I'm looking for a sled for my wife and the place I might buy my 05 RX-1 ER has a couple of 04 Venture XL's still in boxes. They are willing to let them go for slightly less than their cost.

My wife is used to riding a liquid cooled 650 tripple ('90 Indy 650), but she never really gets over about 70 mph.

It has all of the features she wants (electric start, reverse, two up, heated rear grips, etc.), but it only has the 488? fan cooled twin (Phazer motor?).

How slow/fast would the Venture XL be?

(The dealer claims they will do 70+ mph)

Steve

Anything with a 500 in it should easily do 70. I had a 340 Indy Lite once that went 70 (77 on the speedo) on hard pack. Even with the added weight of the starter, seat and reverse it would be hard to imagine it doing anything less than 80 - 85 on reasonably packed snow. That lets her back off 10 - 15 mph from full throttle, which puts you in a pretty safe rpm/stress zone for extended runnig.

Originally posted by blue thunder@Mar 25 2004, 12:45 AM
Anything with a 500 in it should easily do 70. I had a 340 Indy Lite once that went 70 (77 on the speedo) on hard pack. Even with the added weight of the starter, seat and reverse it would be hard to imagine it doing anything less than 80 - 85 on reasonably packed snow. That lets her back off 10 - 15 mph from full throttle, which puts you in a pretty safe rpm/stress zone for extended runnig.
I don't know. An almost 600 lbs machine with a 485 fan cooled twin getting up to 85 mph?

The dealer told me that on a long stretch in good hard packed conditions he's had them up to 120 kph (which is about 75 mph). He also said it's fairly quick up to about 50 mph.

What I was more concerned about was can it really get to 50 mph fairly quickly?

I'm sure on the long straight aways she'll be running wide open (at least when the kids aren't with us).

We've pretty much decided (guessed/assumed) that it will probably be too slow, so we're going to keep looking for either a '97 - '99 XLT touring or a Venture with the 600 tripple.