called a CHALLENGE, one worthy of the effort.


<g>


Oldfeller

it's called a winter time project bike .....

One ya gotta have faith for.

depends if the ungrateful b!tch refuses to start after I finally finish fixing her

Cool, glad to hear it.  I would rather have cosmetic issues than mechanical ones.  Much easier to ignore.

if you see a piston rod hit the ground let me know - wind as its been lately could use a little more weight on the bottom

hope so - I've been hitting the rev limiter on this 200cc too often- it's geared so low need to either speed shift it all the time or just leave it in 3rd/4th/5th - I believe you can walk beside it wot in 1st