I also just ordered a better grade of Quorel HPE plastic jugs for my auxillary gas system -- this new stuff hopefully won't permit "gas stink" to migrate nearly as much as the previous jugs did.They are still the same plastic 2.6 gallon jugs, just made from the stiff bone white plastic they ship paint thinner in.
You can take a sniff and a look in a month or two,
then we will both know if they are really worth using.
Right now, it is a $35 theoretical trial sort of thing.
If you want to rubber neck some tanks that could go up on a Savage sissy bar mount, look here.
https://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=104163&catid=578 P.S. The Barcalounger jest got its oil and its front brake fluid changed, and the bike fired right up and idled fine as soon as both cylinders got properly fueled up.
(Suzuki ran the fuel supply for the front carb through the back carb,
so before the front carb fires off the rear carb has to be completely fueled up and the lines between the two completely filled, and only then does the front fuel bowl really begin to fill. Odd, huh. There can be as much as a minute before both cylinders are really firing properly
by design.)
Previous Dr. Owner told me the bike had never once run correctly after a winter's storage and the stealership firmly instructed him to bring it back in for "carb cleaning" if it did that odd "stall and run" action the first thing in the springtime. After 10 years he would just call them to come and get it every spring and then paid them an average of $325 in shop labor hours to "take the carbs apart, rebalance them and fix it all up".
...... this likely meant either charge the battery or replace it and run some seafoam through the tank.==================================================
It was 50 degrees today, so I worked on my bikes some and got them to the stage they could be inspected. So I put a paperback in my pocket and ran them out to the Cycle Shop in by turns.
I don't go to Stealerships any more for inspections since I discovered this little hole in the wall Cycle Shop does bike inspections with no waiting.
Well, both bikes made it through inspection OK and I have given each bike a one tank dose of seafoam on the theory that a couple of bucks worth of Seafoam certainly can't hurt anything, and historically list-wide Seafoam does a good job of partially stopping "stored alky gas" issues from fouling things up.
So, I Stabil'd the gas in the fall and Seafoamed the first few tanks in the very early spring so I guess that even Bill would bless my new set of semi-superstitious yearly maintenance rituals.
The Barcalounger got a "pretty bike" complement from the bike inspection guys, who wanted to know FYI what sort of aftermarket can system I was using in the bags. I told them it was a matched set of small outboard gas cans which satisfied their curiosity well enough, I guess.
So, as soon as my new hard white scent free Quorel HPE 2.6 gallon jugs get here I will put the "5.2 gallons in the saddle bags" auxiliary fuel system back together.
====================================================
On Sunday (very next day) I got a fail to crank on the Barcalounger so I pulled the battery and found it was an old style liquid acid battery that was running mostly dry on two cells.
I had already bought a new style AGM glass mat battery from Walmart.com on-line CHEAP like a month ago figuring I was gonna need one this year. So I went to put it in and I got me a surprise, the new battery is like an inch and a half shorter than the original battery. All the upper bulky slosh acid baffles are gone from the new AGM battery of course, and that simply makes the battery that much shorter. Modern AGM batteries are simply better batteries (and that made it yet shorter still as less plate area is needed).
The battery box on the VS800 is odd for another reason, it opens from the bottom like a trap door, you stick the battery up in the blind hole, push it up into place and lock the trap door with a couple of bolts and the tight fit of the battery in the box gives you all rattle control and aligns the terminals to match up to the rather small clearance access windows that are cut on the up high blind ends of the box.
Next stupidity, the stock battery required two 90
o battery lug ADAPTORS to move the connections to a sideways connection pattern which also made it a bloody pain in the arse to get the battery to come out of the steel battery box itself without arcing on steel.
I decided I could do better for myself than paying $136 for a FACTORY STOCK liquid acid Yuasa battery (yep, they still sell them as the stock battery is the only thing that would go into the odd arrangement and actually still mate up to the little box windows using the battery lug adaptors).
Issue on the 15 year old bike is that the little access windows in the steel battery box (so you can get to the terminal bolts on the lug adaptors) no longer get even close to matching up to the new style shorter AGM battery's terminals, so I spent Sunday all day pulling side covers and wiring connections and setting me up some "Generic Battery Connections" that come in from the top of the battery box.
So now I can stage literally any applicable AGM battery of
any terminal orientation on my old rectangular Savage box lift* and after jacking the Barcalounger up high on my hydraulic motorcycle jack. I can sit comfortably in a chair, drop the trap door, catch the old battery on the box lift, remove the two battery connections that come down from above (lots of room in there now for some coiled up extra cable length as the batteries are so much shorter than they used to be).
I can now go buy any applicable 12 volt AGM motorcycle battery that is currently selling for a reduced price as long as it is about 3 1/2" x 6 1/4" on the bottom rectangle form. Likely any lithium motorcycle battery would work fine too.
Bike starts instantly now, so I am good to go for Florida.
* (very ancient Savage tech, that 15 year old simple box lift, only the real Savage old timers remember the original board box lift that would lift either front tire or back tire (you pick which one this time) just by tilting the bike up a tad on the side stand and then siding the wooden box into the correct place by tapping it in the correct place with your foot.